Tuesday, October 11, 2005

October 11

Osborne Robinson, Jr., 59, of E. 33rd Street, is scheduled for arraignment at 9:30 tomorrow morning before Judge Lynn K. Stewart for manslaughter in connection with the death of James Royster, 58. A Baltimore Grand Jury indicted Robinson on August 30. Court documents allege on Wednesday, July 6, 2005 Royster was sitting on his front steps in the 1800 block of North Bond Street when he was approached by Robinson. Words were exchanged between the two men which led to an altercation. Afterward, Royster was in severe pain and transported to Johns Hopkins Hospital where he fell into a coma. Royster remained in a coma and on life support until his family decided to remove him from life support on July 14, 2005. Robinson is currently released on a $50,000 bail.

Jessamy announced today that a Baltimore City Grand Jury indicted Charles Benedict Knott Sr. 51, of the 1300 block of Clipper Heights Avenue in connection with the death of James Garrett, 56. Court documents allege that on September 16, 2005 in the 1100 block of West 36th Street Charles Knott and James Garrett got into an altercation which resulted in Knott striking Garrett several times with a cane about the head. Garrett was transported to Union Memorial Hospital where he later died from his injuries. Knott is currently being held without bail at the Baltimore City Detention Center.

What the ?! In Clinton a man went into the T-Mobile store where his wife worked, doused her with gasoline and set her on fire.

A 15-year-old was arrested for carjacking a woman in the parking lot of a shopping center in Towson.

How to Get Robbed:

  • If you hear a knock on the door and you don't know who it is, find out by opening the door.

  • Walk around the city in flip-flops and a baseball hat, by yourself, drunk, late at night

  • If someone starts talking to you on the street, stop imemdiately and pay attention to what he's saying! He needs a cigarette? You bet! What time is it? Better stop and check the watch! Your car's broken down over there? Tell me more!

  • Leave your iPod on the seat of your car

  • Park your SUV at a Towson mall, and gas it up at discount urban filling stations late at night.

  • Leave any doors, gates or windows unlocked, don't buy curtains and put a camcorder on the coffee table.


The murder trial of Martin Morgan, originally scheduled to begin today, has been postponed at the request of the State until January 30, 2006.

William Nicholson pled guilty today to conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Judge Roger W. Brown scheduled a sentencing date of January 9, 2006.

Good reading from the archives: Sun's "Cases crumble, killers go free: Police blunders in homicides leave city's 'lifestyle of death' unchecked". Good pie graph action.

4 comments:

Maurice Bradbury said...

And now the comments are working. That's weird.

Anonymous said...

Responsive to the Dundalk vigil for domestic crime victims, please note that number (70) was a *statewide* number, while the murders were at the city level of aggregation. Yep, the city's a mess.

For 2004 the rankings for homicide rate were:


DC 198 homic = 3.58/10M pop.
Detroit 385 homic = 4.27/10M pop.
Balto. 276 homic = 4.34/10M pop.
Memphis 105 homic = 1.56/10M pop.
Chicago 448 homic = 1.57/10M pop.
Phila. 330 homic = 2.24/10M pop.
Columbus 88 homic = 1.21/10M pop.
Milwauke 87 homic = 1.49/10M pop.
New Orl 265 homic = 5.74/10M pop.
LA 518 homic = 1.36/10M pop.

Now ol' New Orleans is... gone, so there's us and MoTown. Mo' Cars, Mo' Crime. But then again, Detroit is a disaster city, basically headed into municipal receivership. That makes us the leader of the pack, I s'ppose, with a homicide rate 9 times that of the nation.

The link to O',Malley/Townsend hotspots was cool. I'd forgotten about that 1999 program. So did most of the communities where it was implemented. For a bird's-eye view of one of them now in the news, see the Sun story at

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.own10oct10,1,6511022.story?coll=bal-home-headlines


Not much has changed under Madison Avenue Marty O'Malley over the last six years in CHM. He seems to think that everything is just a matter of marketing. What about a snazzy campaign against killing folks? Maybe "Thou shalt not" on a stone tablet, or.. oh, it's been done? Too bad. Moses? Funny name for a gubernatorial candidate. Is he running as an independent? 'Cuz Senator Mike Miller says the Democrats shouldn't talk about the crime in Baltimore. Makes the party look bad, apparently.

Murders? What murders? Now, how 'bout that new Convention Hotel. Yeah, we won't allow the murders down there. Much better photo-ops.

Marty, I have the proper spin to put on your high crime statistics:

When Chicago cracked down on gang violence, it found that many of the violent offenders left for greener pastures in suburbs, notably Calumet City. The way to sell people on the benefits of homicide is that it's keeping the jobs of skilled criminal professionals here in the city, supporting our local econmy. Yeah that's the ticket !

Anonymous said...

We killed as many people last year as Milwaukee, Columbus, and Memphis combined ?

Anonymous said...

(Alleged) Killer Osborne Robinson, Jr.; another fine example of what comes out of hot spot CHM in Northern Baltimore. When the Lieutenant Governor's (read: Townsend)office examined neighborhoods for hotspot designation, they looked at where the crime OCCURS. They should be similarly cognizant of where the criminals come from. Keep in mind that the upside to high recidivism is that most future offenders at large in the community are already 'in the system.' They have local addresses on file with their parole officer. Police manpower ought to be deployed according to where the offenders are regularly found, in this case the intensely criminal wedge lying between about Alameda-Harford Rd. and Greenmount-Barclay from Coldspring to maybe 20th Street. About 10% of the city's hoodlums are to be found there amongst some 1% of its residential population. The more-or-less law-abiding within that community deserve some relief, dontchya think? How do you make things better? Start by enforcing curfew: clear those mean streets after dark. Enforcing open-container laws will discourage young punks, winos, and ne'er-do-wells from imposing upon the decent working poor trying to raise their families. Because so many here are housed by the City in Sec. 8 or HABC units, declare zero tolerance on CDS possession, use, and distribution from within a given radius of City housing. Station Parole & Probation field ops. in the community to surveill the clients. Make the working, family-values oriented neighbors confident that if they have an 'incident' with a hoodlum, a familiar officer is only a few minutes away, rather than an hour, and they will begin to perform some of the surveillance and community rule-setting that make neighborhood policing effective.
These were some of the things which were said about CHM six years ago. The Baltimore City Police Department plus agencies never followed through in a credible way. The result is.. what you see. BTW, read that Sun article. Good insight into life in this corridor of Charm City, where the Other Half lives.