October 22

The Sun's article on the sorry state of public safety in Baltimore City and the administration's recent downward revision in progress estimates demonstrates that many in low-income Baltimore see no improvement and lays the blame for police misconduct and inadequate staffing squarely at the feet of the Commissioner and his appointer, the Mayor who would be king.

Baltimore City government should compel its police dept to be responsive.
The Examiner editorial addresses the department's lackluster response to the Grand Jury report on irregularities in police conduct, including false arrests. Since Mayors don't seem to care about their duties, perhaps the Commissioner should once again be independent of the Mayor.

October 13

Aha!
Now, here's the Baltimore City criminal justice problem in a microcosm.

In March, officer Dante Hemingway was lured by his new girlfriend's lover into a home in Westport, was ambushed, and shot by her masked male accomplice.

The girlfriend and shooter, age 21, received a very generous plea deal from the State's Attorney's office not because any of the events in Westport were disputable, but because of an apparent desire to avoid embarrasing details surrounding Hemingway's duty status at the time of the incident.

As a result, a guy who shot a cop can be paroled in ten years with five of probation.

This was fully premeditated and the State's Attorney was responsible for seeking 20 years. The defendant had been previously null prossed for attempted robbery on school grounds and has been indicted for another second degree assault since the incident with the officer. If the department has dirty laundry, tough. Fire the officer, but the charges must be prosecuted vigorously. This is exactly why the CJCC couldn't figure out why the Garrett kid wasn't safely in jail at the time of his murder. Defects in the police department are used to justify defects in the prosecutor's office. And you wonder why the bench is skeptical of them?

October 11

Martin O'Malley, during 1999 mayoral campaign:

"If police officers break the rules, then together we must have the political courage to discipline or prosecute our own police," O'Malley said. "And if our officers are justified in their actions to protect our citizens, then together we must also have the political courage to back them up."

Mr. O'Malley, what happened to your political courage ??? I cannot think of a police department on the East Coast which breaks the rules more freely than yours.

The City Paper concludes that O'Malley's claim about crime "just isn't true" and investigates how public school children have been used to advance his political campaign.

Court of Appeals lawsuit

At issue: can the City of Baltimore circumvent public disclosure laws by using a dummy corporation, such as the Baltimore Development Corp. ?


10% of Baltimore murder victims are minors.
Juvenile murdersare going through the roof. Nonfatal shootings of minors are up 13%. The District of Columbia declared an emergency, but it's business as usual in Baltimore, a national disgrace.

Philadelphia, awash in juvenile homicide, has only about half our rate. Philly Inquirer laments 'where's the love' as murder rate rises. See the Inquirer's youth violence webpage.

The Daily News runs a useful letter to the editor on the mindsets of Philly A and Philly B.

FYI: parolees in Philly rose 15% in two years to 8,864. Our analogous figure (parole+mandatory supervision) is about 4,054 (keep in mind we're much smaller than philly). Baltimore's (supervised) probation population, however, is up around 12,000, many of them drug-related.

October 10, Do the Math

Let me get this straight.

Murder is up 4%.

Gunshots are up 12%.

Robberies are up 8%.

But somehow, the O'Malley admistration says crime is down by 3% and violent crime by 6%.

It seems that means that common assault (like, a fistfight or a tussle) is down sharply. And burglary and theft from auto as well, because there's nothing really left to account for the gap. But those are precisely the incident types which we'd expect victims in crime-plagued neighborhoods to avoid reporting when the overburdened police do little to nothing to help them. So, those crimes are probably up, not down. The inclination to report them is likely what's decreasing here. It's what happens when officers refuse to take incident reports under pressure from O'Malley's brainchild, CitiStat. The best way to get crime stats down is... to discourage victims from reporting them.

That means crime is up. Probably a lot.

October 9

False arrests,... and higher crime ??

The official murder count today is 216, versus 208 this time last year, up 4%.

The official count of nonfatal gunshot incidents is 487 today, versus 437 last year, up 11.5%.

The young boy found killed in Leakin Park has been identified. Mr. Garrett, it is pointed out by the police, has a long and sordid criminal history. Yeah, and as I said, he's still dead.

I failed to take note of a double shooting of two young males on Llewelyn Ave. in East Baltimore. It was quite a weekend.

Another man was nonfatally shot in his car around 8:00 p.m. Mon. night at Lewiston & Gist in Northwest. Police have no suspects at this time.

On the plus side, Mayor O'Malley had a grand time at the parade telling everyone how much better things are.

October 8, evening

BaltimoreCrime Temp Edition
Lotsa violence,... does anybody really care ?

