He is, the deputy police chief of Chestertown says, the "town nuisance."

He's also Frosty the Snowman, and he's under arrest, charged with kicking a police dog in a parade while dressed up as the famous character. The story went around the world, and The Sun's Tricia Bishop contributes with a gem of a story detailing the snowman's turbulent history with cops and his past arrests.

He's been banned from public meetings (he stood outside banging pots and pans in protest one day) and called police in April pretending to be part of a CNN crew seeking an interview. Here are some unforgettable holiday lines from Tricia's story:

"Within minutes, two police officers had the so-called jolly, happy soul face down on the sidewalk in front of the Compleat Bookseller, raising a ruckus as his hands were cuffed behind his back. The round, white head lay forlornly at his feet, top hat and carrot nose still in place."

"While the Frosty of holiday lore has only a brief run-in with a traffic cop (who famously hollers "stop"), the Frosty of Chestertown, 52-year-old Kevin Michael Walsh, has a history of tangling with police."

He said he spent three hours in the suit, handcuffed to a wall, before someone made him take it off so it could be returned to the costume shop. He was released on his own recognizance that afternoon. And by Monday, he'd come to a realization: "I've got to get a lawyer, before I melt," he said.

Check out other coverage -- The Cecil Whig: Frosty Iced by Police and The Star Democrat in Easton has Man playing Frosty says he did nothing wrong.

Read The Baltimore Sun's complete story here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Crime humor
        

A man who authorities say robbed banks from Glen Burnie to Brookings, South Dakota, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Monday. Gary Allen Densmore, 56, who used to live in Anne Arundel County, faces up to 20 years on each of three counts of bank robbery.

Prosecutors say that on Feb. 2, he tried to rob the Carrollton Bank on Crain Highway in Glen Burnie by handing a teller a bag and a demand note. He ran out of the bank when the teller hesitated. The next day, prosecutors said he walked into the Severn Savings Bank on Crain Highway, handed the teller a note and a bag, and fled with $2,300.

The Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office said Densmore stole a car and left Maryland. They said he hit banks in February and March in Wisconsin, South Dakota and Iowa before being arresrted in Minnesota.

More details from a statement by the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office:

Continue reading "Serial bank robber pleads guilty; hit several states" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

Maryland State Police have arrested a 25-year-old man in a series of armed robberies of gas stations and convenience stores in Baltimore, Cecil and Harford counties. The attacks include a robbery of a gas station at an I-95 rest stop and several along Pulaski Highway.

The suspect is identified as Michael R. Malpass, 25, of Cecil County. Police said they got tips from photos of the suspect distributed to the news media. Police stopped him Thursday night driving a 2008 Chevrolet Impala on Pulaski Highway in Perryville. 

Police said they found evidence linking him to the robberies, and that the car he was driving when arrested was the getaway vehicle. Here is more from a statement from Maryland State Police:

Continue reading "Man arrested in string of armed robberies" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Harford County
        

The Smoking Gun is calling him "the ex-boyfriend from hell."

Christopher Scott, a 20-year-old college student and former Stevenson University lacrosse player, has been charged in Pennsylvania with uploading a video of him having sex with a former girlfriend in a dorm at the Baltimore County campus. According to documents posted by the web site, Scott told investigators that he posted the video 11 months ago because he was "depressed" over his break-up with the 24-year-old victim.

He admitted that he was "trying to be hateful" and "realized the implications it could have," the site reported. The victim, who was not a student, told police that word of the video spread, leading to her employer asking for her resignation and harassment on Facebook.

The encounter was recorded on his laptop, which was seized from his family's Delaware County home. Also found on the computer were "several files indicative of child pornography." 

Scott is charged with four misdemeanor counts related to the creation and distribution of the video of his ex-girlfriend, as well as two misdemeanors related to drugs found in his Newton Square, Pa. home.

When reached tonight, Stevenson lacrosse coach Paul Cantabene declined comment.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Baltimore County, Crime elsewhere
        

From The Sun's Arthur Hirsch:

The man suspected of fatally shooting two people outside of Arundel Mills mall late Friday was shot and killed in an exchange of gunfire near Capital Heights this morning, Prince George's County police said.

Anne Arundel County Police spokesman Lt. Francis Tewey had said early Saturday that the victims in the mall shooting were a male and a female, but he had no further information about them. He said the incident was "probably not a random act of violence."

The shootings occurred shortly before midnight outside Dave & Buster's restuarant at the mall in Hanover. Few other details of the shootings have been released. Read the full story here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Breaking news, Crime elsewhere
        

Federal authorities in El Paso, Texas have filed additional charges against 10 people from Baltimore being held in a trafficking case involving The Block and strip clubs across the country. Prosecutors are calling the case a "forced prostitution" scheme.

The alleged leader, Alarcon Allen "Tha Don" Wiggins, 43, and nine other city residents had been charged with transporting for the purpose of prostitution. A superseding indictment unsealed on Thursday charges the defendants with conspiracy to commit human trafficking and sex trafficking by force.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Texas alleges the group leaders called themselves concert promoters to allegedly lure women into their group and then force them to dance at strip clubs, including at The Block, and to be prostitutes. One of the bars mentioned in the indictment is Chez Joey on East Baltimore Street, shown above in the picture by The Sun's Gene Sweeney Jr.

Prosecutors said the group had strict rules, confiscated the women's cell phones and identification cards, and set minimums for pay, all of which were taken by the leaders. Rules, prosecutors said, "prohibited any communication by the victims and personal interaction with anyone outside the group without the defendants permission."

On Sunday, The Sun published a long article on the case and interviewed one of the women involved. The story documents how several women escaped, helped others to get out and then helped the FBI. All 10 suspects were arrested at a single family house off Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore.

Here is a statement from federal prosecutors on the case:

Continue reading "Feds file more charges in Block trafficking case" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Downtown
        

As I walked around the pretty campus of Frostburg State University on Monday, covering yet another alleged student-on-student killing, some things stood out. Police in this small Western Maryland town, just as in Baltimore, leave their crime scene tape behind.

And a sorority up the street from the killing put up a Baltimore-like memorial -- minus the votive candles -- on a pole at Maple and College. There was a teddy bear, a note and plastic flowers honoring the victim, Kortneigh McCoy. The girls who put it there didn't even know the victim. "We just thought it would be nice because it happened on our street," one told me.

But the aftermath was this -- a promising gospel choir vocalist and physics major who graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic is dead, and a business senior from Waldorf is behind bars, facing first-degree murder charges. Read full story here.

Campus officials talked about the problems with alcohol -- the fight that led to the stabbing came after a crowded house party and involved one of the girl's renting the home, who police said was collecting admission at the door. The fight started when police that girl argued with one of the victim's friends -- she thought he would not get out of the way.

Such petty fights -- just two months ago, a female student at Bowie State University was charged with fatally stabbing another student in an argument over music and an iPod. And the killing at Frostburg was the second in two years involving students.

The bail hearing for the suspect, 23-year-old Shanee Liggins, was short,with her held without bail, and her parents and a lawyer disappeared into a private conference room. The mother and father walked out hand-in-hand but had little to say to reporters.

At a news conference back on campus, the vice president of student services, Thomas Bowling, recalled visiting the hospital emergency room where 20 of McCoy's friends gathered, and learned of her death. 

He recalled McCoy's mother -- "In the midst of her own unspeakable grief, she was focused on providing comfort to the friends of her daughter." She went around the room and hugged them all.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

For the second time in a year, a student at Frostburg State University in Western Maryland has been killed. The Sun's Susan Reimer writes:

Kortneigh McCoy, a 19-year-old Baltimore Polytechnic Institute graduate, was fatally stabbed after a fight at an off-campus house party, police said. Police said officers arrived at about 1:30 a.m. to find her bleeding to death in the street outside the house from a wound to the head. She was declared dead at Western Maryland Hospital, police reported.

Arrested and charged with both first- and second-degree murder was Shanee Liggins, a 23-year-old senior business major from Waldorf, police said. She was being held by police Sunday until a bond hearing could be scheduled, police said. University officials said the party took place at Liggins' home on Maple Street in Frostburg.

Members of the Allegany County Combined Investigation Unit were not available to confirm those accounts Sunday afternoon. McCoy was a member of the United Voices Under God's Dominion, a student gospel choir, and was scheduled to sing as part of the group's regular Sunday worship.

Frostburg also was the site of a student-on-student killing in April 2010 that occurred after a fight at an off-campus party. Tyrone Hall of Glen Burnie opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun, striking two fellow students in the abdomen. Twenty-year-old Brandon Carroll of Waldorf died; the other student survived. Hall was sentenced to a five-year prison sentence in November 2010.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, North Baltimore
        

It was a busy day on Tuesday's crime front. The picture by The Sun's Kenneth K. Lam is from Occupy Baltimore, which is embroiled in security issues (see blurb below).

Catch up on the latest headlines:

Today: Attorneys are scheduled to make closing arguments in the bribery trial of state Sen. Ulysses Currie in federal court. Currie, a Prince George's Democrat, is accused of selling his influence as chairman of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee to do political favors for Shoppers Food Warehouse. Read how the state's power brokers are rallying around Currie, and other stories.

* The man convicted of killing a Towson gas station owner for money apologized Tuesday in Harford County Circuit Court to the victim's family and friends, saying "I'm sorry to the last fiber of my being." The apology came shortly before a jury was to begin deliberating whether Walter P. Bishop Jr. will be sentenced to death or life in prison.

* The Occupy Baltimore protest is now entrenched at the Inner Harbor, but its members are questioning whether they can sustain the movement amid a dwindling number of core leaders and allegations of crime and drug use. Reports that a woman was sexually assaulted in a tent, deemed unfounded by city police, have nevertheless put public safety at the forefront.

* A 52-year-old man died after being shot during a robbery at a carryout restaurant in Better Waverly on Monday night, renewing concerns in the community about the crime connected to the beleaguered business. The Yau Brothers carryout, in the 2900 block of Greenmount Ave., was closed Tuesday, as it was after similar shooting incidents in the past two years: In 2010, 72-year-old security guard Charles Bowman was fatally shot in a robbery there, a year after three men were shot following a fight that broke out inside.

* A former professional basketball player pleaded guilty Tuesday in the pistol whipping of his girlfriend's brother after a dispute at a cookout in Arnold.

* Towson University students and employees were briefly alerted to stay inside Tuesday afternoon, because police were looking for a man with a gun on campus. But the man turned out to be carrying a prop gun for an acting class, said Towson spokeswoman Gay Pinder.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Downtown, North Baltimore
        

The shooting of Maryland State Trooper Michael S. Nickerson a decade ago still resonates on the Eastern Shore. Michael, killed along with a sheriff's deputy trying to get Frank Zito to turn down his stereo, was a member of the small Centreville police force.

He had wanted to become a state trooper, and five years after his death, his brother Phillip became a trooper to fulfill the dream. Last month, Phillip's son, Tanner, also became a trooper, bringing the family together on the force. Read the full story here.

I followed Tanner for a day. The young trooper, in his first few days of field training, had just started driving and pulling over cars. His family talked about the tragedy, and their commitment to law enforcement.

The story was big news at the time. Zito, known as "Crazy Frank," was an oddity in the small town and a frequently had issues with police and neighbors. A jury rejected his insanity defense and he was sentenced to death, but died of lung cancer a year after the incident.

Nickerson's death raised questions about how to best treat the mentally ill and told of a tragedy involving two police officers and their families. It's a story that continues to this day, with father and son now colleagues, in adjacent barracks, serving to honor a brother and an uncle.

The photo by The Sun's Kenneth K. Lam shows young Tanner Nickerson on just his sixth car stop of his career. With him is Cpl. Frank J. Stanco. The video is of Phillip Nickerson talking about his brother's death at a fallen hero ceremony in May.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere
        

Maryland State Police say that a 38-year-old man apparently jumped off a bridge on the Maryland-Virginia line, but never made it to the ground. Instead, police say he landed on top of a tractor trailer, and wasn't discovered until 11 miles away in Virginia.

Police said it occurred Tuesday afternoon on the Maryland side of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. A motorist saw the man jump off a pedestrian overpass nd called police, who caught up with the truck on I-95 in Woodbridge, Va.

The man was pronounced dead of an apparent suicide. State police said his body came to rest on top of a canvas cover on the open-bedded trailer, which was hauling waste products.

Continue reading "Suicide victim lands on moving truck, travels 11 miles before body discovered" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The teenager from Ellicott City who is charged with using the Internet to solicit money for a convicted terrorist who called herself "Jihad Jane" pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. The hearing was brief; a trial date was set for December.

Attorneys for the Mount Hebron High School graduate, in interviews outside the courtroom, portrayed their client, Mohammad Massan Khalid as a stellar student with a family described as the "true American immigrant story."

They said federal prosecutors misconstrued the emails they intercepted on Internet chat boards but noted their client's life has been destroyed. He withdrew from Johns Hopkins University, where he had a full scholarship this fall. He was arrested in secret when he was 17 years old; the charges were unsealed last week, after he had turned 18.

Federal prosecutors have outlined an indictment that alleges Khalid tried to raise money to help fund a holy war in Europe. More on the prosecution's case in today's story. He is being detained in federal custody until his trial, one of the country's youngest terror suspects.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Howard County
        

Maryland State Police are searching for a Dorchester County man who may have been missing since 2009. Authorities said they began their search last week; they said Craig Junior Parker, 39, was never reported missing before now.

Police said Parker lives alone in Hurlock. He is described as a black male with brown eyes and a medium complexion. He is about 6 feet tall and weighs 215 pounds.

Anyone with information about Parker or his current whereabouts is urged to contact Maryland State Police at the Easton Barrack. A dedicated tips line is available around-the-clock at 410-819-4796. Callers may remain confidential.

A Maryland State Police statement with more details is below:

Continue reading "State police search for Dorchester County man" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The South Side Brims, the Bloods gang taken down by the feds on Thursday, worked from one end of the state to the other. Authorities allege a broad scheme that stretched from the Eastern Shore to Western Maryland.

As The Sun's Justin Fenton wrote today, court documents describe a virtual modern-day tutorial in gangs. Along with the allegations of murder, revenge killings, drug running and gun use, federal prosecutors say members used YouTube, Facebook and text messaging to communicate and to boast.

It's a colorful rendition.

They kept meticulous notes and lists of members, including phone numbers, broken down by geographic region. Those who were locked up were called "G-Wall Homies." Those on the street were "G-World Homies."

Alleged gang members threw dues into a kitty to pay expenses, such as bail, firearms and legal bills. They had the Brim Association Blood Application, a list of signs and signals, and the Brim's Concept of War. Many had multiple nicknames -- Squeaky, Redrum, Platinum, Diamond,
Trigger, Ransom, Blaze, Breezy Brim.

Targets were "on the menu." Members went on Facebook, openly talking about their affiliation and posting pictures of meetings.

Leaders, called "hats," had "round table" discussions, once the feds say, to plan on how to gently recruit two members from a rival gang without inciting a war.

They had First Lady's," one of whom kept the books in Salisbury.

The feds said one text message from a First Lady: "Bang Bang Brim Gang Hat Til I Die."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Howard County
        

[Note: Embedded video does not appear to be a Maryland Bloods member but was linked to on a Frederick South Side Brim member's YouTube account]

Read the full indictment here.

Two years after police found a gang roster in a Frederick motel room, federal authorities announced Thursday a racketeering indictment charging 35 alleged Bloods gang members with murder, kidnapping and other crimes from Western Maryland to the Eastern Shore — a move they said had "dismantled" the gang.

Authorities say cells of the South Side Brims coordinated gang activity across the state and region, and court documents offer a tutorial on how modern criminal organizations operate, including posting photos and messages on Facebook, and uploading initiation videos on YouTube.

Those indicted are accused of at least one murder in Baltimore, an attempted murder in Wicomico County, a home invasion in Howard County, a kidnapping in Frederick, and witness intimidation in Allegany County, among a host of other alleged crimes.

"Gangs represent the most significant violent crime challenge we face throughout the state of Maryland," said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, flanked at a Baltimore news conference by police officials from across the state. "We hope these gang indictments send a message to gang members and prospective gang members to get out while you can."

Frederick police chief Kim C. Dine said the case was "extremely significant" for his city, which he said has been conducting gang outreach work in recent years but is not immune to the spreading of gangs. "Sixteen of these gangsters are from Frederick, and it will have a huge impact on the city of Frederick and quality of life," he said.

The alleged leader of the gang was identified as Andre Ricardo Roach, a 34-year-old Prince George's County native. Known as "Redrum," he's accused of leading the gang since 2005 from behind bars at the North Branch Correctional Institute in Cumberland, where he is serving a 50-year sentence for second-degree murder.

Here's an article from the Frederick News Post from March in which a county detective told citizens that the South Side Brims were among several active sets there. 

The list of people charged is after the jump:

Continue reading "Feds indict members of Bloods gang subset" »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Crime elsewhere, Gangs, Howard County, Witness intimidation
        

The Maryland State trooper was returning from drug training when he stopped to help the driver of a disabled car on I-95 in Cecil County Wednesday night. The trooper left with two people in handcuffs and marijuana worth an estimated $300,000.

The unidentified trooper had pulled over to help the men change a tire on the northbound lanes of the highway, near Route 279 in Elkton. Police said the trooper got suspicious and got consent to search the pickup truck, and found two duffel bags and box with "high-grade marijuana."

