The above link also mentions Jamie Mills (#144), a 33-year-old from Pennsylvania who was shot to death at North Ave. and Monroe St., and an unidentified man (#146) who was killed Sunday morning on the 900 block of N. Collington Ave. The man found in the abandoned house in West Baltimore on Thursday was identified as 20-year-old Jeremy Jennings (#141).
Julius Pratt was the inmate at the maximum-security facility in Jessup who was fatally stabbed on Tuesday.
"This is family killing family. They are not going to tell you why their children suffered and died."
Feds are pursuing the death penalty against Eric Hall in four murders, but not against the two brothers who ran the drug organization that hired him.
Other than the rape, the shooting, and the four robberies (including that of a 69-year-old man), today's Blotter is pretty uneventful.
Officers Keosha Buie of the Northern District and Joseph A. Decandeloro of the Northwestern have been charged with unrelated crimes and suspended from the BPD.
Clifford Edwards got eight years for possessing an illegal shotgun.
On Friday morning, a Provident bank on Lexington St. downtown was robbed.
A look at criminals in hospitals, focusing on two recent incidents at Howard County General.
Mock drunk-driving at a Carroll County summer camp. Apparently, this guy didn't attend that summer camp: he was arrested and handcuffed in Carroll County on Friday night, escaped from the back of the police car, and was arrested again (sans-handcuffs) at a friends house.
Laura Vozzella writes about the outcome of the eBay auction for happy hour with Leonard Hamm and Patricia Jessamy.
24 comments:
Other than the rape, the shooting, and the four robberies (and a bank robbery), today's Blotter is pretty uneventful.
Geez, if that's uneventful, then Baltimore's a really, really f*@ked-up place.
Money magazine has released its survey of best places to live. Needless to say, Baltimore's not on it. Baltimore's crime is 5.48 times the national average and 14.8 times that of Columbia/Ellicott City, which did make the list.
Comments of the past few days make me want to ask a question I've been considering lately...
While it's not a guarantee, there's evidence to support that as a city's tax base increases, its quality of life will improve.
There is also evidence that suggests citizen action and involvement is key to improving a city. While I'm not a student of city planning or criminology, it seems like most every methodology -- from Broken Windows to New Urbanism -- hinges on some form of active community involvement.
Many of us over here in the land of Baltimore Crime (and I do the same on my other sites, though not with enough regularity to be effective or well-read) are consistently pointing out the bad, and consistently talking about what a crappy place Baltimore is.
Now here's my question. By vocally discussing the ills in Baltimore without giving proper credit to the good aspects of the city, are we merely ensuring that people remain afraid and never move here? Are we, by running our mouths (or fingers, if you will), doing our part to keep Baltimore mired in the abyss where it has been stuck for the past 30 years?
Are those who view Baltimore through rose-tinted glasses (what I refer to as the Urbanite Magazine crowd) improving our overall quality of life by attracting people who can effectively contribute to the city's tax base? By bringing scores of people to the city who have the financial clout (and therefore the political clout) to demand that the police do their jobs, is their rose-tinted view doing more good than we are?
Just a question. I'm curious to hear people's thoughts. I'd also be curious to hear what the commenters here are personally doing to improve this city.
i flat out point out the ills of baltimore to reflect poorly on o'malley, who hasn't done nearly a good enough job to warrant a promotion. sad but true (on both points ;) )
Warning: really long post here.
While the increase in tax base makes some more public money available, it is probably the competitive exclusion of people on the low end that improves conduct.
For instance, if you built an Emerald Palace on one side of town, complete with Beemers and sushi bars, chances are the other, seamier side of town would continue to behave as before. You need a zero-sum game to make gentrification 'lift allboats'.
Now, if you were to do a snow job on productive, gainfully-employed folks with middle-class values and snooker them into moving into the 'hood, then I think you would see them demanding that the police come and arrest their immediate neighbors as they misbehave. Where they are dense enough, you'd see successful gentrification. Where they are insufficient, you'd see them eventually flee.
