Friday, October 21, 2005

October 21

Hakim Jordan-El, 20, and Christopher Giles have been arrested for the murders of Howard Thacker and Dante Rodney Thacker in Owings Mills.

The narcotics and murder trial of Asmar Rashad Holland, 17, is scheduled to begin 9:30 Monday morning before Judge John M. Glynn. A Baltimore City Grand Jury indicted Holland February 26, 2004 for first-degree murder. Court documents allege that on December 1, 2003 Holland shot and killed Earl Ross, 39, at his home in the 600 block of Bartlett Street. A Baltimore City Grand Jury also indicted Holland March 15, 2004 on possession with intent to distribute, unlawful possession, possession with intent to manufacture heroin.

The trial of criminal genius Gregory A. Alston, 20, is scheduled for 9:30 Monday morning before Judge Wanda K. Heard. A Baltimore City Grand Jury indicted Alston June 16 with two counts of carjacking, two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of second-degree assault, one count of theft under $500, one count of theft over $500, one count of car theft and one count of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. If convicted on all counts, Alston could receive a maximum prison sentence of 144 years. From the AP archive:
A suspect takes a car at gunpoint and drives it around for two weeks before the owner spots the car and has it towed. The thief then calls police to report "his" car stolen.

Those events seemed so improbable that Baltimore police detective Gregory Jenkins felt compelled to end his report of the incident with the admonition, "Again, this really happened."

"Another detective told me, 'Greg, you had to make this up,'" the detective told The (Baltimore) Sun.

Police charged Gregory Alston, 20, Tuesday with armed robbery, possession of a stolen car and a handgun violation.

Police say the carjacking occurred about 10:30 p.m. on April 20 when two women reported that a man armed with a silver handgun and wearing a black bandanna approached them while they were parked on a street in northeast Baltimore. The women said the gunman ordered them out of their car and sped off.

Tuesday, one of the women spotted the stolen car in front of an apartment building about a half-mile from where it had been taken.

She called police who towed it to the department's Northeast District station.

Two hours later, a man called police and reported the car stolen.

Officers brought the man back to the station for questioning. At first, police said, he insisted he had bought the car for $1,700 on March 11. Eventually, he confessed to the robbery.

Why did he report it stolen?

The suspect told police he had left his wallet in the car.

A man changing clothes in the back seat of his Buick was shot in the arm by assailants. Also in the blotter, car thieves with remarkably bad taste.

In Howard County, the medical examiner has ruled the death of Juan Miguel Gonzales, 50, a homicide, and Wayne Holder, 32, got life for shooting Bruce Solomon, 34, over drug money.

In PG County, a teacher who was attacked by a baseball-bat wielding student is back in the classroom.

palumboYvette Cade's family is asking for the dismissal of Judge Richard Palumbo (left). But really now, would that be fair? After all, Judge Robert E. Cahill gave a guy a year and half for shooting his wife to death, and has more than 15 complaints against him, yet was appointed bollingerto the Circuit Court by Ehrlich. And then there's notorious old Bollinger, right, still around in spite of giving a guy probation for rape and calling sex with a passed-out teenager "the dream of a lot of males."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

FYI, there's an article in the current Urbanite

http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/currentissue/pathology.htm

which looks at homicide as a pseudo-medical problem. It relies on notions of epidemic from epidemiology and contagion from social sciences. While I think exposure to frequent homicides may desensitize potential offenders to the emotional baggage that accompanies taking another's life, it seems to me that all the 'environmental influences' in the world cannot increase homicide one iota if the fellow holding the gun simply considers the consequences too great and 'just says no' to pulling the trigger. I'm rather concerned that this analysis could form the basis of a 'twinkie defense' to the effect that yes, I shot him, but don't blame it on me. Blame it on my environment/my school/my mother/the ready supply of guns/the lack of subsidized anger management classes/poverty/the music/too much caffeine.