Here is the statement from police with more details:

Continue reading "Drug training pays off for Maryland trooper" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Coming off revelations by The Sun's Justin Fenton on the lavish lifestyle of a reputed drug dealer, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office gives us another example today.

A federal judge sentenced Eric Hellams, 40, to more than 10 years in prison for drug dealing and money laundering. Prosecutors said he distributed heroin in the Baltimore area from 2003 through 2009.

Prosecutors said he hid his drug proceeds by laundering up to $1 million, some of it by refinancing a home in Upper Marlboro, listing an annual income of $178,764. Authorities said that when they searched his home, they found $98,875 hidden in an attic crawl space, a bullet-proof vest, jewelry -- including Rolex, Gucci and Cartier watches -- necklaces and Tiffany bracelets.

The feds also said he had a 2008 Mercedes-Benz coupe -- monthly payments $2,200 -- and a Toyota Truck. Prosecutors said they found $1,220 in an apron pocket. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

In case you were out enjoying the beautiful weather this weekend and missed the crime, here is a bit of what you missed:

A woman poured bleach and Pine-Sol on a Walmart customer in southern Baltimore County, police said, in an incident that closed down the store for several hours Saturday and sent 19 to area hospitals. The two women knew each other and were involved in a continuing dispute, police said.

State police say a traffic stop in Hagerstown led to a major marijuana seizure. A trooper pulled over the driver of a 1979 Cadillac early Friday morning for not having a working light on the rear license plate. State police troopers found a bag with nine pounds of freshly cut marijuana.

Baltimore city police said they were investigating an overnight shooting in Northwest Baltimore that injured a 25-year-old man. The man was found near Park Heights and Belvedere avenues shortly after an officer on patrol heard gunshots around 1:43 a.m. The victim, who was not identified, suffered multiple gunshot wounds, police said, adding that he was taken to a local hospital, where he was in serious but stable condition.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Crime elsewhere, Northwest Baltimore
        

The former Wicomico County state's attorney has been arrested on charges of violating a court order by contacting a woman he had dated, the Salisbury Daily Times reported.

Police said Davis Ruark, who was the top prosecutor for more than 20 years, was taken into custody Thursday in Salisbury after authorities say he violated an order that prohibiting Ruark from coming into contact with the woman by sending text messages and e-mails.

Police said the woman told authorities that Ruark attempted to contact her several times this week. Ruark was released on his own recognizance.

Thursday's arrest was Ruark's latest run-in with the law. In 2008, Ruark was accused of drinking and driving in Ocean City. He was later charged with possession of a handgun while under the influence.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Prince George's County police say they have arrested a Fort Washington man accused of impersonating Eagles backup quarterback Vince Young.

Stephan Antwain Pittman, 33, of the 2800 block of Lindesfarn Terrace, was taken into custody by county police at a shopping center in Temple Hills and was charged with first-degree fraud. The charges have been filed in Washington DC.

According to the Washington Post, Pittman is charged with defrauding a woman who gave him $2,500 which he said would go to a charity foundation that "does such things as provide hula hoops for neighborhood children," a county police spokeswoman said. 

Pittman first met the woman in June on Facebook and said he was connected to Young; eventually they began meeting and Pittman, who bears a resemblance to Young, said he was the in fact the Eagles quarterback. 

Young had Tweeted earlier this week warning fans that "there is a man in the DC area that has been impersonating me" and identified him as Pittman.

Maryland's sex offender registry shows that Pittman is a registered sex offender for a crime in a different state. He was last listed as a "Tier III" offender, which is the most serious level, and was listed as "compliant."

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

A man killed in a Maryland state prison in Cresaptown had been serving two life terms for imprisoning and trying to rape a Mount Vernon woman in 2000, according to court records.

Saleem N. Abdullah, 53, was found dead in his cell Thursday night in the Western Maryland Correctional Institution. State police said he died of asphyxiation, and that a fellow inmate was being held but had not yet been charged. No motive was given.

A correctional officer delivering mail in Housing Unit 4, a segregation unit at the prison, found the man unresponsive, state police said. He was pronounced dead at Cumberland Hospital.

The Sun wrote a brief story on Abdullah's conviction in 2003, saying he had attacked a 19-year-old woman at a Mount Vernon laundromat. He lived nearby, in the 2000 block of North Calvert St., had been on parole at the time for attempted murder.

More details on the homicide from Maryland State Police: 

Continue reading "Man killed in prison had tried to rape Mount Vernon woman" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, North Baltimore, Prisons
        

Two Prince George's County police officers have been indicted in the beating of a University of Maryland College Park student during a celebration over the school's defeat of Duke at a basketball game last year.

The officers were charged with first and second-degree assault, and misconduct, according to prosecutors. The officers, dressed in tactical gear, were caught on video hitting the unarmed student with batons. From an AP story:

Police arrested more than two dozen students who took to the streets to celebrate Maryland's 79-72 win over Duke on March 3, 2010. A video, taken from a dorm room window, later surfaced showing officers in riot gear beating student John McKenna with batons. Charges were later dropped against many of those arrested that night, including McKenna.

The video shows McKenna half-dancing, half-jogging down the sidewalk in celebration. He stops when he is cornered by two officers on horseback. Then, three officers in riot gear approach McKenna, and he is slammed into a wall and struck repeatedly with batons. McKenna suffered a concussion, cuts and other injuries, his attorney has said.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

UPDATE FROM MARYLAND STATE POLICE: "The accused is identified as Alexis D. Simpson, 19, who is a student at Bowie State University and resides on campus. She is from District Heights, Md.  She is charged with first degree murder, second degree murder, and first degree assault.  She is being held in the Prince George’s County Detention Center without bond."   

An argument between roommates at Bowie State University has left one young woman dead and another in custody, according to Maryland State Police. They said the victim, Dominique T. Frazier, 18, was cut and found bleeding in the hallway of a campus dorm.

The victim was from Washington. Police said her roommate, a 19-year-old from District Heights, is in custody awaiting formal charges. Here is a brief account from state police:

Just after 8:00 p.m. yesterday, Prince George’s County Police received a 911 call for a cutting in the Christa McAuliffe Residential Community building on the campus of Bowie State University, in the 14000-block of Jericho Park Rd., Bowie, Md. University police officers were also notified and were the first to arrive on the scene outside of the apartment style residence on the second floor of the residential community.

Bowie State University Police Department officers found the victim in the hallway. She was bleeding from the upper torso and was unconscious. Officers rendered emergency care until EMS units from the Prince George’s County Fire Department arrived. EMS units transported the victim to Prince George’s Hospital Center where she was pronounced dead at about 8:44 p.m.  

Police have confirmed that this incident was isolated to one residential apartment on campus and the situation is contained. The campus of Bowie State University is safe and there is no continuing threat.  

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

News from The Sun's Mary Gail Hare:

The University of Maryland College Park campus police are investigating an assault on a female student while she was sleeping in her residence at Leonardtown Apartments.

The woman awoke at about 3:30 a.m. Sept. 9 to find an unknown man in her bed and fondling her breasts and torso, police said. She screamed and he fled the apartment. The victim glimpsed the assailant through her window and described him as curly headed and wearing a striped shirt, police said.

More details can be found here at the University of Maryland police site.

Watch the police surveillance video.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

From the Baltimore firefighter's union:

Baltimore’s International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) Local 734 will commemorate the 343 firefighters who lost their lives on September 11, 2011 with a moment of silence at the time each plane hit the World Trade Center towers. 

The IAFF will be hosting a tailgate before the Ravens versus Steelers home opener Sunday, September 11.  At 8:46 and 9:03 a.m., participants will pause to honor and remember their fallen brothers. It will be held at the union hall, 1202 Ridgely St.

The tailgate is free and open to the public.  IAFF volunteers will be on site to begin preparing food as early as 5:00 a.m. Proceeds from food and beverage sales will go toward the Widows & Orphans Fund.

The Widows & Orphans Fund has a longstanding history with the IAFF Local 734 and has been helping to ease the financial burden for surviving family members any time an active or retired Baltimore City Firefighter passes for decades. The fund distributes over $100,000 annually to families of fallen Baltimore Firefighters.

The tailgate will offer pit beef, ham, and turkey, chili, crab soup, a variety of drinks and more prepared by local Baltimore City Firefighters, and the location is just blocks from M&T Bank Stadium. 

As you probably know, there's been some concern of attacks as we mark the 10th anniversary. Here's a story on Baltimore since Sept. 11 and whether we're safer or not. Read a special statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security: 

Continue reading "Join Baltimore firefighters for Sept. 11 tailgate" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

While everyone was trying to stay dry on Thursday, I spent the day trying to get wet.

I headed down to Severna Park, to the Anne Arundel County Fire Department's Jones station, Company 23, headquarters of the special operations command. Accompanied by Sun photographer Barbara Haddock Taylor (her pic at left), I was trying to get out with a water rescue team on a call.

In the photo, Lt. Jeff Halpern, left, and Firefighter/Paramedic Ronnie Carr await a call. Read The Sun's storm coverage. Read Frank Roylance's weather blog for the latest updates.

The previous 12 to 14 hours had been busy for firefighters here, responding to more an a dozen calls for people trapped in water, most of them after having driven into what at first glance looked like a puddle but was really a small lake.ne person had died in Pasadena, a person a bit south drove into a sink hole big enough to have swallowed her car, and firefighters got their truck stuck while helping a county police officer, also stranded in the water. In another case, police officers used ropes to rescue a stranded motorists (more details on that later).

More details below:

Continue reading "Firefighters rescue people stranded by storm" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Crime elsewhere
        

Howard Scott Kalin, the Baltimore County magician who was arrested in Florida on a charge of seeking sex from a child, has signed a plea agreement with prosecutors.

The Orlando Sentinel reports:

A Baltimore balloon entertainer faces up to 10 years in prison after signing a plea agreement in which he admitted traveling to Lake County for sex with a 14-year-old boy he found through an Internet personal ad.

Here is some background from our story in May:

Continue reading "Local Magician signs plea agreement in child sex case" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

A woman found fatally stabbed five blocks from the White House earlier this month has been identified as a 56-year-old homeless woman originally from Baltimore, and police there say they are close to making an arrest.

Barbara Lloyd, aka Eman Mohammed, was found Aug. 8 in the 1100 block of Pennsylvania Ave. NW, and police only recently positively identified her. But Detective Tony Patterson said he has a suspect and is close to filing charges.

The Metropolitan Police Department put out a flier seeking information about the killing - at that time, the victim was a "Jane Doe," yet police had a picture of her on the flier (seen at right, via Homicide Watch DC). Patterson said that's because Lloyd was carrying papers from an arrest in July made by park police, who had charged her as Jane Doe. Patterson took the case number on the documents and was able to pull up her booking photo, and though he still didn't have a positive ID, he said "that got the ball rolling."

Fingerprints helped police confirm her identity. Patterson reached out to Baltimore police and learned that Lloyd had two children in Baltimore, and was able to reach one of them via Facebook. That then led to the discovery of 15 siblings and two other adult children.

Asked if he needed any help from people in the Baltimore area who may have known Lloyd, Patterson shrugged off the offer. "I have a suspect - I know who killed her," he said. He expects charges to be filed shortly. 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

In case you missed it:

John Wagner was found guilty of murder in last year's killing of Johns Hopkins researcher Stephen Pitcairn, stabbed in Charles Village as he walked home from Penn Station. His killing jolted a campaign for state's attorney and once again cast focus on violent repeat offenders who so often escape justice. Read Tricia Bishop's story on the verdict.

The Sun's Justin Fenton writes about Maryland crime rate has hit a record low:

Maryland's crime rate decreased 6.3 percent last year, reaching a new low in the state's per-capita incidence of violent and property offenses and mirroring a national trend.

The figures released by state officials Wednesday and reported to the FBI are the lowest since modern crime tracking began in 1975. That continues a pattern of the state notching record lows for most of the past 14 years, though as crime rates dropped more sharply in other states, Maryland has remained one of the most violent.

The numbers run counter to the public's perception about crime and safety and even surprise some experts who expected the rates to rise amid a recession — a pattern that's been borne out in previous economic downturns, according to criminologists. Some experts said they are hard pressed to pinpoint an explanation for the declines.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, North Baltimore
        

Aruban authorities said Sunday that they intend to pursue criminal charges against Gary Giordano, the Gaithersburg man whose female companion disappeared on the island this month (this story was written by Dan Morse of The Washington Post and appeared in our paper).

Aruban Solicitor General Taco Stein called Giordano a "suspect in a suspicious death." Giordano told officials that Robyn Gardner, 35, failed to return to the beach after the pair went snorkeling Aug. 2, but officials have questioned his account. Her body has not been found.

In Maryland, federal agents began sifting through documents seized during their raid of Giordano's $1.1 million home Friday night.

Full version of story from the Washinton Post.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

At this moment, nothing is burning in Baltimore. The smoke you're smelling is from down south, in Virginia, where brush fires have been buring since Aug. 4. Watch video here. Here is a statement from the Baltimore Fire Department:

Due to major swampland fires burning in Suffolk, Virginia consuming as much as 6,000 acres and producing heavy clouds of smoke that can be seen for miles has finally reached Baltimore City limits.

Northeasterly jet streams and continuous winds have blown remnants of smoke from these major fires to our region and have permeated many Baltimore communities. These active fires are currently isolated to the state of Virginia and do not presently pose a threat to the City of Baltimore.

Be advised that for those with respiratory illnesses affected by smoke fumes are encouraged to seek medical attention. For the safety of all others, please keep windows and doors closed, and use hvac systems accordingly.

Currently, there are no actively working fires in the City of Baltimore. We will continue to monitor the conditions and progress of these fires and will provide updates as they develop.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

First, the youths assaulted and robbed a man of $150 at the Inlet Lounge in Ocean City.

First mistake: One of the teens sported a tattoo on his forearm -- "Truly Blessed."

Second mistake: They later stood in a group on a public street drinking alcohol. A police officer noticed the tattoo and arrested the 17-year-old.

Third mistake: Police searched the area and found a second young suspect sitting on a curb. When asked for identification, police say he handed the officer the victim's ID.

Fourth mistake: Right after the robbery, the young men rented a room at lodge. They used $100 bill. That's one of the bill's they had stolen from the victim.

Now both are in jail. Here are more details from a statement from the Ocean City Police: 

Continue reading ""Truly Blessed" under arrest in Ocean City" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Neighborhoods throughout Maryland participated in National Night Out against crime on Tuesday. The Sun's Steve Kilar visited a block party on Edmondson Avenue, in a tiny enclave called Evergreen. It was one of 40 events in the city alone.

At left, Ricky Falcon, holding son Ryan Falcon, 12 months old, makes a bet with flight officer Arnie Russo about whether Falcon can fly the police helicopter during at Helen Mackall Park. The photo was taken by The Sun's Karl Merton Ferron.

Here is part of what Steve found:

Police officers shook hands and answered questions from citizens concerned about the safety of their neighborhood. Three blocks away from the festivities, less than a month ago, a woman and her baby were carjacked and she was forced to jump onto the highway, clutching her child, to escape her abductor. In June, two blocks west, a man was shot dead.

Maj. Robert Booker, who has been in charge of the city's Western District police force for about two years, wants to make a positive impression on children before gang members and drug dealers can turn them against police.

"They put this cloud over the Police Department," said Booker. "Once they start seeing stuff like this, they realize that it's not true, what the drug dealers and the gangs are saying about police."

Booker admits that some kids see drug dealers more often than they see police. He's increased the number of officers on foot patrol in the district, he said, to increase young people's positive associations with the department.

"My son is scared of them," said Keyana Jones, who lives in Park Heights, of her 4-year-old boy. "He's seen a couple of his relatives locked up."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Southwest Baltimore
        

In Washington DC, killings are down for the year after a summer that has seen 44 percent less murders than last summer. The Washington Examiner had this report today:

As temperatures climbed relentlessly this summer, homicides in the District fell just as dramatically, something a leading expert says may not be a coincidence.

Since Memorial Day weekend two months ago, the number of killings in D.C. has dropped by 44 percent compared to the previous year. Before the holiday, which traditionally kicks off the summer season, homicides in D.C. were up 16 percent. The pace of killings in the city have slowed so that homicides for the year are down 12 percent and violent crime is down 7 percent, according to police records.

Criminologists, the story notes, "have long noted that crime can rise in the summer months. People become more aggressive and lash out. Rapes, riots and 9-1-1 calls go up. Part of that is that teenaged males are out of school and unsupervised, the days are longer, and outdoor activities increase. But searing heat may drive people indoors, and even dull the ardor to keep cycles of revenge killings going."

DC and Prince George's County went homicide-free during the record-breaking heat, and so did Baltimore, with six days going by before a spate of killings this week. But for the summer, Baltimore isn't enjoying the same lull in violence. While DC has seen a 44 percent summer drop, there have been the same number of killings in Baltimore since Memorial Day, 40, as there were during the same period last year. DC has seen just 18 summer killings, down from 32 at the same point last year.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Maryland State Police have arrested two Caroline County women and charged them with killing a man and leaving his body in the Choptank River, near Denton on the Eastern Shore. Police identified the suspect's as the victim's step-daughter and friend. From a statement:

An autopsy of the victim conducted at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore determined the victim was murdered. Forensic pathologists found the victim had cutting wounds to his head and hands, none of which had injured vital organs, but some of which were wounds he likely sustained while trying to defend himself. 