A man was shot on the 3600 block, Kenyon Ave. in Northeast Baltimore last night.

A quadruple shooting took place on the 1700 block, West Pratt Street in Southwest Baltimore. All were young males. The fourth man was apparently found nearby on West Lombard. I believe it occurred Saturday. They were taken to shock trauma and are in critical condition.

Two men and a woman were shot on the 4300 block, Reisterstown Road this evening in Northwest Baltimore around 10:00 p.m. None of the injuries was fatal, but one of the victims was sent to shock trauma, the others to Sinai Hospital.

A body was found on Winans Way near Leakin Park.

Also, a man was shot early Sunday morning on the 2800 block, Eastshire in South Baltimore and is in critical condition at shock trauma.

No official word yet on the body at West 26th Street and Miles Ave.

Stephon Nicholson, age 19, was named as the inmate stabbed to death at Central Detention. The other inmate, Kevon Gantt, who was found stabbed in the same cell was released from the hospital.

The Baltimore Afro opposes DC's Mayor-apparent on rolling back curfews.

Affordable Housing Proposal
Now, on the subject of Baltimores B & A, the City Council's affordable housing plan is as misguided as it is misspecified. The proposal would require that 10% of all new rental housing be set aside for tenants at the $42,000 income level and another 10% at the $86,000 level. The effect is to drive yet another wedge between have and have-not neighborhoods in Baltimore at about those income levels. It basically encourages the productive in Baltimore B to cross the river to the other side, enhancing the already high segregation in this very polarized town and ensuring that kids in Baltimore B never see any worthwhile role models, because functional households all leave if they can.

An economically better proposal would be for a set of affordable housing slots to be established, distributed uniformly across the City, in Baltimores B and A both. The subsidy necessary to accomplish it would vary across geography, but provide equal access and equal burden. A necessary prerequisite to relocating deserving Baltimore B families into Baltimore A... or B, for that matter, would be a tight set of behavioral restrictions. No entitlements. Critics of the existing proposal say it doesn't do enough for the truly desperate, but...

Guess what? The whole point of gentrification is to remove behaviorally defective neighbors by pricing them out. (which has its own detractors on ethical grounds) If you pay them to stay, then the higher cost of living that goes with the gentrification accomplishes... nothing. So the investment vanishes down the toilet. Without behavioral restrictions, affordable housing is just another good way for Baltimore City Council to raise your taxes and hand your money to people who voted for them. This is how Baltimore always kills an improved property market, every time.

Advocates at Healthcare for the Homeless argue that affordable housing needs to reach minimum wage workers. Guess what? Minimum wage works out to about $12,300 a year. It's the median household income in my neighborhood. It's not enough to take care of your responsibilities, among which are childcare, education, and adequate nutrition. It's why we have behaviorally impaired young males running around shooting everything that moves. We should not encourage minimum wage earners to live in Baltimore City. To live with decency simply requires more than they've got to offer. They need to go misbehave somewhere else.

October 7, BaltimoreCrime TempEdition

In the police blotter:

a knife robbery on Gold Street and a 16 year-old arrested with a handgun on the 800 Block, Newington, in Reservoir Hill after a police chase. Several robberies, one armed in East Baltimore and an arrest in connection with a shooting on the 1800 block, Chapel St.

This just in: a reliable reader indicates that a body was found in a van this morning at 27th Street & Miles Ave in Remington. Police were on the scene.

Anne Arundle prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in connection with murder of correctional officer David McGuinn. The defendants are already serving life sentences at the facility.

A U.S. District Court judge found that an armed career criminal has been a very, very bad boy and gave him a 15 year sentence.

The jury in the second-degree murder of Raymond Smoot failed to return an answer and will return on Tuesday. It seems they had many questions regarding the quality of some of the testimony.

The Department of Justice is concerned that youths held at the state-run Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center "suffer significant harm and risk of harm" from violence because there isn't enough staff on hand, and behavior management and treatment plans are inadequate. "This facility is in one of the most violent cities in this country," replies Stephen Moyer of Juvenile Services. My answer: bring back the reform school rock pile.

And former Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Clark is requesting that a legislative committee in Annapolis reviewing employee terminations for political reasons include his firing by O'Malley, which a court recently ruled improper. What was Clark's political problem? Investigations of O'Malley's operatives, it seems, some of whom are said to have compromised truthful reporting of crime data.

October 6, BaltimoreCrime Temp Edition

Truth and Consequences.