But it never would have happened if YOU'd kept the gun out of YOUr hot little hand.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to inquire after readers' suggestions for operational changes in Baltimore City Police Department to achieve simultaneous and substantial reductions in both violent and property crime levels. I'd ask that suggestions anticipate resource requirements and efficacy considerations.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Let me guess... you're a Republican. I don't think the purpose of approaching violent crime as a public health issue is some a means of deflecting blame, it's a way to try to frame and solve the problem. As one O'Shea Jackson once noted, "shotgun bullets are bad for your health." And bad for the health of the family and society that needs you to be productive and contributing instead of paralyzed with a shotgun bullet. And it has a psychological effect on everyone in the city too-- if I'm going to get shot in a random drive-by, why quit smoking?

Anonymous said...

But some negative externalities which are understood to be affected with a public interest are deemed to be substantially attributable to poor choices by individuals, while others are thought to be exogenously-/ quasirandomly- occurring. In the first,we designate the poor choice a crime and prevent it through a strongly detrrent penalty. In the case of the latter, for instance contagious meningitis, we don't imagine a penal sanction to have much ability to prevent the transmission, hence we simply treat the source of dificulty without any real attempt to compel restitution from the transmitter. That cost is borne publicly and the infector is neither punished nor stigmatized.

I just don't see extending that approach to homicide, because it is the seminal sin. (No religious fanaticism intended.) We don't even ignore the matter of culpability in the case of accidental manslaughter. Homicide is the ultimate abuse of the power of free will. If we decriminalize that abuse, what other fateful choice could possibly justify a societal sanction?

And, yes, more Republican than Reagan. No, I don't take much responsibility for Dubya and Dubyer.

Anonymous said...

It seems though, Mr. Galt, that you might assume that "the fellow holding the gun" considers consequences. While you or I might consider the consequences (and consider them too great, I might add, to suffer them. . .otherwise we too would kill? Hmm. Don't know about that logic)there are people, it appears, who either do not consider the consequences or find the consequences entirely bearable. If longer sentencing is what you're after, I'm not sure that works in regards to being a deterrent. Partly that's because I'm not convinced certain people consider the consequences.

Your comment interests me as I have had this on the mind for the greater part of this past week. Is all criminality a form of "mental illness" if you will, and if so from what angle.

Hope my ability to consider that idea, even if just for a moment, isn't angering.

It's unfortunate that one can't seperate well the issue of poverty from the equation. However this may be more easily done in crimes of passion (homicides), however, the court makes exceptions for those.

I've met a number of murderers and it is quite a fascinating topic to consider.

Anonymous said...

I like to think of myself as more open to new ideas than to become unreasoningly angry when they propose thoughts which rub me the wrong way.

I deal daily with quite a lot of local criminals and more than a few murderers. There are those who are clinically sociopathic, and they are the less interesting. On the other hand, there are many who are desensitized to the gravity of their actions by degrees and even more so to the seriousness of the attendant consequences.
Crime probably exhibits stigmatic characteristics: we initially ascribe great severity to the first breach of a serious law. We were taught it was wrong; we were tought you get punished. However, after the first successfully un(der)punished crime, the offender downgrades his expectation of severity of punishment and downgrades his moral objection to the criminal act. With each successive criminal act, the expectations are further downgraded until such time as reality crashes in and the penalty is realized.
The other effect is particular to folks accustomed to a dysfunctional socioeconomic environment: the have very short horizons, only those events set to occur within a very short timeframe are 'real'. Everything else is sort of fictitious. For instance, when undertaking a mortgage, only the payment obligations for the first year or so count, so the balance are.... slim to none. The shortness of horizon devalues distant consequences and the future benefit of current investments.
The penal environment serves to drive off those only hypothetically experiencing it, whereas old hands find that incarcerated life is ... just like life on the outside: lots of familiar faces, old home week at the big house. Not very distressing.
Because the effect of penalties under sanction are so diminished by these effects, harsher penalties are needed the more highly criminalized the offender. Hence, I'm a great fan of fire & brimstone treatment for lifestyle offenders, whereas I'm a tad more enlightened when it comes to dumbass first offenders.

If this is interesting, I'd be happy to continue the conversation one on one and give the blogreaders a break from the sound of my voice. email is cournot100@hotmail.com {Sorry guys if this was overlong.}