According to the medical examiner, the victim had also sustained blunt force trauma to the head and had been asphyxiated. Autopsy evidence indicated the victim was already dead when his body was placed in the river.

More details from state police news released, including names:

Continue reading "Step-daughter, friend arrested in murder of man found in Choptank" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

A human skull found on a beach in Kent County belonged to man who was killed with blunt force trauma to the head, Maryland State Police said on Wednesday.

Beyond that, police say they have little information about the identity of the victim or of any people who might be responsible. In a statement, police said they believe the victim was killed sometime this year.

Authorities said a man walking along Tolchester Beach found the skull about 3:30 p.m. Monday. An autopsy determined the man been killed the death has been ruled a homicide. Police said they are reaching out to other law enforcement agencies “to check missing person files.”

Statement from Maryland State Police:

Continue reading "Man walking on beach finds skull" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

"I thought, 'We're going to die either way.'"

These are the words of Elsya, the 24-year-old mother who along with her 20-month-old son was carjacked from a West Baltimore gas station (video above) Wednesday night. She managed to escape with her child Julius by jumping from the moving car during a police chase on the Washington Beltway.

Thursday night, she spoke with reporter Steve Kilar:

“I don’t know what his motive was,” Elsya said. The rest of the incident, she said, is a blur.

After shoving the woman into the backseat, he sped off, she said.

She remembers him breaking the driver’s side window with his elbow. He wagged his tongue at her and muttered “nasty stuff,” she said. She said he threatened to kill her when he realized she had a cellphone, which he threw out the window.

Finally, on the Beltway near Rockville, police said, the driver slowed and the 24-year-old woman seized the opportunity. She opened the door and jumped onto the pavement, her toddler firmly in her arms.

“I thought I was going to suffocate him, as tight as I was holding him,” said Elsya.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, West Baltimore
        

[UPDATE: While the New Jersey press reported that Dwek's whereabouts were previously unknown, I was pointed to a link tonight showing that the Baltimore Jewish Times had written about Dwek's local residency a full year and a half ago, link here. I regret the oversight.]

The operator of a massive Ponzi scheme and key informant in a federal corruption sting in New Jersey, which led to the arrests of dozens of politicians, public officials and rabbis, has been living in Pikesville while waiting to testify in the cases.

The information first came to light late last month in New Jersey, when Solomon Dwek, 38, was unable to take the stand in the trial of the former mayor of Secaucus, N.J. because of an arrest here. Dwek, who turned informant after being implicated in a $400 million Ponzi scheme, was charged in Baltimore with failure to return a rental car, triggering a federal judge to revoke his bail.

On Thursday, the car theft charges were dropped in Baltimore District Court. Defense attorney Marc Zayon called the case a "financial oversight with no criminal intent." He said the car had been returned to Hertz Rent-a-Car, where Dwek is a "gold" member, and all payments had been made.

But Dwek's troubles are far from over. His bail was revoked after the FBI said he lied in an affidavit when quizzed about the car theft, and a federal judge ordered him jailed over recommendations from prosecutors that he be placed on home monitoring. A $12,500 monthly stipend he was receiving from a federal bankruptcy trustee has been revoked, along with a $100-an-hour private security team.

With Dwek incarcerated, prosecutors had to move forward without his testimony in the trial of former Mayor Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, who was convicted last week of bribery but acquitted on extortion charges.

Continue reading "Informant in N.J. corruption probe has been living in Pikesville" »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Crime elsewhere
        

Police in Ocean City and Delaware have charged a man with being what they describe a "serial peeping Tom." The Pennsylvania man was arrested Tuesday and charged with peeping into windows of three different apartments:

Here is a statement from police:

Continue reading "Police charge man with being "Peeping Tom" in Ocean City" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The 13-year-old case of a missing Baltimore County doctor was solved Tuesday, with a surprise murder confession announced in a federal courtroom nearly a thousand miles away, The Sun's Tricia Bishop reports.

Dr. Henry Peter Ackerman was a 48-year-old widower and recent transplant to the Baltimore area when he went missing in the summer of 1998 during a trip to Memphis, Tenn. He and his wife, Velma, had lived in a suburb there before her death from leukemia in 1994, and Ackerman went back to the area planning to buy a vehicle and drive it to his new home in Maryland, federal prosecutors said.

But he never returned, and more than a decade would pass before anyone looked to Dale Mardis, a gun dealer, for answers.

Mardis, 57, was convicted earlier this year in federal court in Tennessee in the racially motivated killing of an African-American code enforcement officer named Mickey Wright in 2001. Mardis shot Wright, dismembered the body with a Becker BK-1 Brute survival knife, burned it and spread the remains in junk cars that were later crushed, according to court documents and news accounts

Posted by Justin Fenton at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

Maryland State Police took nearly 70 suspected drunk drivers off the roads over the July 4 holiday weekend, and issued thousands of traffic citations.

In various crackdowns from the Eastern Shore to Western Maryland, troopers did everything from pull over speeders to rescue boaters. Troopers also helped city police in the Inner Harbor during the violence-marred Fourth of July fireworks.

"Statewide, troopers issued more than 12,000 traffic citations and warnings (6,613 citations, 5,400 warnings) and arrested 68 drunk drivers," state police said in a statement. "Troopers made 78 on-site criminal arrests and arrested another 28 people on warrants. Four guns were recovered by troopers during traffic stops."

Here is the full statement from the Maryand State Police:

Continue reading "Maryland State Police bust scores of drunk drivers over holiday" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The Sun's Outdoors Girl brings us sad news this morning -- police are searching for the killer of the state's last known goshawk. There were three chicks in the nest, and with no female, they died as well. Read full story, and learn more about the goshawk here.

From Candy:

The goshawk's nest, near Savage River State Forest close to the intersection of Westernport and McAndrews Hill road, was being closely monitored by Department of Natural Resources biologists because of the bird's "highly rare" status. Dave Brinker noticed the absence of an adult at the nest in early June and found the carcass last Friday. The shooting occurred outside any legal hunting season.

"You'd like to think that in this day and age, these things don't happen," said Brinker, who has led the state's efforts to restore the bird for the last 30 years. "We'll try and get something good out of this, use it to educate. This is not the right way to behave in 2011."

The Maryland Legislative Sportsmen's Foundation is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter. NRP is asking anyone with information about the crime to call the Poacher Hot Line: 1-800-635-6124.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Federal prosecutors are cracking down on people who sell drugs that lead to overdose deaths. For the third time in Maryland, the U.S. Attorney's Office has gone after the sellers and secured prison time.

In the latest case that wrapped up Monday, a federal judge sentenced April Lynn Baker, 30, to three years in prison. A nursing home worker in Western Maryland sold Methadone and morphine and gave it to Baker who then traded it to another man in exchange for marijuana.

On March 1, 2008, that man sold a $40 wafer of Methadone and $20 worth of morphine to Brandon Sgaggero, who was found dead in his apartment five days later. An autopsy concluded that he died of an overdose of the two drugs. Prosecutors said they found two text messages from the seller to Sgaggero asking whether he wanted more "shampoo," described as a code word for morphine.

More details here:

Continue reading "Woman sentenced for supplying drugs that led to overdose" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

A Pennsylvania woman who was beaten and raped in the parking lot of the popular Ocean City club Seacrets in 2008 has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the club's security staff left her vulnerable to the attack.

The woman, who was 25 at the time, is seeking at least $1 million, according to court records.

The attack occurred in the early hours of May 24, 2008, when the woman went outside the megaclub to make a phone call and left her purse inside with her friends. After trying to get back inside, club staff told her she was being ejected for being too intoxicated and would not let her find her friends to get her purse, which contained her hotel room key, according to the court filings.

She was unable to reach her friends or get into the hotel, and returned to the club parking lot at 2:15 a.m. There, in an area obstructed from security staff because of a large boat and SUV that blocked their view, the woman was attacked by a man who dragged her behind a building on the premises and raped her, records show.

Continue reading "Woman sues Ocean City club in connection with '08 rape" »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Designer drugs designed to look like benign "bath salts" are the newest narcotic, and they're available legally in shops and over the Internete. Still, federal authorities are cracking down, going after people for improperly packaging and labeling the material.

Feds earlier this week raided a storage facility in of all places New Market and seized to barrells of white powder that is marketed as bath salts and gives a high similar to cocaine. The Sun's Jessica Anderston takes us inside a bust in Howard County that led to a broader investigation. Picture at left is a stock image from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

And health officials warn that these new synthetic drugs are dangerous. Eight midshipmen got expelled earlier this year after being found with synthetic marijuana. Here Jessica write about visiiting a "head shop" in Towson:

Continue reading ""Bath salts" new designer drug craze" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Howard County
        

A 47-year-old attorney and magician who runs a children’s entertainment company in Baltimore County was arrested Monday and charged with flying to Florida to have sex with a 14-year-old boy, who turned out to be an undercover detective, according to police.

Howard Scott Kalin, who lives in the 1700 block of Anne Ave. in Essex, was being held without bail by the Lake County, Fla. Sheriff’s Office. Police said he runs “Funhouse Entertainment,” which has an address on York Road in Lutherville.

Members of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office cyber crime division said in a statement that Kalin contacted them in January through an Internet chat line, using the name “Ben Aldridge.” The detectives posed both as a 14-year-old boy and as the boy’s caregiver, the police statement said.

“Mr. Kalin also told undercover detectives that he would bring a basketball to the child and planned on having sex with the boy during his visit,” according to the police statement. On Monday, police said Kalin travelled to Florida and was arrested at a undisclosed meeting place.

Continue reading "Lutherville magician charged with child sex crime in Florida" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Breaking news, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

A man who supplied drugs that federal authorities said led to a fatal overdose was senenced today to nine years in prison, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office. Luis Reyes-Torres, 26, distributed morphine and methadone.

"Drug dealers should be on notice that they can be held accountable if anyone dies after taking the drugs that they distribute," Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement.

Reyes-Torres pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the nursing home where he worked and giving them to a woman. That woman gave them to another man in exchange for marijuana. That man then sold the drugs for $60 to Brandon Sgaggero of Frederick.

On March 6, 2008, Sgaggero was found dead in his apartment. An autopsy found that he had overdoses on methadone and morphine. Two other intermediaries have pleaded guilty to selling drugs and are to be sentenced in June and July.

Prosecutors said this is the third case prosecuted in Maryland "in which the distribution of drugs resulted in a drug user dying from an overdose." A Boonsboro man was sentenced to 20 years in prison and an Olney woman was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2008.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

A member of a police fugitive aprehension task force on the Eastern Shore shot a tire out on car with a fleeing fugitive, enabling officers to arrest two suspects Thursday afternoon. The officer fired when the driver took off with another officer hanging from the car window.

The incident occurred in Salisbury after officers stopped car occupied by a man wanted on a warrant charging him with armed robbery stemming from a home invasion in March on Kent Island, according to Maryland State Police.

Here is a full account of the shooting from authorities:

Continue reading "Police officer shoots tire on car of fleeing fugitive" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Police shootings
        

A former Montgomery County police officer pleaded guilty today to using a law enforcement database to conducted wanted checks on her boyfriend and others involved in personal disputes, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Delores Culmer, 37, of Silver Spring, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when she is sentenced June 13. She admitted to using her police powers to access databases at least 20 times between August 2008 and April 2010. Those databases included information about unserved arrest warrants and and motor vehicle information.

Prosecutors said she did unauthorized checks on her boyfriend, a person with whom her sister was having a dispute, a friend of her boyfriend and her boyfriend's brother.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

People watch the FBI raid a house but it takes two years for prosecutors to file charges. It's only then they learn the target was charged with viewing child pornography.

A bus driver is arrested on the same charge, but had been suspected 10 months earlier when police raided his house and seized his computer.

Both cases have left people wondering why the suspects were left on the streets. It's become an outrage in Montgomery County, where an unsuspecting school system allowed the bus driver to continue making rounds with students.

Police and prosecutors say the cases are tougher then many people think, and they can't go around naming people before formal charges are filed, potentially ruining the lives of innocent people. I explore these tough cases in today's Crime Scenes.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Baltimore County, Crime elsewhere
        

Three Baltimore police officers and a Baltimore County firefighter will be honored next month at the annual Fallen Heroes Day ceremony at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens. The event is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Friday, May 6.

A procession of 25 honor guards will open the ceremony at the Timonium cemetery, which is to include an address by Gov. Martin O'Malley.

At left is a photo from Fallen Heroes day in 2009, taken by The Sun's Lloyd Fox.

Here is a list of police and firefighters being honored, from a statement issued by organizers:

Continue reading "Dulaney Valley honors fallen police, firefighters" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Police shootings
        

A former Baltimore police officer has been charged with killing his neighbor on Kent Island in an argument over a dog, according to news reports and Maryland State Police.

Ther suspect is identified as Charles E. "Pete" Richter, 66, who reports say was a city officer from 1965 to 1978. The victim was identified as Mark Xander, 55. The Associated Press is reporting:

The statement says the neighbor was shot during an altercation after Xander's dog went on his property. Authorities say arriving deputies and paramedics founder Xander with a gunshot wound laying in his yard with his dog, a Rottweiler, beside him. They say relatives took charge of the Rottweiler so authorities could approach.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

From the Boston Globe:

When he was arrested, Philip Markoff, the so-called Craigslist killer, was wearing shoes stained with the blood of the woman he had killed, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said today.

[snip]

The arrest of a man with no criminal record and a seemingly bright future shocked the city and law enforcement officials. The location of Brisman’s murder and one of the other assaults in two high-end Back Bay hotels opened a window into a lurid world, where people meet in posh locales to engage in sex acts for money, and led to withering criticism of Craigslist for offering advertising for erotic services.

Markoff's double life as a dangerous criminal and a run-of-the-mill medical student was highlighted by another revelation in the evidence released today: After his first robbery and before he killed Brisman, Markoff traveled to Baltimore, prosecutors said, to visit his grandparents for Passover.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Prince George's County police have arrested two suspects in the Jan. 11 killing of a student at the University of Maryland, College Park. Justin Vance Desha-Overcash, 22, of Bel Air, was shot on 38th Avenue in the off-campus areas.

In a news release, police said the motive was robbery. But authorities have in the past said the killing was drug-related. The Washington Post is reporting police sources saying the victim was selling drugs and that detectives found scales and marijuana-laced lollipops in his home.

The victim's mother has denied her son was linked to drugs. Police identified the suspects as Stephan Weaver, 22, and Deandre Ricardo Williams, 23. Both have been charged with first-degree murder.

More details:

Continue reading "Arrests made in killing of College Park student from Bel Air" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Crime elsewhere, Harford County
        

A Maryland State Police trooper tracked down the owner of a 1970 Damascus High School ring being pawned in North Carolina, an investigating that led to the arrest of a man charged with burglaries in several counties and a neighboring state.

Edward A. Morton, 57, of Garrett County, was arrested this week after a two-month investigation that began when a trooper at the McHenry Barrack learned that the suspect was receiving checks totaling more than $10,000 from pawn shops in Maryland, Washington, New York and North Carolina. Police said:

In early March, State Police investigators learned a pawn shop in Charlotte, North Carolina had received a package of jewelry from Morton. The pawn shop owner gave troopers a description of the items, including a 1970 Damascus High School ring.  

With just the graduation year and the initials inside the ring, a State Police investigator called Damascus High School and then made multiple calls to members of the 1970 graduating class.  Within days, he had identified the owner of the ring as a woman who lives in Frederick.  He contacted her and she confirmed the ring had been stolen along with other items during a recent burglary at her home.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The Salisbury Daily Times is reporting that convicted sex offender Thomas Leggs has pleaded guilty to killing 11-year-old Sarah Foxwell in late 2009. The girl's disappearance set off a massive search, and the killing spurred new legislation in the General Assembly. The plea spares Leggs the death penalty:

Leggs, 31, was sentenced in Cecil County Circuit Court to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of the 11-year-old Salisbury girl. He also pleaded guilty to kidnapping and sex offense charges.

Leggs addressed the family in the hearing today, and said he was surprised they had agreed to allow the removal of the death penalty option.

Sarah Foxwell's aunt, who was caring for Foxwell at the time of her kidnapping and murder, gave emotional testimony at today's hearing. Prosecutors also read statements from other members of Foxwell's family.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Montgomery County's top prosecutor John McCarthy described an attack so brutal that even cops who've seen it all couldn't comprehend. A woman has been charged with killing her colleague inside a Bethesda yoga store and then hurting herself to trick police into thinking she too was a victim.

That's how what was at first thought to be a random crime became an inside job, police and prosecutors said during Monday's court hearing for the prime suspect. The Washington Post details the hearing:

McCarthy said the attack in the store occurred after closing March 11, shortly after Murray reported to a manager that she had discovered stolen store merchandise inside Norwood’s bag. Norwood bludgeoned Murray for as long as 20 minutes and struck so many blows in the same places on her body that it was difficult to determine the exact number of wounds, the prosecutor said.

“The nature of this crime is shocking in terms of the level of violence,” McCarthy told the judge. “The majority of the blows were directed at [Murray’s] head. Her skull was crushed during the attack.”