WBAL tv's David Collins reviewed the claims of the two gubernatorial candidates for truthfulness and accuracy as to crime issues, and concluded that O'Malley's criticisms of Ehrlich are substantially false, while Ehrlich's criticism of O'Malley is basically quite truthful, but possibly inaccurate as to degree. He finds that the intent to manipulate Baltimore City crime data on O'Malley's part hasn't been proven, even if the result is pretty clear, and that Ehrlich's promise to oppose the release of violent offenders was kept, and in fact was stymied in the State legislature by.... O'Malley's Democratic runningmate, Del. Tony Brown.

Of items of note in the police blotter today, Tuesday's previously-reported shooting of a woman and a teenage boy outside a Cherry Hill carryout resulted in a bullet to her leg and several to his body.

35 year-old Stuart Griffith, who was sought in violation of probation for weapons charges, was murdered with multiple gunshots by unknown assailants in the wee hours Monday morning at Gossip's on South Calvert Street downtown.

Another Blockbuster Video robbed in Cockeysville and another RoFo robbery in White Marsh, and a carjacking solved in Southwest.

Now waitaminute!Eastern Shore attorney and former Asst. State's Attorney Christopher Llinas was convicted of stashing his client's drugs from an investigation, claiming he was disabled by his own addiction from exercising proper judgement. Y'know, this "I'm not responsible because I was drunk/high/upset." has gotta stop. I wasn't impressed with Rep. Foley's version, and I'm not impressed now. He got off with 1 year home detention for evidence tampering by an officer of the court.

An Examiner interview with former Commissioner Ed Norris details just how out of character with departmental routine is the shredding of files protected by the Court in the civil rights case of black officers filed against the Baltimore City Police Department. I agree with Norris, “It’s outrageous.”

From our nation's capital:

A bereavement registry - the best music to bury your children by, and

District of Columbia debates what to do as the crime continues in the nation's capital.

October 6 - news from central booking

Now, here's a really good reason why detaining large numbers of more or less innocent citizens without charging them is a serious abridgement of their rights, abatement by arrest logic notwithstanding: two guys in central got stabbed in their cells, one dead.

How'd you like to end up there because a cop thought you were loitering sitting on your own front steps? No, false arrest is not a harmless inconvenience. O'Malley should be required to enjoy the hospitality at the Central Booking Hilton.

October 4

This map displays Baltimore B. Who's got all the criminals in town?






Unacceptable attitude from Baltimore Police

The block was known for drug dealing, the victim was a convicted drug dealer and the killing was almost certainly drug related, the police said.

"He committed crimes there; he was killed there," a spokesman for the police, Matt Jablow, said.
Yeah, but Matt, ol' boy, murder is unlawful. Yep, even in Baltimore B.



Now, then, Anna Ditkoff's Murder Ink column reports 10 murders this week, and they just keep a comin' after press deadline. Lotsa guys shot in the head, it seems. And quite a few multi-victim shootings.



2005 Murder Rank, Large Cities in America and their murder rates per 100k pop.

1 New York City.........lllllll
2 Los Angeles............lllllllllllll
3 Chicago..................llllllllllllllll
4 Philadelphia...........llllllllllllllllllllllllll
5 Detroit...................llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
6 Houston.................llllllllllllllll
7 Baltimore...............lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
8 Phoenix.................lllllllllllllll
9 Washington, DC.. ..lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
10 Dallas..................llllllllllllllll


Gemini Jones at it again.
Jeez Louise, it seems that good ol' Jemini Jones, when fleeing arrest for a handgun charge just lately, was at the intersection of 33rd and Frisby in Better Waverly.

While Frisby is only a couple blocks in length, it's already seen two police chases, a shotgun assault on a cop, a double shooting, and a couple of robberies, not to mention being the exit from the Blockbuster where Tony Gilmore was murdered. Busy lil' dead end street.

From the Blotter:
And the Messenger's Crime Log for the week in Northern District is available. Highlights include an armed robbery of customer(s) at the McDonald's @ Greenmount & 29th and the theft of a car from its owner by his own passenger on York Road.

Gang Activity confirmed
One more indication that the Bloods are becoming a presence in Baltimore: the July 4 mini-riot by the Harbor, denied by our illustrious Mayor, who just wants the tape to stop. I wasn't there, but I've been watching the gang tags multiply in the Barclay and Harwood communities in Northern District, even as the Northern Police Commander disingenuously suggests that refugee firebomb-victim Edna McAbier can safely return to her home deep in Bloods territory. A few weeks ago a Blood was murdered during a fight with Young Guerrillas members on Guilford & 22nd in South Charles Village with a shotgun. It's very much here, even if the recruits don't know their gang signs properly.