Dogs picked up the scent of flammible liquid at the building at the 2100 Garrison Boulevard apartment-building site where two people, including Thomasina Evans, died on Friday. Oddly, the building is owned by a company that appears to consist of a single New Jersey man.
Since Friday, eight people have died in fires in the city, most recently a mysterious rowhouse fire that killed three. Check those smoke-detector batteries and think about your escape plan, it's that time of year.
Justice will be delayed at the trial of Wayne Lavon Bond, accused of shooting Edgewood cab driver Derald Howard Guess, a 37-year-old father of nine, as part of a gang-initiation rite.
The conviction in the shooting death of Marcellus Maddox (also in a cab) is under Appeal in Wicomico County. The ruling could potentially help define assault sentences in the state.
In Carroll County, 40-year-old Anthony Hughes pled guilty to assaulting ex-wife Ellen Redifer with a claw hammer in 2002.
Another great date opportunity from the State's Attorney's office: a concert tonight at 6:30 p.m, in which the Baltimore City Police Choir will be singing with the Northwood-Appold United Methodist Church Choir at the New Metropolitan Baptist Church at 501 McCulloh Street. The free concert that will also involve eulogizing the state's fallen police officers. The most recent Baltimore City death was the July 3, 2004 shooting of Officer Brian D. Winder.
Life's bitter irony dept: the most recent MD police fatality, Grant Turner, had a heart attack while running a 5K in honor of fallen hot officer Duke G. Aaron III.
11 comments:
Edna McAbier was encouraged by the City to better her neighborhood. He had a great deal of assistance from the then commander of the Northern.
The then Commissioner of the BCPD got into hot water for (allegedly) hitting his girlfriend and took it out on the commander. When Ms. McAbier came to his aid politically, Deputy Commissioner McMann pulled the manpower from her neighborhood. Mr. O'Malley was TOLD she would be jeopardized. He had received numerous emails from her in this regard. She was firebombed.
Since the incident, Ms. McAbier can no longer live in the neighborhood, which should be understood at this point to be insurgent-held.
The blood of the neighborhoods is on the hands of our Mayor. To ask homeowners to come here to be sitting ducks and BELIEVE under these circumstances is simply irresponsible government.
I guess those fire-bombing boys aren't interested in snitchin cessation. ;)
These are Blood wannabes loosely connected with the Delmarva arm of the organization. Because they don't have adequate street creds to enforce the Code of Silence, you get a very volatile situation:
a) affiliates are not so loyal (out of fear)that they won't rat each other out, and
b) because the 'cells' are not robust to being dissolved through defections, the structure of the drug-dealing industry is constantly in flux. This means in turn that there are gains in market share to be had through inter-gang violence, which increases the incentive to commit such violence. Paradoxically, criminal enterprises which are strong and resistant to prosecutorial deal-making are also more stable, which induces a stable, peaceful equilibrium between gangs, minimizing violence.
hey its Adam Meister. I totally misplaced your email address.
Check out this Northwest Baltimore Crime story:
http://www.jewishtimes.com/2701.stm
Good link, Adam.
Just goes to show you that for people accustomed to a certain manner of living, to tell them that a delay of maybe 40 minutes on a 911 call and a districtwide total of maybe 450 robberies are not just stats; they're indications of an unacceptably unsafe place to live. It's not about trying to BELIEVE them into accepting it: they'll just continue to vote with their feet, heading to Pikesville or whatnot.
City residents should stop trying to be understanding of the difficulty of delivering public safety in Baltimore, because this administration takes that assent as acceptance of this preposterous level of crime. USE the word 'unacceptable'.
What middleclass people care about is not that robberies are down from last year, but rather that they are still around eight times the per capita level of, say, Westminster.
Just now, the price of housing in the counties has peaked out. That's primarily why middleclass folks have moved into the city. Not because it's cool and funky. When the prices fall off again as the overheated market collapses, they WILL be leaving again.
Why? Because they were never, ever willing to live like this. Many of my newer neighbors in Greater Charles Village feel that they were suckered and would respond very favorably to leaving Baltimore, even though there are some neighbors and a handful of amenities which they'll miss.
Adam's area of Remington/Mid-Charles is a prime example of an area which succumbs to decline every cycle, because the city never really steps up to meaningful crime reduction, even when markets are strong and budgets are flush with cash.