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

It was another one of those violent weekends in Baltimore -- at least 18 wounded, several dead, including a 4-year-old boy who apparently got hold of a gun and fatally shot himself in the head. The latest in this spate of violence occurred Sunday night in Northwest Baltimore, when three people were shot.

Baltimore police officials have called a news conference for late this morning to discuss the violence; hopefully we'll learn whether any of it is connected. It came in two spurts -- Friday night, which included the wounding a city police officer, and throughout the day and night on Sunday.

The violence included, but is not limited to, a fatal shooting on Frankford Avenue, a man fatally stabbed at a West Baltimore gas station, and a fatal shooting in Pigtown. Check back for more details later today.

Meanwhile, a Maryland State Police trooper shot a New Jersey man in the hand after a chase Sunday night that started with a stolen car spotted in the Fort McHenry Tunnel and ended up further south on I-95 in Prince George's County. See more details.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, East Baltimore, Top brass
        

Breaking news from TBD.com, via ABC7:

Authorities have arrested a suspect in the Lululemon Athletica attack that claimed the life of 30-year-old Jayna Murray.

The suspect detained is the unidentified 27-year-old woman who also claimed she was attacked in the incident.

The suspect was found bound with Murray inside the store.

Police sources said statements from the 27-year-old woman and forensic evidence weren't consistent. Police suspect the woman caused her own wounds after killing Murray. Police have charged the woman with murder. 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Federal law enforcement officials today released a 10-month investigation into the New Orleans police department that the New York Times says reveals "a profoundly and alarmingly troubled" force. The report was compiled by Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, a former Montgomery County official who until 2009 led the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

Among the findings in the report, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune: officers were too quick to use excessive force on the streets and too often neglected to document such use of force after the fact; bias against minorities and routinely stopping people without any legal basis for "pat down" searches. Perez wrote that the deficiencies existed "long before" Hurricane Katrina.

The report also found that the police 'systematically misclassified possible sexual assaults, resulting in a sweeping failure to properly investigate many potential cases of rape, attempted rape and other crimes.'

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Fresh off the battlefield and fresh out of the police academy, Thaddeus Allen survived two tours in Iraq only to narrowly miss getting seriously injured or worse when a suspected drunk driver slammed into his cruiser on I-95.

It was just his third time out in a cruiser. He and his training officer had stopped behind a woman who ran out of gas just north of the Washington Beltway. The driver of a Ford Taurus hit the back of Allen's police car, forcing him and his partner to leap over Jersey wall. The woman wasn't hurt, and the driver of the Taurus was charged with drunk driving.

"We were taught that one of our biggest enemies are the other cars on the road," Allen said this week as he recounted his harrowing tale. "Most people don't move over or pay any attention, especially the drunks."

Read more for on the crash and Allens' reaction, and on how car accidents typically claim more lives of police officers than do gunfire.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Howard County
        

The U.S. Attorney's office for Maryland says a Montgomery County police officer has been indicted on charges of conpsiring to help her drug dealer boyfriend access sensitive police information about him and his associates, in addition to providing a "safe haven" for him from his drug dealing activities in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Officer Delores Culmer, 37, of Silver Spring faces drug conspiracy and computer fraud charges, officials said.

Read the press release here:

Continue reading "Feds: Montgomery Co. officer conspired with drug dealer boyfriend" »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

He rented a Mount Vernon carriage house under the name "Clark Rockefeller" but was quickly arrested and sent back to Boston on charges he kidnapped his daughter in 2008. Now, the man of assumed identities has been charged with murder in Southern California.

He is accused of killing a man he had rented a guesthouse from in the early 1980s. He's been under suspicion in the man's death for the past three years. In 2009, he was sentenced to five years in prison in Boston for kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter, who he had brought with him to Baltimore and who was found safe.

His real name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. Here is a story from The Sun published in 2008, when he was arrested in Baltimore, but before authorities had learned his real name:

Continue reading ""Rockefeller" charged in California murder" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, North Baltimore
        

When the U.S. Marshal's Safe Surrender program rolled through Baltimore last summer, the city's law enforcement community jumped at the opportunity to clear their books of old cases. Tens of thousands of people were wanted on old arrest warrants; the amnesty program of seemed a sure way of helping out.

About a 1,000 people took advantage -- coming to a city church (at left, in a photo by The Sun's Kim Hairston) and meeting with prosecutors, who either dropped the cases or got the suspects together with lawyers and in front of a judge for an immediate hearing. It was designed for nonviolent offenders, many with cases so old that witnesses and case files had all but disappeared.

Now, there's a report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the feds are pulling the plug on the program, which police departments all over the country had joined, resulting in 34,000 fugitive surrenders in 20 cities. Officials told the newspaper that Safe Surrender didn't fit the agency's mission of targeting violent offenders.

For more details:

Continue reading "Safe Surrender program ends" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

Baltimore police are complaining about cuts to their pay and to their pension, and are loudly protesting City Hall. Baltimore leaders are cheering that they closed a $121 million budget deficit without laying cops off.

They point to New Jersey, where cops by the hundreds have lost their jobs to dire economic times, and police unions there say crime is soaring as a result. Today's Crime Scenes gets into the debate in more detail, and notes the release of the Maryland State Police annual law enforcement salary survey.

In the 1990, Baltimore police officers were among the lowest paid cops in the state, earning starting salaries of about $28,000. An academy graduate in the city now gets $42,290 a year, still in a low tier. They’re ahead of state troopers and cops in Anne Arundel and Charles counties but below police in Baltimore, Howard and Harford counties.

Above, the president of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police union, Robert F. Cherry, leads a protest outside City Hall. For more details: 

Continue reading "Fighting over police pay" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Top brass
        

In December, a federal judge sentence Byron Keith Brown to 15 years in prison for bilking people out of $17 million in an Internet Ponzi scheme.

On Tuesday, you can buy his luxury cars during an auction run by the U.S. Treasury Department being held in Ellicott City (photo at left provided by the treasury department).

Brown was convicted after a three-week trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. He ran a company called "In God We Trust Financial Services" and several others under different names in Virginia and Maryland. He used to live in Ellicott City.

Prosecutors said that from 2003 to 2009, Brown pushed an investment scheme in which he created fake investors to give the appearance that people were sending him up to $1 million "Brown used funds from new investors to make payments to old investors and to conceal his diversion of investors' monies," prosecutors said.

With Brown securely in prison, the feds can now auction off his cars. Here's a list:

2007 Lamborghini Murcielago            2005 Rolls Royce Phantom
2004 Mercedes Benz Maybach 57       2006 Aston Martin
2008 Maserati Gran Turismo              2002 Ferrari 360
2004 Bentley Continental                  2007 Jaguar XKR CPE
1936 Auburn Speedster                    2006 Land Rover
2006 Mercedes Benz S500                2005 Land Rover Range Rover
2007 BMW 3 Series                          2004 Audi AA8
2005 BMW 7 Series                          2005 Volkswagen Beetle
2005 GMC Canyon

See pictures of the cars here.

For more information:

Continue reading "Cars owned by Ponzi schemer to be auctioned" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

[Read the 31-page indictment here]

Former Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson on Monday was indicted in federal court in Maryland on eight charges, including bribery, witness and evidence tampering and aiding and abetting.

Johnson, 61, a former prosecutor who was the county's top elected official from 2002 to 2010, is accused of playing a key role in a conspiracy that reaches deep into the ranks of power players in the tight-knit government and business communities.

Johnson, along with an unnamed public official, accepted things of value -- including money, trip expenses, airline tickets, rounds of golf, mortgage payments and in-kind campaign contributions -- from business owners and developers in return for official favors, the 31-page indictment states. The indictment alleges that the conspiracy lasted from 2003 until last November, almost through the entirety of Johnson's term.

-The Washington Post

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

"He smirked at me."

That's how Baltimore Police Officer Todd Strohman described the gunman just before he
pulled the trigger, putting a bullet into his shoulder, a bullet that will remain inches above his heart for the rest of his life.

The cop had another message for state lawmakers who make up the Senate's Judiciary
Committee contemplating tougher guns laws proposed by the city (see city's website describing proposed legislation): If the proposed laws had been on the books, the person charged with shooting him wouldn't have been on the street.

The audience applauded Strohman and the lawmakers wished him well. There was no sense
in grilling him on the necessity of enhanced gun legislation. The man charged in the crime had served two years of a 12-year sentence for armed robbery (the judge had suspended six of the years) and had been charged with five previous gun crimes. He had gotten out a little more than two weeks before the shooting on North Calvert Street.

"Seventeen days after he gets out, he shoots one of our cops," said Deputy Police Commissioner Anthony Barksdale.

See more on the gun hearing:

Continue reading "City, county leaders press for tougher gun laws" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Kenneth Harris trial, Neighborhoods, Police shootings, Top brass
        

Authorities have found more illegal fishing nets. The Sun's Outdoor writer Candus Thomson -- see her Outdoors Girl blog -- reports today:

Natural Resources Police patrol boats Monday found two more illegal fishing nets in the waters south of Kent Island and seized another half-ton of striped bass. The agency also announced that the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the poachers who have netted more than 10 tons of fish has increased to $10,000.

The first net was hauled out at 2 p.m. near Poplar Island. The 600-yard net, which officers estimated to be in the water since last year, contained "a couple of rockfish that were released alive and 200 to 300 horseshoe crabs," said Sgt. Art Windemuth, NRP spokesman.

The second net, pulled in the evening, was about a mile south of the illegal nets found off Bloody Point last week. The 1,200-yard submerged net contained 1,159 pounds of striped bass, which were sold at market, Windemuth said. Once again, the 73-foot buoy tender M/V Widener was called in to help lift the fish-filled net.

Everything you wanted to know about rockfish poaching and more.

State closes striped bass season.

Net with three tons of rockfish found.

Two more nets of rockfish discovered.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

For months, authorities in southern Pennsylvania were stumped by a string of serial car arson fires at which playing cards were found at the scenes. On Friday, police arrested two men who face charges in the fires, one of which occurred in March in Parkton.

Here's the tale:

Continue reading "Police arrest two in PA arson spree; one victim from Parkton" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Crime elsewhere
        

UPDATE: Police have learned the man's name -- Gregory Talesnik, 65, from a tag on the inside of his jacket. They still have not located his relatives. A Connecticut man apparently confused about drug laws went right to the source: he called 911, told the operator he was growing pot and asked about penalties. The operator quickly sent a police car and the man was arrested and charged with drug possession.

Listen to the 911 tape, from the Harfort Courant:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Crime humor
        

Detroit police last week released surveillance camera footage of a gunman walking into a city police precinct five days earlier and opening fire on officers. As the Detroit Free Press reported, the video offers "shows a sudden, gruesome attack on police by a gunman implicated in an alleged sex crime and kidnapping. It also shows the heroics of Cmdr. Brian Davis, who engaged Moore in a point-blank shoot-off."

Police released the video, according to Chief Ralph Godbee Jr., after deciding as a command staff that it would reinforce a "commitment to transparency that Mayor Bing has made and that we as a police department intend to follow" and that it would give the public a chance to see acts of heroism by officers and a glimpse into the pressures and dangers they face every day.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Anyone who wants to know how drugs get into Baltimore, read Sun reporter Justin Fenton's story out of federal court -- "Mexican cartel on trial in Baltimore."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter M. Nothstein told jurors Tuesday that during the course of the trial they would hear things "you've only seen on TV and in movies."

Nothstein couldn't have been more right. A mobile home packed with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine crossing the country. Fine dining and fine hotels. A suitcase filled with $275,000 in a Baltimore hotel room. Another $335,000 in the trunk of a car. A corrupt cop and a stolen watch.

The details are in the story, and it's a tale using words not too often associated with Baltimore's street corner drug dealers. Here, we get words like "cartel" and "Mexico" and undercover DEA surveillance outside a Little Italy nightclub.

Said one suspect, according to the authorities: "My work is selling drugs. I'm a businessman."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Gangs
        

Natural Resources Police made quite a catch this morning on the Eastern Shore -- what they described as an illegal net filled with three tons of rock fish. And while not all crime involves guns and drugs, I couldn't help but note the poaching sting was at "Bloody Point."

The Baltimore Sun's outdoor writer, Candus Thomson (see her Outdoors Girl blog), said in her story:

It is believed to be the largest illegal netting of striped bass in a quarter of a century. The haul, with a market value of about $15,000, was so large that the 25-foot patrol boat had to radio the 73-foot buoy tender M/V J.C. Widener to help pull up the catch.

"My gosh, I did not expect this many fish," said Cpl. Roy Rafter, a veteran officer who spearheaded the operation that began Monday afternoon and continued overnight. "It's overwhelming."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Incidents of fatal police-on-police shootings are incredibly rare. But they do happen, and departments across the country have learned the hard lessons Baltimore is now facing after the killing of plainclothes Officer William H. Torbit Jr., The Sun reported this weekend.

A Harvard professor, who chaired a commission that looked into such incidents after two officers were killed in New York, said police will have to scrutinize not only the actions of the officers who fired on Torbit, but Torbit himself.

The incidents gathered by the commission show that criminal charges are rarely if ever brought. The panel found the "unconscious racial bias" plays a major role in off-duty or plainclothes officers being mistaken for suspects, and that departments often have gaps in protocols among their own officers and other agencies they may come into contact with. Black officers here and elsewhere say being mistaken for suspects comes with the territory, and at least one supervisor we spoke with said he was in favor of instituting uniforms for plainclothes officers so that they are more easily identified.

Click here to read the full report from the New York commission that looked into police-on-police shootings. 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Police shootings
        

A 30-year-old man dubbed the "preppy burglar" because of his collared shirt and glasses has pleaded guilty to breaking into houses in Howard and Montgomery counties. His crimes got wide-spread attention because one of the break-ins was captured on a home-security camera (see video here).

Jeremy Matthew Hall, of Silver Spring, was sentenced to serve 18 months in jail. His attorney told me he admitted to his crimes and made restitution. In one instance, he was able to retrieve two valuable guitars from the people he had sold them to and return them to the owner. The two men shook hands.

“I feel that the criminal law in this case was used by the lawyers to do substantial good, by virtue of this unusual restitution effort," Hall's attorney, Thomas L. Heeney told me.

Howard County resident David Irick had returned home one day last year to discover a break-n. He turned on his video from surveillance cameras he installed and saw the suspect knocking on his door and then emerging carrying computer equipment.

Hall was dressed in a collared shirt with rolled up sleeves and a red tie. Police at the time surmised that he dressed that way so that he would appear to be a door-to-door salesman or somebody conducting survey. Heeney told me his client was dressed up only because that's how he dressed for work (he wouldn't tell me where he had worked).

In court on Jan. 7, Hall made a full confession and said he had been addicted to prescription medication. "I have brought shame to my family, my community and to myself," he said.

Here is his statement from court:

Continue reading "Preppy burglar pleads guilty" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Howard County
        

"Stop Snitching" has gone overseas.

After the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old Sierra Leonian national at a south London estate last month, fliers started circulating the area that read: "No one likes a rat ... Be smart. Don't snitch."

The flyers were linked to a crude website that tells people not to trust Operation Trident, which investigates gun crime in London's black community, the BBC reports. When a reporter from one newspaper went to talk to residents, one said through her door: "These people have guns. Who will protect me?"

In November 2009, I switched places with a crime reporter from The Independent to examine comparisons being made there to Baltimore. In talking with government officials, residents, police and reporters, I found that though the country has one of the lowest murder rates in the world and even police are averse to carrying guns, gun crime was rising and as was the perception of crime. One politician likened the streets of Manchester to Baltimore as depicted in "The Wire."

Not surprisingly, I found there was little credibility to that comparison, but the fear was real. While intimidation against cooperating with police is nothing new in either place, it's causing great alarm that the anti-snitching sentiment in London has now been crystallized into a formal campaign much like Baltimore saw with the circulation of the "Stop Snitching" video in 2004.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Witness intimidation
        

A University of Maryland student apparently fighting over marijuana became Prince George's County's 13th slaying in 11 days.

The spate of killings -- exceeding Baltimore, which has eight of this day -- has officials in this suburban Washington county trying to figure out what's going on. Officials there told The Washington Post that the killings were isolated, unconnected and most linked to criminal behavior.

Here's there explanation from a Post article on Tuesday:

"It's . . . important for folks to know that the lifestyle of these victims has greatly contributed to where they are in life," said Deputy Police Chief Kevin Davis.

"To commanders and detectives, it's mystifying. . . . There's no common set of circumstances that we can go after," said Maj. Andrew Ellis, the department's public affairs commander. "If they were all drug-related, we could hit it with the drug angle. If they were all robbery-related, we could start combing our files for robbery suspects that had been recently released from jail. If it was a gang war, we could go after the gang leaders. And so the fact that it's disconnected makes it much more difficult to prevent."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

From Dan Connolly at The Sun's Orioles Insider blog:

Orioles reliever Alfredo Simon was scheduled to meet with Dominican Republic authorities in the country’s capital of Santo Domingo this morning to discuss a New Year’s Eve shooting in the resort town of Luperon that left one man dead and another injured.

As of 11 a.m., one of Simon’s agents, Phil Isaac, said he believed that Simon already was speaking to the police and hoped there would be more clarity on Simon’s situation within the next few hours.

“A far as we know he is meeting with officials and his attorneys right now in the Dominican Republic to supply an official statement and we would hope that would clear things up sometime today,” Isaac said.

