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?
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?
posted by John Galt at 3:30 AM
2 Comments:
I'm a bit confused. Are you referring to the callout at Northern District ?
I'm familiar with Boston's Operation Ceasefire. It deals primarily with deadly violence arising from turf wars between well-organized gangs. It relies upon collective responsibility (ie. if a Shark go after a Jet, everyone will get arrested and no one will make money for a while, so don't do it.)
When the organized crime structure is looser, as it is in Baltimore, the strategy fails to persuade the outer fringe of criminals, who are usually the triggers for incidents anyway.
Another way to get Grandma on your side is to make her financially liable for the things Junior does. Then she tells him to cut it out.
A problem with threatening to arrest offenders in this town is that the criminals really outnumber the cops. The threat of arrest has to be credible, and ultimately, criminals here figure out that the cops could never arrest all those people as threatened, so noncompliance get to sound better and better.
To do this sustainably, we'd need about twice as many cops, and we'd really want to discharge about 1/3 of the ones we have now. There are a lot of bad apples in that barrel.
Now, on the misstated address, I'm sure the neighbors around the old Northern Station in Hampden were thrilled that Jessamy erroneosly sent the city's worst to their corner last night.
Another way to get Grandma on your side is to make her financially liable for the things Junior does. Then she tells him to cut it out.
Why would Grandma care? She's making twice as much in drug money as she'd ever have to pay out in fines. It's just the cost of doing business, to her. Because can you imagine the uproar when elderly poor women are actually held accountable for the actions of their grandkids? I wouldn't want to be near the fallout...
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