We still lag other older urban centers in cumulative percentage reductions since 1996. Welfare convention hotels for tourists visiting our Disneyland Downtown won't mean squat if crime levels are not slashed.
Gosh, I've got a big mouth.
If cops are so few and criminals so plentiful that response to 911 is delayed 40 minutes,... it doesn't take a rocket scientist. Hire more cops, Marty! And I don't mean someday. That would be priority, uh,... let me think,... ONE.
Ok, so how many cops are needed? Depends on how 'decent' a city you hope to be. Depending upon the specifics of the deployment, each additional effective sworn officer in an older urban center will likely reduce part I offenses by about 24 per year, based upon multi-city panel data.
To be competitive with, say, New York City, we'd need a total part I count of about 17,643 for a city our size. We had 47,726 part I offenses last year (after the FBI corrected O'Malley's report). Hence, a reduction of about 30,000 requires a minimum of about 1,250 additional officers, provided the deployments are fairly optimal.
As it happens, officers in Baltimore are largely deployed off-patrol to the extent of 66% of the force. Absent a change in how the department is organized, this would imply new hirings of about 3,750 officers, or more than double the current force.
And that's just to get crime down to an urban level. The township in which I grew up has a much higher budget share devoted to policing and a far lower per capital part I crime count than New York.
Bottom line: this administration, while offering a good spin on crime-control, ain't even close to delivering an acceptable product. And he wants to be Governor? Ha!
Commissioner Hamm is a very nice man, but the operative question is, by how many (hundred) officers is he proposing to increase (net of attrition) the force in each of the next five years and how does he expect to attract them, given that about half the applicants can't even pass the frickin' drug test?
The 2005 edition of the Morgan Quitno report is out:
The most dangerous major cities are:
1 Detroit, MI
2 Baltimore, MD
3 Washington, DC
4 Memphis, TN
5 Dallas, TX
6 Philadelphia, PA
7 Columbus, OH
8 Nashville, TN
9 Houston, TX
10 Charlotte, NC
their most dangerous cities of any significant size are:
1. Camden, N.J.
2. Detroit
3. St. Louis
4. Flint, Mich.
5. Richmond, Va.
6. Baltimore
7. Atlanta
8. New Orleans
Now, before you set out to celebrate beating out Flint and Richmond, note that our violent crime rate is greater than theirs. For that matter, St. Louis's violent crime per capita was substantially identical to ours, so we really only beat out Detroit by any meaningful margin. I'd certainly hope so, since Detroit is basically a pot-apocalyptic husk of a city.
Among major cities, only Detroit surpassed our lack of safety.
All of which is to say, Baltimore's in sad shape.
More cops would help, but better policing would help, too. The officer's responses in the article posted by Adam is inexcusable.
The police seem to care about having fewer reported crimes and the politicians seem to care only about coddling the criminals. (Note - two of the politicians are defense attorneys who spend their career pleading with judges to excuse criminal behavior. Gladden is a public defender and Carter is a private defense lawyer.)
We need politicians who will stand up for crime victims. Maybe even a lobbying group. Politicians respond to money, so the new homeowners can make a difference if we organize and bring the focus back to us.
my e-mail is chococatsanrio@yahoo.com
I'm always surprised at how little talk there is about holding corporations accountable in the same way we hold (or pretend to hold) politicians accountable.
GM's announcement yesterday about 30,000 layoffs will most likely be another devastating blow to Detroit. Four of the 11 affected plants are within 90 miles of Detroit. (Flint, one of the scheduled closings, is lucky enough to get it's own spot on the worst cities list.)
Then there are the Spring Hill, TN cuts (30 miles from the 8th worst big city, Nashville), the Doraville, GA cuts (15 minutes from the 7th worst city of any size, Atlanta), and Moraine, OH (75 miles from the 7th worst big city, Columbus).
It's one thing if consumer tastes change and market shares drop; it's entirely different if years of greed, mismanagement, and poor workmanship drive a company, it's workers, and the cities it supports right into the shitter.
In my fantasy world, corporate executives (past and present) would be held accountable not just for their stock values, but also for the way their decisions influence their employees and their overall communities.
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