Isaac said he is hopeful that Simon will be cleared of any wrongdoing, “but we don’t want to predict what will go on. But we hopefully should have more information today.”

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Crime continues to decline across the country, according to preliminary data released by the FBI today.

In the first half of 2010, law enforcement agencies reported a 6.2 percent drop in violent crime compared with the same period last year, and a 2.8 percent drop in property crime. The biggest drop was robberies, which declined 10.7 percent. In Baltimore, we saw a slightly lower drop in violent crime - 5 percent - and a larger decline in property crime - 5.6 percent - than the national averages. The city's decline in robberies was almost 15 percent.

Across the country, murders were down 7.1 percent, though in the Northeast region killings rose by 5.7 percent. That means Baltimore, which is down 5.3 percent in murders as of this morning, bucked the regional trend but would be a little behind the curve nationally if the projections pace holds up.

A question was posed to me as to whether it's fair to project out whether the national 6 month data may end up being indicative of the year-long trend. While it was only intended as a hypothetical, a look at past data shows that largely, yes, the murder numbers have at least in recent years held relatively steady. 

-In 2009, the six-month figures showed murders were down 10 percent compared with the same period in the previous year. For the year, murders finished down 12.1 percent.

But in 2008, 2007, and 2006, the year-end numbers did not change much from where they had been at six months. In 2008, the six month figure was a dip of 4.4 percent; the year ended with a decline of 3.9 percent. In 2007, murders were down 1.1 percent at six months and ended down 0.6 percent. And in 2006, murders were up 1.4 percent at the halfway mark and ended up 1.8 percent. 

Click here to explore the data yourself.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

What seemed like a long-shot scenario being at least considered by officials investigating the death of a North Carolina teen with ties to Baltimore is now the likely explanation.

Delvonte Tisdale "more likely than not" fell out of an airplane as it prepared to land at Boston's Logan Airport last month, Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating said today, ending the criminal investigation into the mysterious and horrific death of the North Carolina teenager, the Boston Globe is reporting. 

The body of the 16-year-old Charlotte, NC, high school student was found Nov. 15 on Brierbrook Street, a quiet upscale subdivision in Milton -- which also lies underneath the flight path aircraft sometimes use to arrive at Logan Airport.

“It appears more likely than not that Mr. Tisdale was able to breach airport security and hide in the wheel well of a commercial jet airliner without being detected by airport security,’’ Keating said, calling it a major breach of airport security.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The suspect arrested by the FBI in the alleged bombing plot at a military recruiting center in Catonsville talked of waging war on the U.S. and only recently became radicalized. Today's Baltimore Sun has several articles on the plot and on Antonio Martinez's (photo at left from his Facebook page) transformation to radicalism:

* A 21-year-old Baltimore County man, whose Facebook postings about jihad gave way to discussions with an FBI informant about how to kill American soldiers, was arrested Wednesday after authorities say he tried to blow up a Catonsville military recruiting center using a car bomb supplied by undercover agents.

* Not so long ago, the young man accused of plotting to blow up a military recruiting station in Catonsville had a mundane job: selling children's clothes at Columbia Mall.

* Car Quest Auto Parts manager Will Eckenrode was beginning the day at his Catonsville store Wednesday, when he and other workers heard a loud bang and rushed outside to find FBI agents swarming behind his building.

* The suspect in the attempted bombing of the Army recruiting center in Catonsville apparently drew inspiration from an array of websites and radical Islamic leaders, including a U.S.-born cleric who has been targeted for assassination by the Obama administration, according to an FBI affidavit.

For more detail, read the criminal complaint filed by the FBI. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere
        

Maryland State Police are asking for help in solving the slaying of a woman whose body was found by hikers on Nov. 30 in Calvert Cliffs State Park in Lusby. Sandra Renee Long, 41, was inside on the front seat of a silver Ford Focus.

Police have released photographs of the car and are asking anyone who saw it before 2:45 p.m. on Nov. 30 to call the Prince Frederick Barracks at 410-535-1400. Police have not said how Long may have died.

More details can be found here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere
        

Three hunters on Tuesday found the body of a woman inside a car parked at a state park in Lusby, Calvert County. Maryland State Police say a cause of death is unknown, but they are treating the case as a homicide.

Authorities identified the victim as Sandra Renee Long,41, of Lusby. Her body was found about 2:45 p.m. in the front seat of her silver 2009 Ford Focus in a lot in Calvert Cliffs State Park, near Camp Canoy Road and H.G. Trueman Road.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

A mutilated body found last week in an affluent Massachusetts suburb was identified as a 16-year-old who had recently moved from Baltimore to North Carolina, and officials are investigating whether he was trying to make his way back to the city, officials said.

Remains found last week in a secluded area of Milton, Mass. were confirmed through finerprints to be that of 16-year-old Delvonte Tisdale, according to the Norfolk County district attorney’s office. Tisdale had been reported missing 800 miles away by his father in North Mecklenburg, N.C., hours before the body was discovered.

A half-brother in Baltimore, 18-year-old Craig Tisdale, speculated that Tisdale may have hitched a ride with two friends headed for Boston, with a goal of being dropped off in Baltimore, according to the Boston Globe.

The district attorney’s office was asking anyone in Baltimore with information to call them at 781-830-4800, ext. 215.

“He moved from Baltimore a couple of years ago, but he still has family there,” Traub said. “We’re specifically requesting that anyone who might have information about the period just before his death to contact us.”

Public records indicated that Tisdale’s father had previously lived in the Harwood neighborhood of North Baltimore, near Charles Village. Reached by The Sun, a sister in Baltimore, whose Facebook posts about the death were widely disseminated in media reports, declined to comment.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, North Baltimore
        

The owners of a Langley Park liquor store who were swept up as part of a broad corruption probe paid bribes to Prince George's County officials and hid $400,000 in cash in their closet, federal prosecutors said in court Tuesday according to the Washington Post.

FBI wiretaps captured conversations between Amrik S. Melhi and public officials about bribes Melhi paid in exchange for official acts, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Copperthite said during a detention hearing for Melhi. Melhi, 51, and his wife, Ravinder K. Melhi, 49, also talked to each other about paying off county officials.

Prosecutors did not specify who allegedly received the bribes or what the officials did in exchange for the payoffs. But the revelations in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt show the broadening scope of the federal corruption investigation in Prince George's.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Maryland State Police issued this statement a few minutes about a body found along a highway in Western Maryland:

Maryland State Police homicide investigators are investigating a body found inside a box off of a highway in Frederick County. The victim can only be described as an adult at this time.  No identification has been found.

The body has been taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore for an autopsy and to continue efforts to identify the victim.

The preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 9:45 a.m. today, a  State Highway Administration maintenance crew was working roadside along westbound I-70, at mile marker 48 near Braddock Mountain, when they discovered a box. The box was barely visible off the shoulder of the highway in a wooded, roadside embankment. The contents of the box appeared to be that of a deceased human body. The workers immediately called state police.  

Due to this being a possible homicide, members of the State Police Homicide Unit responded to conduct the investigation. They were assisted by sheriff deputies and state troopers from the Frederick County Bureau of Investigation, crime scene technicians from the State Police Forensic Sciences Division and forensic experts from the Office of the State Medical Examiner.  

At this time, the cause of death has not yet been determined. Investigators are awaiting autopsy results.  It is unknown, at this time, how long the body has been in the wooded, roadside embankment.

Police are asking anyone with information that may be relevant to this case to please contact Frederick County Law Enforcement Center 301-600-4151. This investigation is active and ongoing.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Crime elsewhere
        

UPDATE: The U.S. Attorney's Office just sent out a press release and the indictments, which make no mention of the Johnson case. According to the documents, the officers are charged in an extortion scheme involving the transport of untaxed cigarettes and alcohol.

Here's the statement:

---

The Washington Post is reporting that three Prince George's County police officers have been arrested in the investigation centered on County Executive Jack Johnson, who was arrested Friday at his home.

Two of the officers taken into custody Monday morning have been identified as Sgt. Rich Delabrer and Cpl. Chong Kim, sources familiar with the arrests told the Post. A third as yet unidentified officer was also taken into custody in Beltsville.

Prosecutors on Friday called the arrests of Johnson and his wife the "tip of the iceberg" in a long-term investigation.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Newly unsealed documents show a frenzied Jack and Leslie Johnson attempting to hide evidence as FBI agents descended on their home this morning. Jack Johnson, the outgoing, two-term Democratic Prince George's County Executive, and Leslie Johnson, newly-elected to the Prince George's County council, had a brief hearing in federal court in Greenbelt this afternoon on charges including witness tampering and destruction of records.

The affidavit lays out Jack Johnson, who had been confronted by FBI agents this morning after being observed accepting a $15,000 check from a developer, speaking to his wife, who wanted advice on what to do about the agents waiting at the front door of their Mitchellville home. The Johnsons were unaware that his cell phone had been under a wiretap since January 2010.

"Don't answer it [the door]," Jack Johnson told his wife, according to the records. He told her to go to a bedroom drawer and grab a check from a developer - believed to be for $100,000, agents wrote. Leslie Johnson asked if she should get rid of cash that was in the drawer as well.

"Tear it up!" he said of the check. She asked about cash that was in the basement. "Put it in your bra and walk out or something, I don't know what to do," he told her.

He again told her to tear up the check, and she asked if she should flush it down the toilet. Agents wrote that a flushing sound could be heard over the call. That explains why a plumber was called to the home, as the Washington Post reported earlier today.

When agents entered the home, they searched Leslie Johnson and found $79,600 in cash in her underwear, according to records.

Continue reading "P.G. Exec Johnson charged with witness tampering, destruction of records" »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

There are few details, but the Associated Press is reporting that Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson has been taken into federal custody. Sources told the Washington Post that his wife, who was recently elected to the county council, was also arrested, and federal agents were executing search warrants on the county administrative building.

Johnson, a Democrat, has been executive since 2002, and was set to step down due to term limits. 

The Gazette reported in June that the state prosecutor's office had begun calling witnesses to investigate allegations that Johnson and several County Council members solicited bribes and favors while considering a $1 million annual lease for the county Department of Housing at the Four Points by Sheraton complex in New Carrollton last year. It was unclear whether today's arrest was connected to that investigation.

[AP photo]

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Continue reading "In Chicago, city reports success in taking lawsuits against police to trial" »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The Philadelphia Police Department is going through more trouble, with the arrest of a high-ranking police commander over the weekend on corruption charges.

Remember, that department's chief, Charles H. Ramsey, nearly became Baltimore's police commissioner under former Mayor Sheila Dixon. And Ramsey, even after leaving DC's police department, still had trouble following mass arrests at a protest.

Troy Graham of the Philadelphia Inquirer brings this report (you can read it in full here):

On Friday, FBI agents went to the home of the inspector, Daniel Castro, a 25-year veteran and one of the highest-ranking officers on the force, and arrested him.
Indicted in an extortion scheme that portrays him more like a gangster, Castro became the 15th member of the Police Department to be arrested since March 2009.

Six of the officers were taken down in three drug investigations, four were charged with sex crimes, and two faced murder charges after off-duty shootings. The sudden jolt of arrests can't be explained by Ramsey's oft-cited commitment to root out corruption.

A third of the officers were caught in federal investigations, and two others were nabbed in a sting after state investigators got a tip about cops working with drug dealers.

The sheer number of arrests has left the department's leaders embarrassed, and focused their attention on the city's police culture, particularly a code of silence whereby many honest officers - the great majority of the force - feel unable to turn in those who betray the badge.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Top brass
        

The ACLU in Pennsylvania has sued the Philadelphia Police Department over it's stop and frisk tactics, adding Philadelphia to a list of cities targeted for what civil rights groups call harsh policing methods that unfairly target minorities.

Read a copy of the complaint here.

Police officers in Baltimore and New York have come under fire for stopping and searching people on the streets, often times without arresting them or finding evidence of a crime. Supporters say the practice drives down crime, while opponents say it violates people's rights.

In Baltimore, stop and frisk was part of a zero-tolerance policing program that in the mid 2000s led to cops arresting more than 100,000 people, filling the jail to capacity and drawing complaints form citizens and prosecutors that many of the arrests were unlawful.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III has shunned the practice, promoting smarter arrests targeting violent gun offenders. His officers have arrested tens of thousands fewer people than his predecessors, and has driven down crime and homicide to historic lows.

In 2007, Bealefeld told The Sun that he found the volume of arrests in previous years "mind-boggling. ... Did we really accomplish a lot doing that?" He said that instead of filling the city's Central Booking and Intake Center "with a whole bunch of arrests for arrests' sake, ... we're going to be much more focused."

In June, the Maryland chapter of the ACLU settled with the city over this city's mass arrest policies, costing the city $870,000 and requiring a monitor to examine arrest data. New York City has received similar complaints, and now Philadelphia appears the next target.

The Washington Post reports on the Philadelphia suit in today's editions. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that city officials are defending the practice:

City Solicitor Shelley Smith, however, said [Charles] Ramsey has beefed up police training and supervision, responded quickly to allegations of abuse and meted out discipline when warranted. Last month, Ramsey added more investigators to the Internal Affairs Bureau. "The Police Department and Commissioner Ramsey take seriously the need to protect the constitutional rights of citizens," Smith said. Yesterday afternoon, Nutter said he had not yet reviewed the suit. But he said the "stop and frisk" policy was legal and effective if used correctly. Since taking office in January 2008, Nutter has championed "stop, question and frisk" policing as part of a plan to fight crime and get guns off the street. Nutter stressed that overall crime, including violent crime, is down and said race is not a factor in who gets searched. He also noted that "stop and frisk" - in which police stop people suspected of criminal activity and pat them down for illegal weapons - was being used before he became mayor.

While Baltimore police are curtailing the practices, The New York Times reported in May that its department has more than quintupled the number of stop and frisks over the past few years. Last month, the group Center for Constitutional Rights, released a report criticizing the NYPD for its stop and frisk tactics. Here is there statement:

Continue reading "ACLU targets "stop and frisk" police tactic in Philadelphia" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

The man charged with being the "preppy burglar" because of he was caught on video allegedly breaking into a Howard County house wearing dress clothes and a tie has been charged with a second burglary in Montgomery County.

Court records show that shortly after Jeremy Matthew Hall, 30, of Silver Spring, was released on $15,000 bail in Howard County, he was arrested by Montgomery County police. He was released this morning from that jurisdiction on $7,500 bail.

I'm awaiting details from Montgomery County. Charging documents filed in the Howard County case show that he is charged with breaking into a house on Browns Bridge Road and stealing a Sony boom box, a black stereo receiver and a black safe containing personal documents.

Police released a video of the man breaking into the house and hours later they got a tip from someone who knew the suspect. Hall also has an extensive driving record for speeding and in 2001 was found guilty in an excessive noise complaint.

Here are more details from the Montgomery County Police Department:

Continue reading "More charges for "preppy burglar" -- UPDATE" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Howard County
        

A week after Baltimore voters ditched an incumbent prosecutor, who stressed "intervention, prevention and treatment," in favor of the get-tough-on-crime slogan of her challenger, the new top prosecutor in Prince George's County says one of her most ambitious goals will be introducing programs to help prevent repeat offenses by offering intervention.

According to the Washington Post, new Prince George's County State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks says she wants to replicate the "Back on Track" program used in California for non-violent, first time offenders:

In its attempt to prevent repeat offenses, the "Back on Track" program gives young offenders between 18 and 24 the opportunity to channel their energy into learning skills instead of schemes, according to California media reports. After pleading guilty, the offenders attend an 18-month intensive apprenticeship program with a city college and can graduate only by staying crime-free and staying in school or keeping a job.

Although critics have questioned its effectiveness, Harris has said fewer than 10 percent of its participants have re-offended.

Alsobrooks said she believes the California approach could help break the cycle of recidivism in the District's third-largest jurisdiction by helping offenders return to their community - whose support Alsobrooks also plans to court.

"We need their engagement," said Alsobrooks, 39. Alsobrooks, a single mother who heads the county's Revenue Authority, won Tuesday's primary with 42.3 percent of the vote and the endorsements of State's Attorney Glenn Ivey, the county's police union and others.

New Baltimore state's attorney Gregg Bernstein, whose terms begins in January, has said that he supports treatment programs but that the office's first priority must be focusing on locking up violent, repeat criminals. During the campaign, some interpreted that as a "lock everyone up" viewpoint, which Bernstein sought to clarify in the waning days of the campaign.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

Violent crime is down for the third straight year. Property crime for the seventh. But why? Experts are hard-pressed to come up with an explanation.

Violent crimes reported to police dropped 5.3 percent last year, the FBI said Monday, and reported property crimes fell 4.6 percent. That's as police budgets have been shrinking amid a down economy, when crime is typically expected to rise.

The trend is "one of these welcome puzzles," says Richard Rosenfeld, president of the American Society of Criminology. "This is forcing us to think more seriously under what conditions economic activity influences crime."

Among the theories: As overall economic activity slows, more people who otherwise would be at work are unemployed and at home, and when they do travel they are not as likely to carry items of value, so burglaries and street robberies decline.

In Baltimore, violent crime declined 4 percent in 2009, according to police statistics. There were increases in murder and rape, but robberies dropped nearly 8 percent and aggravated assault, the category that constitutes more than half of the total violent crime incidents, declined 2 percent.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Here's what Andew Palmer ate at Burke's Cafe on Light Street: Buffalo wings ($11.80) and nine Blue Moon draft beers: $40.05.

At Shucker's Restaurant on Thames Street: three glasses of Tanqueray gin ($18); two bottles of Corona ($7.50); 1 Johnny Walker Black Label scotch ($7.50); one Heinekin ($3.75); and one pound of steamed shrimp ($23.66).

Palmer did this for year, all over Baltimore, and he skipped the bill by pretending to have a seizure and being rushed to the hospital.

He often got arrested but rarely did he spend more than 90 days in jail. Finally this month, a prosecutor took note of his extensive record -- 89 arrests in Baltimore and beyond, more than 40 convictions -- and consolidated the cases into one theft scheme. Palmer pleaded guilty and got the maximum -- 18 months in jail.

Authorities only know about the place he got caught. How many restaurant managers did what the good folks at Ding How restaurant in Fells Point did when their customer went into "convulsions" when he got his $40 tab. Said prosecutor Scott Richman: "They didn't want to stick him with the bill as he was on his way out the door in an ambulance."

Here is the police charging document:

Continue reading "He ate, he drank and skipped on the bill" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Downtown, Neighborhoods
        

Two horrific traffic accidents involving cars hitting pedestrians left at least three dead and several others injured over the weekend.

In Anne Arundel County, a car went off the road in Laurel and hit three members of the family who were taking a break from bicycle riding. The driver of the car was killed; the family remains hospitalized.

In Western Maryland, two family members were killed and a third injured when a car plowed into a group of people who had gathered by the side of a road after a church service

Here are details of the crash in Anne Arundel County from a police news release:

Continue reading "Cars plow into pedestrians in Arundel, Western Maryland" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Crime elsewhere
        

Five months after a teacher from Bel Air was killed at the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince Geroge's County, authorities have charged a 14-year-old juvenile in connection with the death. Authorities said they want to try him as an adult since he was 13 at the time of the killing, a hearing has been scheduled for next month on the matter.

The youth had been in custody since the slaying of 65-year-old literature instructor Hannah E. Wheeling, whose body wa found Feb. 18 outside a building that housed lower-security detainees in a special program.

Cheltenham has long been troubled by escapes and staffing shortages, and the killing and the pace of the investigation and could become a political issue in the campaign for governor.

 The Sun's Julie Bykowicz writes in the politics blog on lawmakers' search for answers on reforms:

Lawmakers first asked such questions in February. Several, including Del. Anthony J. O'Donnell, a Calvert County Republican, and Sen. C. Anthony Muse, a Prince George's County Democrat, requested a hearing with DJS Secretary Donald W. DeVore. But the hearing was aborted when legislative leaders said it was not official.

O'Donnell has issued several press releases about the killing, demanding the resignation of DeVore and seeking answers in the Wheeling case. Last week, he wrote to Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, demanding answers. DeVore quickly issued a response, seeking to assure the lawmaker that staff safety is paramount to the department.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Breaking news, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

The telephone poll of 800 male and female heads of household from the six-county Chicago area began July 8, one day after Chicago police Officer Thor Soderberg was gunned down in Englewood. A little less than two months earlier, Officer Thomas Wortham IV was killed in the Chatham neighborhood. And on Sunday, four days after the poll was completed, Officer Michael Bailey was killed outside his Park Manor home.

Experts agree that these high-profile homicides, coupled with a bad economy and a steady stream of news about shootings, have fed a public perception that crime in Chicago is getting worse, the Tribune reported. The Market Shares Corp. poll — which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points — found that only 30 percent of Chicagoans feel their neighborhoods are safe.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

UPDATE: We just learned that the person whose identity was stolen in this case, Kurt Branham, was a legislative aide to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, (R-Kentucky), who died in 1994. An obituary published in the Washington Post said Branham had worked on legislation that included laws dealing with missing and abused children.

Here's the story:

A British citizen is being held on charges that he obtained a U.S. passort and a Maryland driver’s license in the name of dead man from Washington and tried to use the documents to fly out of BWI Airport, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

John Skelton, 41, was arrested Monday night at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and charged in U.S. District Court with identity theft and using a fraudulently obtained social security number.

Continue reading "Baltimore man charged with identity theft of the dead" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Breaking news, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, South Baltimore
        

A Charlottesville, Va. court has unsealed a search warrant in the killing of Yeardley Love, the 22-year-old University of Virginia lacrosse player and Cockeysville resident who was killed May 3. Her estranged boyfriend, George Huguely, has been charged in her death.

The records show that police investigated a violent scene, described in part in a story by The Baltimore Sun's Jean Marbella.

Here are the documents:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Crime elsewhere
        

The Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office just announced that a former Prince George's County police officer pleaded guilty to breaking into a bank. Edward Lee Smith Jr., 42, used his marked police car to drive an accomplice to a SunTrust Bank in Temple Hills.

Prince George's County Police Chief Roberto L. Hylton said in a statment, “I absolutely will not tolerate wrongdoing by any member of this agency. Bad cops have no place in our profession; they tarnish the good work that is being done by the rest of our employees.  I am very appreciative of the hard work that the United States Attorney’s office did to ensure the swift prosecution of Mr. Eddie Smith.”

Here are some of the details from prosecutors:

Continue reading "Prince George's cop pleads guilty to breaking into bank" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Crime elsewhere
        

One of the suspects arrested in the fatal shooting of Maryland State Police Trooper Wesley Brown is a parolee with a long criminal record. The Washington Post details the case and notes that the main suspect had once been the state's list of most closely watched offenders.

Cyril Cornelius Williams, 27, is charged as the person who pulled the trigger after getting angry the off-duty trooper had tossed him an Applebee's restaurant in Prince George's County because he had not paid his bill.

Because of his record, The Post reports that Williams had been on the state parole and probation department's Violence Prevention Initiative, in which the most violent offenders are closely watched while free from prison on parole or probation. The idea is that any misstep -- such as missing a meeting or a drug test -- can land the person back in prison.

But the newspaper says Williams was taken off that strict supervision list in December because he had adhered to the rules and kept a job. So when he missed a meeting with his parole agent in March, it was no longer a violationt that would trigger a warrant, the Post wrote.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Police shootings
        

From the AP:

Prince George's County police have charged two men in the slaying of an off-duty Maryland state trooper.

Authorities said Monday Cyril Williams and Anthony A. Milton are charged with first-degree murder in the killing of 24-year-old Trooper Wesley Brown.

Brown was shot early Friday while working as a security guard at an Applebee's restaurant. Brown, who wore a jacket that identified him as an officer, was talking on a phone in the parking lot at the time, state police said.

Officials did not identify which man pulled the trigger, but said a semiautomatic handgun was used in the shooting. They say Williams was the person of interest who Brown had escorted out of the restaurant just a half-hour before the shooting.

Both men have criminal records.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction in the killing of off-duty state trooper Wesley W. Brown is up to $75,000, the AP is reporting. And this morning, police said they had located a "person of interest" who is being questioned. Here's a link to an update from the Washington Post.

Authorities say Brown was killed early Friday at an Applebee's restaurant. County police spokeswoman Cpl. Erica Johnson said Saturday that officials continued to gather surveillance video in the area and follow any leads.

Police were offering $50,000 from the State of Maryland, Metro Crime Stoppers and Prince George's County for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the killing of Trooper 1st Class Wesley W. Brown, and Applebee's Services Inc. has offered an additional $25,000 toward the reward, Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Saturday.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

It was quite a Friday for police across Maryland, particulary for Baltimore police. It seemed everything happened at once -- with a cop acquitted of manslaughter, another found guilty of civil rights violations, yet another the subject of a manhunt on a first-degree murder charge.

In one courtroom, a Baltimore police officer was acquitted of manslaughter charges in the shooting death of an unarmed man. I'd love to talk to jurors in this case. The officer had tried to move the trial out of the city, arguing that widespread mistrust of police in the city would prevent him from a fair trial. He lost that bid and chose a judge to hear his case, but when a different judge got assigned, one who has been openly critical of the police commissioner, Tommy Sanders opted for a jury instead. Circuit court jurors found him not guilty in less than two hours. What I want to know is whether jurors trusted a cop charged as a criminal more than the cops who tried to put him away?

In another courtroom, this one federal, jurors convicted a city cop of obstruction and civil rights violations in the beating of a handcuffed teenager. Two of his colleagues, who had left the force, pleaded guilty and testified against Gregory M. Mussmacher. that case was brought by the U.S. Justice Department.

Meanwhile, after much public bickering and leaks concerning evidence, police issued an arrest warrant for Gahiji Tshamba, who shot and killed an unarmed former Marine in Mount Vernon a week ago today. City cops are now engaged in a manhunt for one of their own on a first-degree murder charge.

The day started with sad news out Prince George's County, where a Maryland State Police Trooper, 24-year-old Wesley Brown, working an overtime security shift at a restaurant was shot and killed, possibly by a disorderly man he had ejected for not paying his bill.

Meanwhile, Baltimore County police are stymied in trying figure out an apparent cult and police in Anne Arundel County made another arrest in a human trafficking case linked to prostitution, the second in just a matter of days. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Breaking news, City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Top brass
        

An off-duty Maryland State Trooper working security at an Applebee's in Prince George's County was shot and killed early today.

This just in from the Associated Press:

Officer Henry Tippett said Trooper Wesley Brown escorted a disorderly customer Thursday night from the Applebee's on Donnell Drive in Forestville. Tippett said when Brown was leaving the restaurant around 12:40 a.m. Friday, the customer shot him in the parking lot. Brown was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Gov. Martin O'Malley issued this statement not long ago: 

“Early this morning, TFC Wesley Brown was tragically shot and killed while serving security detail at a local restaurant in Forestville.  Tragedies like this remind us all how fragile life can be, and that the men and women of our public safety agencies risk their lives on a daily basis to keep the people of our State safe.  I’ve visited with Trooper Brown’s family this morning and extended my most sincere condolences.  The thoughts and prayers of all Marylanders are with them on this very sad day.

“The Maryland State Police, Prince George’s County Police, local and federal law enforcement are working tirelessly to investigate this incident, capture the suspect, and bring this killer to justice.”

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Police shootings, Top brass
        

In an unusual move, Boston police released photographs of 10 unidentified young men who the commissioner says should be shamed for belonging to a gang that he contends is responsible for the killing of a 14-year-old that is shaking the city, the Boston Globe reported. The flier is going around the Dorchester community and was distributed to the media.

"We are doing this because we believe the community can play a role in making the individuals who are responsible for the execution of a 14-year-old boy outcasts in their own neighborhood,’’ Commissioner Edward F. Davis said in a telephone interview.

Boston papers reported that the city had a particularly violent weekend, prompting outrage from community leaders and police. The city had three killings - or about less than half of the number of people killed in Baltimore over the same span. Here, the mayor and police commissioner were quick to note that all other crime numbers - besides killings and shootings of course - were "fantastic."

Anyway, what do you think of this flier as a police tactic? 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 9:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

With all the talk about the Baltimore Police Department's internal crime meetings being suspended and then reborn, here's a novel concept out of the once-corrupt New Orleans Police Department: invite the public in.

That's right, open the doors. Talk about transparancy, and then maybe some of of the misgivings Baltimore residents have about cops hiding crime might go away. It would also give the public  valuable insight into just how much the police are really doing to confront crime in their version of Comstat.

Of course, police talk about operational issues that they'd rather keep from criminals and the public, and it remains to be seen whether the police in New Orleans have separate, private meetings to talk about what they can't talk about in front of people and the news media. That could render the public meetings a farce. I also wonder whether police in New Orleans use the meetings to dress-down their top cops the way Baltimore does.

I attended one Comstat meeting in Baltimore -- one of the first they did -- and watched how detectives investigating seemingly unconnected shootings suddenly realized they were looking for the same suspect. I watched as they put dots on a compute map showing 911 calls for drugs and then put more dots on the same map showing where cops were. They weren't in the same place. And that was with old technology.

Comstat uses a dizzying array of computer maps, charts and data to plot crime and guide officers on the street. It's also been criticized for encouraging downgrading crime as commanders struggle to make the numbers, and thus themselves, look good.

I also spent some time in New Orleans, back when Martin O'Malley became mayor, because they  were openly practicing zero-tolerance policing, the kind of strategy O'Malley wanted here but couldn't admit. I was allowed into a Comstat meeting there as well.

Let's see how this New Orleans experiment works. The New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote a story on the first open meeting:

Continue reading "New Orleans opens crime meetings to public" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Top brass
        

Continue reading "Holding businesses accountable" »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 8:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The Village Voice in New York has obtained secret tape recordings made by an NYPD cop of his colleagues, giving the public an unusual and unvarnished view of what it's like to be a police officer in New York, and of some of the attitudes that come with it.

The recording are raw and uncensored, and quite revealing. Reminds me a bit when I took an unsanctioned ride with a city cop last year who wanted to demonstrate how poorly staffed the department was. Commander promptly launched an investigation -- not to fix what was wrong, but to uncover the cop's identity.

Here's how the Village Voice describes the find:

Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes — made between June 1, 2008, and October 31, 2009, in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant and obtained exclusively by the Voice — provide an unprecedented portrait of what it's like to work as a cop in this city.

They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don't make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statistics. The tapes also refer to command officers calling crime victims directly to intimidate them about their complaints.

This pressure was accompanied by paranoia — from the precinct commander to the lieutenants to the sergeants to the line officers — of violating any of the seemingly endless bureaucratic rules and regulations that would bring in outside supervision.

The tapes also reveal the locker-room environment at the precinct. On a recording made in September, the subject being discussed at roll call is stationhouse graffiti (done by the cops themselves) and something called "cocking the memo book," a practical joke in which officers draw penises in each other's daily notebooks.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Top brass
        

A bright, young University of Virginia lacrosse player from Cockeysville is killed in her dorm, and Charlottesville police have charged her boyfriend, a lacrosse player from Chevy Chase in her death. Now, everyone is speculating whether anyone missed signs that their apparently tumultuous relationship would reach this level.

Friends are asking friends and family is asking family and everyone is asking the cops and the university, whose officials said on Wednesday they had no reports of violence involving the suspect George Huguely against the victim, 22-year-old Yeardley Love. At left, in an AP photo, is a Wednesday night memorial service on the university campus.

Let's go back to 1996, when Robert Harwood Jr. was charged with standing over his best friend and Johns Hopkins University Republican clubmate Rex Chao and shooting him with a .357 Magnum handgun in the back of the head and then again in the chest as he lay on the library lawn on the Homewood campus.

Harwood, 22, wanted to remain friends with Chao, 22, and got angry when his pleas were rebuffed. Chao and his girlfrend told a Hopkins dean about threats, about stalking and about Harwood's gun. The university ordered that Harwood notify security when he visited campus.

Similiar questions are being raised now in Virginia and for the moment university officials are attributing it to distraught students searching for warning signs they might have missed. The big question in the coming days leading up to Saturday's funeral in Baltimore will be whether any officials, be it police or campus security, knew Love feared for her safety and what they did about it.

At the old case in Hopkins, Harwood -- who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and handgun violations is serving a 35-year prison sentence -- relayed his frustratings in a series of lengthy emails. Reporter Scott Shane, now at the New York Times, detailed the relationship in a long story. Here is part of it:

Continue reading "When tragedy came to Hopkins" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, North Baltimore
        

Fans jump onto baseball fields all the time and television stations usually turn their cameras away from scene, arguing they don't want to encourage such activity by granting publicity. But one video has made it to YouTube -- of 17-year-old Steve Consolvi being tased as he ran around the filed at a Philadelphia Phillies game.

Authorities are examining the video to determine whether authorities used excessive force to stop the prank. And the boy's parents, in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, apologized for the incident. There's a nice succession of pictures on Philly.com.

Philadelphia police have at least for the moment backed the officer, though a spokesman for the department told The Inquirer that the take-down is under review and police are now pondering whether they should go onto the field at all, and instead let private security handle future incidents.

Continue reading "Tased at the ballpark" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Students at the University of Maryland College Park campus expressed outrage at the beating of a student by three Prince George's County police officers during a celebration of the basketball team's victory over Duke back in March. The video, which has been aired nationally, shows a student near police horses but does not, as police alleged when the arrested the man, show him attacking officers:

"They crossed the line," senior Auston Edwards said of the three county police officers captured on camera. ... Like other students, Edwards, 22 of Largo, had heard that some officers acted violently toward students in the chaos after the Duke game. But "seeing it's kind of different," he said.

"If they had to handcuff him, then OK," he said. "But he's on the ground, and they're beating him. He's not that much of a threat."

"This really was disheartening as well as shocking to see firsthand," said Eric Narrow, a 21-year-old sophomore from Baltimore. "There were better ways to handle the situation. ... It's about time somebody came out and showed there was this brutality going on, abuse of power."

Narrow, 21, does not excuse the "destructive" behavior by students, including one who tried to climb a lightpole. But he said that until Monday, accounts of the night had been too one-sided by focusing on the more than two dozen arrests, including at least 13 current students. While he said tension between police and college students might be inevitable, police who patrol off-campus areas of College Park have "become an intimidating force as opposed to a protective force. When students see a cop, they get nervous."

The Washington Post is reporting that the FBI plans to launch a civil rights investigation. For more on the story, check out The Baltimore Sun story by Brent Jones and Scott Calvert.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Students celebrating the University of Maryland basketball's team's victory over Duke in March led to a wild street celebration that ended with police in riot gear taking control. One student says he was beaten, and his attorneys have released a compelling video that has led to the suspension of a Prince George's County police officer and an internal investigation.

The video (from Fox 5 in Washington)  and story are on the Washington Post web site:

It's outrageous. Anybody who would see that would see a young man who was completely defenseless, who hasn't committed a crime, who was brutally beaten," said Chris Griffiths, Jack McKenna's lawyer. McKenna ended up with a concussion and eight staples in his head. Plus, contusions on his back and arm. Prince George's County Police Chief Roberto Hylton feels his department is bruised too. "I saw the tape. I'm outraged. I'm disappointed in the actions of my officers that I saw on camera. That is not going to be tolerated," said Chief Hylton.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The headline on this morning's on-line edition of the Washington Post: Like a war zone.

No, it's not another dozen shot at a Baltimore cookout. This time, it really is crime someplace else. Four dead, five wounded in front of an apartment building in Southeast DC on South Capitol Street (the crime scene picture at left was taken by The Washington Post and transmitted by AP).

From the Post story:

"The burst of gunfire, apparently a drive-by shooting, led to a police chase in which four D.C. officers were slightly injured. Officials later said three persons were arrested and a weapon was recovered, but no other details were immediately available. Initially, three people were reported killed in the shooting. D.C. police said early Wednesday that a fourth victim had died. Police were still looking for a motive in the shooting, in which at least nine people were hit."

That certainly reminds Baltimore residents of the day last July when 18 people were shot, and two killed, in shootings across the city, including a dozen at a backyard cookout for a family mourning the anniversary of another killing.

Here is video from WJLA-TV in Washington:

Continue reading "DC erupts in violence" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

With all the talk of possibly hundreds of officers being laid off in Baltimore, here's a story out of New York City where Mayor Michael Bloomberg is concerned over an increasingly thinner "thin blue line," as the article puts it.

New York has attracted much attention for its dwindling murder rate, but so far killings are up 22 percent, and shootings and rapes are up as well, the New York Post reports. (Bloomberg notes that even an increase this year is still well below the city's crime levels from a decade ago; NYC's murder rate is about 1/6 of Baltimore's 2009 rate)

Officials believe the NYPD's shrinking manpower is playing a factor. The department had about 41,000 police in 2001, which is down to 35,000 today, the Post reported. The city expects to shed 1,300 officers in the upcoming year through attrition, and is threatening to lay off 3,150 cops if state slashes funding. In Baltimore, though the proposed budget calls for layoffs, Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake is vowing that it will not come to that.

How has Baltimore's sworn strength fluctuated in recent years? Baltimore counts 3,119 sworn officers for fiscal year 2010, down about 6 percent from a high of 3,329 in 2003, according to statistics obtained by The Sun. That's a difference of nearly 200 officers, which is the equivalent of an entire patrol district. The number has been pretty steady under Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III's entire tenure, and crime is down nearly across the board this year. 

Click below for the annual breakdown:

Continue reading "New York City could lose thousands of officers" »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: City Hall, Crime elsewhere, Top brass
        

Federal authorities in Baltimore announced this morning the arrests of nine people in an alleged multi-million smuggling ring that authorities say imported through the Port of Baltimore counterfeit  Coach, Nike, Gucci and Cartier merchandise.

Here is an edited version of a statement from the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office:

Baltimore, Maryland - A federal grand jury has indicted nine individuals, including two Malaysian citizens, four Chinese citizens and three naturalized citizens of the United States, on charges arising from a conspiracy to smuggle into the United States counterfeit shoes, handbags and wrist watches manufactured in Malaysia and China.

“Intellectual property crimes are among the Justice Department’s top white collar enforcement priorities,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein.  “This case demonstrates the impact that we can make with coordinated law enforcement operations that involve our domestic and international partners.”

More details and information from London Police:

Continue reading "Feds announce smuggling bust linked to Asia, London" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, Crime elsewhere
        

Maryland is a violent state, but today's deluge of major crime news around the region was a bit overwhelming.

In Carroll County, police were investigating a murder-suicide in Hampstead that involved a man who killed his ex-wife's fiance and then took his own life. Michael Leo Swift III had been charged in January with possessing unlicensed machine guns, rifles and explosive devices and was out on bail.

In Baltimore County, the boyfriend of a 23-year-old woman missing since Thanksgiving was arrested and charged with murder, two weeks after her body was found in Virginia. County police also identified a 48-year-old man found outside a Cockeysville home.

In the city, we've already blogged about the Remington drive-by shooting, the killing of a Johns Hopkins Hospital security officer in a robbery, and the case of a month-old infant buried in Druid Hill Park by his mother who had four other children taken away by social services. As I type this, police are investigating a stabbing at the Inner Harbor that sent a juvenile to the hospital in serious condition. And the AP also reported that Raymond T. Taylor waived extradition in West Virginia and will be transported back to Maryland, where he escaped from a prison last month.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 7:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Baltimore County, Crime elsewhere, Downtown
        

Can a retired drug cop from Prince George's County oust the longtime delegate Joseph F. Vallario Jr., who has chaired the House Judiciary Committee in Annapolis for 17 years? It's possible. Police fraternal groups from across the state are expected to back Percel O. Alston, known as "Percy" in his primary challenge in September.

It could the first serious challenge that Vallario, 73, (at left, in a photo by The Sun's Amy Davis) has encountered since he became a delegate back in 1975. Vallario has incurred the wrath of police chiefs, prosecutors, victim's rights groups and women's organizations for repeatedly blocking legislation favored by law enforcement groups. He has stood in the way of proposed laws to broaden the definition of gang members, to stiffen gun laws and help get drunk drivers off the streets.

The defense attorney has been accused of putting criminals -- his potential clients -- ahead of the citizens, and Alston, a retired 24-year veteran of the Prince George's County Police Department and four-year head of its Fraternal Order of Police, calls that a "conflict of interest." He told me: "It seems that a lot of legislation that will affect him as a defense attorney is legislation he will oppose."

Continue reading "Can an ex-cop oust Vallario?" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Top brass
        

Federal prosecutors announced today that a 25-year-old Frederick man has been sentenced to 292 months in prison (that's more than 24 years), followed by five years supervised release, for conspiracy to commit witness tampering and possession of a firearm connected to the death of a man he suspected of cooperating with authorities against him.

According to the guilty plea, from 2004 through July 2005, Steven Stone and co-conspirators David Lee, Jesse Dorsz, 28, Eric Campbell, 20, obtained cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy from sources in New York and Maryland, which they distributed in and around frederick. They called themselves B-6, which stood for "Bottom of Sixth Street" in Frederick. Prosecutors said Stone was arrested several times with drugs and guns, and law enforcement recovered a radio frequency detector that allowed Stone to detect undercover law enforcement agents wearing recording devices (!).

In the spring of 2005, Stone and others began to suspect that Lee was providing information about their crimes to authorities. Campbell and other conspirators learned in the summer of 2005 that Lee had been served with two grand jury subpoenas, which prosecutors said reinforced their concern.

Continue reading "Frederick man sentenced in witness-tampering murder" »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Witness intimidation
        

Recently, Baltimore City Councilwoman Belinda Conaway proposed putting cameras on the dashboards of police cruisers to document interactions with the public, a call that came in response to reports of a septuagenarian's arm being broken during a stop for an alleged hit and run. The police department and officers' union said fixed cameras wouldn't capture many of the interactions that occur out of view.  

In San Diego, the police department is experimenting with cameras, but instead of car dashboards, they're mounted on the officers themselves. San Diego has joined a handful of other agencies to begin testing head-mounted video cameras that record officers' interactions with the public, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Nine officers will wear the RoboCop-like gear while on routine patrol over the next two months.

"It gives real-time information on exactly what occurred at the scene. Anything that helps put the case into perspective," San Diego Assistant Police Chief Bob Kanaski said yesterday. "No more 'he said, she said.'  Now it's in color." Officers have "noticed people act different toward them now that they know they're on camera," one officer said. The AXON camera, about the size of a large Bluetooth device, hooks over the officer s ear. The record button is on a small control panel that hangs on the officer's chest. The third component is a handheld computer screen that shows the color video feed. The computer can store up to eight hours of material.

What do you think? Good accountability tool, or creepy Big Brother policing development?

[Photo from San Diego Union-Tribune site. Link also includes video of a recorded interaction]

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

UPDATE: Here's a link to our story from this morning.  

The woman found dead at a Prince George's County youth facility early this morning has been identified as a 65-year-old Bel Air woman who was a literature and history teacher there. Hannah E. Wheeling was partially clothed and had been "assaulted," police said, though few other details were available. The facility was on lockdown as police interviewed staff and students. We talked to a former co-worker and neighbors of Wheeling, who described her as a passionate bookworkm who actually enjoyed her 75 mile commute to Cheltenham, Md. and spent her weekends making lesson plans. I spent the afternoon trying to get more information at Cheltenham and just filed our story, which you can find in tomorrow's Baltimore Sun. We hope to have more information about the investigation then, so check back.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

A 19-year-old Baltimore man, charged with raping a Canton woman after shoveling her snow in December as well as two attacks in rural Virginia, has been linked through DNA to a fourth rape that occurred in Canton in 2007.

Donald Vaughan was arrested Dec. 21 and accused of raping and slashing the throat of a Canton woman who had paid him to shovel her front sidewalk. It later emerged that Vaughan had been under juvenile supervision in Kilmarnock, Va., where he was under surveillance as a suspect in two rapes there.

The Baltimore Sun reported that Virginia authorities, who assumed responsibility for Vaughan's supervision under interstate agreements, had not notified Maryland officials that Vaughan was returning or that he was a rape suspect. The 2009 Canton attack occurred during a return to Baltimore for the holidays.

Now city police have charged Vaughan in a fourth attack, which court records say occurred Jan 1, 2007, in the 2700 block of Dillon St. The crime follows a pattern of break-ins and attacks that Vaughan has been accused of since a young age.

Here's a link to what appears to be Vaughan's Myspace page.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Southeast Baltimore
        

Peter Hermann today explored why out of four recent child abductions, only two triggered the statewide "Amber Alert." If you were watching the Olympics or other programming on Friday night, your TV was interrupted with an unavoidable minute-long alert that a girl had been abducted from Cecil County. Another was issued the next day in relation with an abduction of a Prince George's County girl.  But there were two other abductions during that time span, which did not trigger an Ambert Alert. The apparent reason is the involvement of a vehicle, and an available description of that vehicle. Since part of the Amber Alert is to have the description put up on highway signs, the lack of a vehicle apparently is a make-or-break element for broadcasting a description, even though the Amber Alert is so much more than a highway alert system.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Howard County, South Baltimore
        

The Sun's Julie Scharper this weekend chronicled the life and crimes of Thomas Leggs Jr., the Eastern Shore man indicted last week in the killing of an 11-year-old girl. Leggs has a long history of allegations of sex abuse, but for various reasons escaped serious penalties. His case has raised questions about the effectiveness of laws regarding sex offenders and spurred talk of reform in Annapolis this session:

Leggs' link to the Foxwell case has prompted scrutiny in Annapolis, with some lawmakers questioning why emergency legislation in 2006 that called for extended supervision of certain sex offenders and for the creation of a Sexual Offenders Advisory Board to assess the state's handling of such offenders both failed to get off the ground.

The O'Malley administration, which contends that the advisory board was not adequately set up and that other sex offender provisions are unworkable or unconstitutional, has responded by announcing that the board will be reactivated and strengthened, with former Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. as chairman.

Though arguing that Gov. Martin O'Malley had improved sex offender supervision without the advisory board, the administration also unveiled 2010 legislative initiatives that they say go beyond what was envisioned in 2006.

The House of Delegates is slated to hear a host of sex offender bills, including the governor's, on Feb. 23. A Senate hearing has not been scheduled.

Advocates welcome the measures, but many say they don't go far enough. And while the sex offender registry can be a helpful tool for vigilant parents, it's merely an address registry. An offender can be furtively molesting children but be listed as compliant on the registry because his address is up-to-date.

"If we don't convict child molesters, it doesn't matter how strong the penalties are or how well the registry is enforced," said Lisae C. Jordan, a lawyer with the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault. "People think, 'If I just check the sex offender registry, my children will be safe,' and that couldn't be further from the truth."

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

UPDATE (2/16): The DEA office got back to me and said the reason for the silly name? Because most of the suspects were family members. Makes sense.   

Giggity giggity!  The Drug Enfrorcement Administration's weekly news roundup sent out this morning includes an item noting the arrest of several men in a drug conspiracy investigation called "Operation Family Guy." Eric J. Humphrey, 31, of Amherst, New York, along with Charles M. Humphrey, Jr., 41, James Humphrey, Jr., 35, and John E. Humphrey, 39, all of Buffalo, New York and Anthony Taylor, 48, of Kenmore, New York, are charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 5 kilograms or more of cocaine and to manufacture, possess with intent to distribute and to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base. The press release said the investigation was the result of a wiretap.

So why was the case called Operation Family Guy? I don't have a clue, but I have a call in to the New York DEA office and Quahog Mayor Adam West.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

State police today said they used a helicopter to rescue a 45-year-old Allegheny Allegany County man who was trapped at his mobile home for several days without heat, food or phone service. On Friday, Feb. 5, the man evacuated his family from their Flinstone, Md. mobile home off Maryland Route 144 in a remote mountainous region of Western Maryland, police said. He returned to the property to clear his driveway and to care for several animals, and was forced to remain at the home without a means of leaving the area, police said.

On Sunday, he lost power and heat to his home. As temperatures dropped, he ran out of food and lost phone service to contact his family, police said. On Tuesday, police were notified by the family and attempted to make a rescue using four-wheel drive vehicles and snow mobiles. But the deep snow prevented a ground rescue.

At 9 a.m., members of the Maryland State Police Aviation Command arrived in the area and found the man motioning to the helicopter, police said. A trooper was lowered from the helicopter and hoisted the victim up. He was suffering from moderate to severe hypothermia and has been taken to Western Maryland Regional Medical Center for treatment, where his condition was listed as "guarded." As for the animals he had returned to take care of, we're told they didn't make it out in the rescue.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

UPDATE: Here's more from the Delaware News Journal. The suspect is a competitive figure skater, and some neighbors think they now know why shoes vanished from their front porch.

Police in Delaware announced Friday night that they have arrested a man in connection with a spree of burglaries over the past two decades in which thousands of pairs of men's shoes and photos of men were stolen.

The break in the case came after a passerby spotted three duffel bags of shoes left in a Maryland creek near the Delaware line and reported seeing a person drive off in a yellow Mitubishi Eclipse, according to authorities.

Police said the suspect, from Delaware, mainly targeted student housing in the off-campus area of the University of Delaware, striking during breaks such as Christmas and Easter.

Police said the searched the man's home and seized 150 boxes of shoes and photograhs, photos taken from a college fraternity, eight guitars, one mandolin, eight snowboards, a surfboard and sports equipment, all linked to burglaries.

Authoritie also said they confirmed that the shoes found in the Maryland creek were from the burglaries, which they said span a period of 20 years.

Walter J. Rubincan, 46, of Newark, has been charged with 25 counts of burglary, 77 counts of theft and 15 counts of criminal mischief.

Here's a statement from police in Newark, Delaware:

Continue reading "Shoe theft suspect arrested" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Breaking news, Crime elsewhere
        

A new study released today attempts to use socioeconomic data to better compare big city homicide figures and determine whether a city’s crime is essentially better or worse than one would expect given poverty, median income, unemployment, race composition and female-headed households. In a nutshell, they're trying to determine which places may be overcoming demographic challenges through programs and policies, and which should be doing a heck of a lot better. Unfortunately for Baltimore, the study shows that we're basically right where the demographics suggest we should be.

Using data from 2008 and the first half of 2009, researchers from the Improving Crime Data program found that some cities, such as Detroit, Cleveland and Atlanta, end up falling down the list of deadliest cities, indicating those places have a lower homicide rate than would be expected based on its level of socioeconomic disadvantage. Detroit fell from No. 2 all the way to No. 53, indicating that, in other words, things in Detroit could have been a lot worse in 2008 given their demographics.

I’m not sure if that’s comforting for the city with the top homicide rate in the country, but one of the researchers, Robert Friedmann of Georgia State University, put a positive spin on it. "If you're a CEO flying out to Detroit considering whether to move your business there, the ranking shows you its not as bad as you initially thought," he said.

Other cities, such as San Jose, San Francisco, Albuquerque, N.M. and Colorado Springs, Col. shot up the list. Or in other words, according to the researchers, even though crime appears low, something isn’t going right in those cities. Friedmann told me San Francisco officials have been angered at the fact that each year their city soars in the rankings, an indication that they're dropping the ball given their favorable demographics.

There wasn’t much good news for Baltimore in the rankings. Along with St. Louis, the researchers determined our crime was about what would be expected - with both cities ranking at the top of either list. Baltimore fell from three to five between the unadjusted and adjusted lists in 2008, surpassed by Oakland, Calif. and Kansas City. In the first half of 2009, we fell from two to three, surpassed by...St. Louis.

It should be noted that the list featured 63 cities, with, from what I can tell, the main criteria being a population of at least 250,000 people. Cities that general FBI data showed were among the tops in murder rate, including New Orleans, La. (the top city), Birmingham, Ala., Jackson, Miss, Baton Rouge, La. and Flint, Mich. were not among those that were considered in this study. I wonder how including more cities in the analysis might have changed Baltimore’s ranking.

The study also fails to take into account some of the drivers of the socioeconomic data that they're studying, some of which has a lot to do with simply how a city's boundaries are drawn. For example, Los Angeles' city limits stretch far, gobbling up lots of more affluent areas that drive up the population and bring little crime with. Think Baltimore if it included Baltimore County. Baltimore and Washington DC, meanwhile, have tight boundaries drawn around the urban core.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere
        

-Nick Madigan writes about a Baltimore County woman who is accused of scamming former classmates at Dundalk High School into thinking she had terminal stomach cancer. Prosecutors say Dina M. Perouty, who was convicted of a mortgage scheme a few years ago in Carroll County, took at least $12,000 from her victims, among them champion skateboarder and Dundalk native Bucky Lasek, who flew Perouty out to California and paid for her to go to Disneyland - one of the things that was apparently on her "bucket list."

-Peter Hermann profiles a bizarre case out of Newark, Del., where a man is believed to have been stealing shoes, pictures of men, and boxer shorts for the past six years. Two-hundred-and-fifty shoes turned up in Maryland on Sunday, in Elkton. In other news, the Newark Police Department's evidence control unit is seeking a grant to buy Gold Bond foot powder in bulk. (No, not really)

-Julie Bykowicz reports that Gov. Martin O'Malley who has proposed reforms to sex offender laws, has activated an advisory board formed four years ago that never met. Former Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., O'Malley's father-in-law, will serve as the chairman. Bykowicz reported the other day that many of the state's laws dealing with sex offenders aren't even being enforced.

-Over at the Investigative Voice, Stephen Janis has been reporting on the unraveling of an apparent scheme in which a convicted sex offender was able to continue to get paid by the city while serving jail time. Officials are exploring whether other Department of Public Works employees helped Dennis McLaughlin forge medical leave slips, the site reports.

-Tricia Bishop reports that attempted murder charges have been thrown out against two Baltimore men accused of trying to kill a former Black Guerrilla Family gang member. The victim changed his story last week. One of the suspects' attorneys had filed a rare appeal to the federal courts for intervention in the case, attempting to get his client freed pending trial.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, City Hall, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

For years, the man stealing men's shoes from homes in Newark, Delaware, had gone undetected. Many people never reported the break-ins, and police didn't notice a pattern that seems obvious in hindsight -- the break-ins all occurred near a college campus, targeted mostly students and the only thing missing were men's shoes and pictures of men.

Now, after five houses were hit over Christmas, police in Newark have put the pieces of the puzzle together and are now investigating dozens of break-ins involving the theft of more than 200 pairs of shoes.

And this week, someone found three duffel bags with 200 wet and soggy shoes in a creek in Elkton. In Wednesday's Crime Scene column, I'll explore this case further. Here are some pictures of the shoes supplied by the Newark Police Department.

They are asking anyone with information to contact Det. Fred Nelson at 302-366-7110, ext. 136. Who knows, given the shoes apparently linked to this case were found in Elkton, maybe there's a Maryland connection? 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Crime humor
        

A Baltimore man, whose 1984 murder conviction was overturned and set a legal precedent that a defendant's statements made pursuant to a plea bargain were not admissible after the state rescinded the agreement, has been arrested in the western Canada town of Saskatoon in connection with the shooting of a man and a woman nearly four years ago.

George M. Allgood, 45, is charged there with murder and attempted murder. Allgood was in Canada under the assumed name of Reno Trevor Hogg, police said.

According to clips provided by the Sun's crack library team, Allgood was a 23-year-old former Navy cook when he pleaded guilty in Oct. 1984 to a brutal beating of a 77 year old man who he called his godfather and had sheltered him and his mother when he was a teenager. His conviction was overturned, with his attorneys saying that a statement made as part of a plea bargain was used against him at trial after the state's offer was withdrawn.

Still, five months after his conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeals in 1987, Allgood again pleaded guilty and received 30 years in prison. It was unclear when he was released.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 6:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Crime elsewhere
        

The Washington Post has an interview with an FBI agent who oversees a gang task force of FBI agents, DC police and U.S. Park Police officers. Among the questions posed was where the District's drug supply originates:

Where does [the drug supply] come from?

[FBI Agent Dave] LeValley: Regionally, heroin comes from Baltimore. Heroin is a little different. Some heroin comes off the Southwestern border. Some heroin comes from Asia. Some heroin comes from South America. Primarily, it comes into New York City and filters down to Philly and Baltimore, and then to D.C.

Usually, couriers go to Baltimore to pick it up. In terms of cocaine, the Colombians get it to Mexico, and the Mexicans smuggle it into the United States, like Atlanta, Chicago or Los Angeles. D.C. is primarily affected by Southern [and] Eastern routes.

We are typically a secondary market. We don’t see smuggled loads of multi-hundred kilos, like some large cities. We are primarily a consumer market here. But our focus is less concerned with drug smuggling routes and more concerned with the crew or the organization that has impact, or dominion, over a particular area in the city.

The amounts of drugs doesn’t matter a whole lot. Down at the street level, and a little bit above, is where a lot of the chaos and violence comes into play because [gangs] have to control the real estate.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere
        

When I posted murder totals from cities across the country the other day, one key city was absent: Detroit.  Detroit misreported its murder count to the FBI last year, something The Baltimore Sun first reported, and the FBI's Uniform Crime Report continues to reflect that Baltimore had a higher murder rate. But in terms of cities with 500,000 or more people, Detroit was actually just barely ahead of Baltimore with a rate of 37.8 killings per 100,000 people, compared with 36.9 for Baltimore, in 2008. With Baltimore seeing one of the only increases in the country in 2009, the city was in danger of overtaking the grim No. 1 ranking among large cities.

But the Detroit Police Department reported today that they finished the year up 6 percent, from 342 to 364, a rate of 40.2. Officials said murders in the first half of 2009 were up 150 percent, at 200 compared with 133 in 2008. A new chief was installed at midyear and the city saw 18 percent less killings in the second half. 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Former state Del. Clarence "Tiger" Davis sent us this on the death of a former Baltimore man:

The link is an LA Times article on the murder of Ben Bradley, Longtime East Hollywood theater director and 1968 graduate of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.  Other links will contain his photo.  He was an excellent student who earned a scholarship to Carroll College in Wisconsin, where he studied theater.  He later moved to LA where he pursued theater arts in all its forms.
 
Should you decide to write an obituary, please do not hesitate to contact me. The LA Police called his mother at 3:30 am Sunday to inform her of the tragedy. She is waiting for the coroner to release the body which will then be shipped to March Funeral Home-East. Once the body is released, plans will be made for his funeral and internment.  I hope its soon; his mother is devastated and need closure of some kind ASAP.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Crime elsewhere
        

The year is over, and many cities have released preliminary homicide statistics. Some of these were gathered through news reports, others through phone calls to the police agency in question. There's a host of reasons why comparing cities against each other is flawed, but nevertheless, it gives a look at what happened in some cities with the highest rates.

These are the cities with the top 10 homicide rates in 2008 (with a population of more than 100,000, based on FBI estimates from 08), followed by their results in '09. Cities with an increase are bolded: 

1.  New Orleans - 281,440 - 179 (08) - 173 (09) - Old rate per 100,000: 64 - New rate:  61

2.  St. Louis - 356,204 - 167 (08) - 147 (09) - Old rate:  47 - New rate:  41

3.  Detroit - 905,783 - 339 (08) - Did not provide 09 total - Old rate:  37  - New rate - ??

4.  Baltimore - 634,549 - 234 (08) - 238 (09) - Old rate:  36 - New rate: 37.5

5.  Birmingham - 228,314 - 82 (08) - 66 (09) - Old rate:  36 - New rate:  28.9

6.  Jackson, Miss - 174,734 - 63 (08) - 40 (09) - Old rate:  36 - New rate: 22.8

7.  Washington DC - 591,000 - 186 (08) - 143 (09) - Old rate:  31 - New rate:  24

8.  Baton Rouge - 226,920 - 67 (08) - 63 (09) *Through October - Old rate:  30

9.  Oakland, Calif. - 401,587 - 115 (08) - 107 (09) - Old rate:  29 - New rate:  26.6

10.  Flint, Mich. - 113,462 - 32 (08) - 36 (09) - Old rate:  28 - New rate:  31.7

Posted by Justin Fenton at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The Sun's Justin Fenton, having recently returned from our reporter exchange in London, brings us a story today about a murder investigation and a special squad of British cops called Trident. What strikes me is that they've got 40 cops assigned to one killing.

The Trident unit has 300 officers and a $44 million budget. Baltimore cops have about 70 homicide detectives investigating murder; the homicide unit has a budget of $5.3 million (the Criminal Investigation Division's budget is $38 million).

London, a city of about 7.5 million, has had 110 homicides this year, 17 of which involved guns. Baltimore, a city of about 640,000 has had 208 slayings so far this year, most with guns.

It's impressive that London puts so many resources into homicide, and this unit specifically targets black-on-black gun murders in London's ethnic neighborhoods, where police, as in Baltimore, complain that distrust of law enforcement hampers their ability to solve crime.

It's an interesting read; you'll notice many similarities and differences between Baltimore and London.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere
        

Our friends at the Washington Post have just launched their crime blog -- called "The Crime Scene" and it has a catchy slogan: "To serve and inform."

They have help from reporters across the region and some fun video clips, and is worth checking out if you don't have enough crime in Baltimore to satisfiy your urges!

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

A group of Iraqi police officers and representatives from the Pentagon are scheduled to visit with Baltimore police next month to learn about informing the public about crime and interacting with residents.

The public will get a chance to interact with the Middle East visitors at two events -- a community forum (the details are being worked out) and a community walk in Southwest Baltimore. Should be an interesting visit.

Here are some more details put out by the Southwestern District Police Community Relations Council: 

Continue reading "Iraqi cops coming to Baltimore" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

My colleague Justin Fenton has arrived in London and is about to head out with a police gun unit. Should be an interesting perspective. Too bad the reporter visiting here from The Independent, Mark Hughes, wasn't offered the same opportunity here.

Just the same, Mark has seen cops in action on a ride with the city police union chief and one two Citizen On Patrol walks in Riverside and Patterson Park. He was impressed by the way citizens get involved and how active the cops were in talking with them and trying to address their problems.

Both are now cross-writing about their experiences -- today's paper has Mark meeting drug addicts and Justin learning about limits placed on reporters covering crime. We grouse here about restrictions in terms of access, but it would drive me crazy to work under the circumstances I'm hearing about in London.

While out with some colleagues last night, Mark noted that some people are defensive about this city, mostly because of the image from The Wire. I told him there are roughly two groups -- people who hate what the fictional HBO drama did and want to never speak of it agan, and those who thought it uncovered a side of the city in way that truth sometimes can't.

I'm in the latter group. The Wire is important and shouldn't be ignored, and we need to confront these troublings aspects of Baltimore. They won't go away simply by ignoring them. At the same time, this is a vibrant city and I and I think others want to show him that it's liveable and people have fun.

After a COP walk in Patterson Park, we stopped by the park to watch a late-night kick ball tournament under the lights. Last night, we headed up to Joe Squared, a restaurant at the edge of the new arts district, on North Avenue. It showed Mark that restaurants and thriving neighborhood joints can make it even in areas others have long given up on. Let's not hide our problems; but lets not hide our success stories either.

At the end of the Tale of Two Cities blog are two comments that found particularly interesting. Now that Justin is in London, people are urging him to hit certain areas off the tourist track, where complaints of violence mirror our own: 

Continue reading "Sun reporter lands in London" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Mark Hughes, the reporter from The Independent who is here trying to see if Baltimore is indeed like The Wire, is unfortunately finding it easy to find our dysnfunction.

Already, the top prosecutor has told him her office's relationship with police is "schizophrenic," which must get him wondering why the two primary law enforcement agencies can't get along, which in turn must be one reason crime is so high.

The top cops won't talk to him, but he's met a few on Citizen On Patrol walks and Tuesday night he hit the streets with the police union president, who took him to a fatal shooting and other intense calls. Here's a bit from his blog, "Crime: A Tale of Two Cities":

The scene was one which must be familiar to officers, but was new to me. A car riddled with bullet-holes was crashed into another vehicle. Through the open passenger door I could see blood soaking the seat. And on the ground were multiple bullet casings, circled with red chalk and each marked with a yellow number. After listening to detectives exchange theories on what might have happened we left and headed to a project block nearby. There we met two patrolmen who suspected some men in the projects of holding a drug stash. The four police officers split up, two went one side, two the other. Justin and I followed the union guys. Two minutes later, amid the shouts of “five-0”, we heard a scream. The union cops ran in the direction of the shout. Justin and I, for some reason, ran too. When we reached the other side of the projects we learned that the scream was that of a man who was now in handcuffs. After some questioning and a search (no drugs were found) he was released and told to go home.

Later, Mark wrote about how most victims of homicide and most of those suspected of killing them have criminal records, which helps explain that while Baltimore has the country's second-highest murder rate, it's still not terribly dangerous for people engaged in legitimate activities.

It does hearten me that Mark is surprised that so many people seem to be following his work on line and in the newspaper. He always seems surprised when someobody recognizes him, such as when he went out on a walk in South Baltimore's Riverside neighborhhood. And even with the top cops not talking to him, he's met plenty of officers and citizens who have gone out of their way to help him.

Last night, we went on a Citizen On Patrol walk in Southeast Baltimore, in the Patterson Park area. He met a new group of residents striving to keep their neighborhood safe, though it was much quieter than one he did earlier this week in Riverside.

None of the residents or the cop, Officer Eddy Arias (above, chatting with Mark, in a picture taken by The Sun's Gene Sweeney), made any arrests (unlike in Riverside) but he did overhear a call on is radio for a report of shots fired two blocks from where we were at the time, Ellwood and Fairmount.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

Our visiting crime reporter from The Independent, Mark Hughes, got a taste of some our problems on Tuesday when he spoke with city State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy. Long documented animosity between her office and the cops once again showed itself, with her describing the relationship between the two as "schizophrenic."

Relations between prosecutors and cops seemed to have improved since the 1990s when they went at it tooth and nail (who can forget O'Malley's profanity-laced tirade against Jessamy) but it appears that there's still some mending to do. I know prosecutors are upset over cop no-shows at trials and over a list Jessamy keeps of officers she deems unfit to testify, rendering them practically useless as cops. And her office has always complained over the quality of policing and what they feel are "abatement" arrests that clog the system but don't go anywhere.

Police routinely complain that Jessamy's office doesn't win as many convictions as they would like and dumps cases by the truckload.

It's an old argument and one that Mark saw first hand while touring the Riverside neighborhood on Monday. He watched cops arrest two strung-out addicts for being disorderly -- they refused to leave the area after an officer told them too. The community love the cops for taking swifty action, but the charges will never hold up.

A perfect example of bad charges, prosecutors say

A perfect example of good community policing, the residents say

The only way to solve a problem and prevent something more serious later on, the cops say

And around and around we go.

Here's the broader picture this argument presents to our visitor: that police and prosecutors, who should be on the same side fighting crime, don't have the same priorities. And that makes the system appear dysfunctional at best.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

Our visiting British crime reporter Mark Hughes ended his first full day in Baltimore by walking with the South Baltimore's Riverside community group. They spent about an hour walking through the neighborhood with police, who even made a couple of busts.

He chatted with residents about crime (they're most concerned with car break-ins, loitering and grime) and learned that these walks are an opportunity for people to point out everything from dangling power lines to trash that needs to be picked up to blighted houses. At left, Mark is talking with the Southern District commander, Maj. Scott Bloodsworth, in an alley near Heath and Light streets.

One of the sergeants on the walk ended up arresting a man and a woman on a disorderly charge (the woman was high and both refused to leave), at least temporarily abating a problem for the night.  Mark is here in part because The Wire is so successful in Great Britain (The Sun's Justin Fenton is headed there on Wednesday), but walking through Riverside was a chance for him to see a neighborhood with other, more pedestrian problems.

Mark has a blog up to recount his experiences, and he and The Sun's crime reporter Justin Fenton are on the Ed Norris show, (105.7-FM) this morning at 8:10 a.m. At left, Bloodsworth chats with a woman one of his officers had just arrested on a disorderly charge at Light and Heath streets.

Just before the walk, the spokesman for the mayor's office, suggesting a better column than one was planning to write, sent me a suggestion of his own (NFS stands for non-fatal shooting):

"The Mayor was sworn in on January 17, 2007.  She has been Mayor for 1,022 days. In that 1,022 days, there have been 2,276 combined homicides and NFS. In the 1,022 days before she took office (April 1, 2004 to January 16, 2007) there were 2,558 combined homicides and NFS.  This represents 282 less combined homicides and shootings – a decrease of 11%"

If those numbers are accurate, in the 1,000 days before Sheila Dixon became mayor, the city averaged 2.50 shootings and homicides a day. Under her tenure, the average has dropped to 2.23 a day. There's a disconnect between fear of crime and stats that city leaders just don't seem to get.

Does a crime drop of a few tenths of a percentage point make you feel any safer? Do you even know what that means?

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Neighborhoods