And these are the interesting ones. Was it fair to tell them that the neighborhood was better than it is? Or was it an incredibly self-interested disservice? Keep in mind the case of Southwest Baltimore in the early 90's. They bet their life's savings on the gentrification of the area, and lost it all. Primarily because of crime which they were led to believe was going to be contained.
The entire scheme is based upon a mass balance of sorts: the money coming in has to be more than the money being pulled out. If enough poorly-behaved folks are forced out before the Intergenerational Budget Constraint tightens up, then the area can recover. It's all about not being the last man in. He gets screwed. He ends up owning an overpriced home with a massive mortgage in a hoodlum neighborhood.
'Urban pioneers' are led to believe that municipal services will continue to improve, but when the bubble bursts not only is the municipal moneymachine turned off, but the demand for emergency services increases, squeezing out quality of life services. The pioneers get screwed by their politicians. Again.
The mobile middleclass renters don't care. When the bubble bursts, they just fly outta here, taking their income base with them intact. It's the property owners, inherently immobile, who take it on the chin. The immobile innercity renters do not participate in the financial decline (and may actually benefit from it in the form of lower pecuniary occupancy costs), but they are disproportionately hit with the lifestyle diminishment, because they are relegated to the worst locales.
Is it fair to do that (with certainty) to some residents for the benefit of those who got theirs and got out?
I give credit for the good things happening in the city. They just have nothing to do with my life, because they're all in the other Baltimore.
I recently had a conversation with the Urbanite editor, who knows my neighborhood well, about the fact that the magazine doesn't speak to our urban ills much, preferring to focus on new cappuccino bars and luxury condos. She observed that 1) there was an article a while back about the nature of violent crime, as seen academically from the outside by nonparticipants and 2) the Urbanite isn't intended to be a traditional news venue nor a downer.
So why do I focus on the ills of our 'other city'? Because if I don't our lousy politicians will deprive it of any decent necessary and essential services. I have to expose the underside of Baltimore only because Matt Jablow & NO'Malley would otherwise ask "Crime, what crime? We don't have crime here."
If government were being honest about the need for essential safety services in the 'hood and their supply thereof, I really would tend to shut up. But they try to con people into overinvesting, which a) overextends the boom and b) deepens the bust.
I have observed the following about the 'new' urban middleclass. The old middleclass did not extensively engage their politicians unless there was an incident. They didn't go to meetings, hearings, and planning exercises. They mostly wanted to be left alone and had nothing to do with the nonprofit sector, other than maybe church.
The new middleclass want to be activists. They are joiners. They entertain themselves with participatory roles in locally-based community nonprofits which garden or operate historical facilities. Along the way, they become very, very addicted to handout money from the City. As a result, the small handful of leaders at the top stand to benefit more from grants to the nonprofits they control than by advocating for staple services to their constituents. It's a pernicious sort of bribery.
For this reason, I'm skeptical of the extent to which bringing in more functional people to demand decent services will work. They'd really have to choose between more basic services and fewer basic services for everyone, rather than between basic services for everyone and grants for the clubby.
I'm also quite skeptical of the way that Baltimore placates vocal group A by providing services to the exclusion of group B. Baltimore has conveniently forgotten that providing services from the public till is only lawful if they are public services. Otherwise, it's just a payoff.
Improving Baltimore
Its all about community organizing. I work with low wage workers of the
United Workers Association. They are focusing on the largest employer of low wage day labor, the M and T Bank Stadium and Oriole Park. Where wages are once $4.50 an hour, they are now over $7.00. The organization, whose leadership are daylaborers or former day laborers, is organizing a cleaining cooperative to pay a living wage and give workers ownership.
I have been talking with students of the Baltimore Algebra Project. The organization pays students to tutor other Baltimore City School students in math using pedogogy/teaching styles developed by Bob Moses of the Civil Rights Movement.
This teaching is focused on not only conceptual knowledge, but allowing marginalized students to take ownership of the abstract language of algebra. The group is also organized to empower students to analyse educational power structures and advocate for better education. These students have been the most active at demanding full funding from the state and accountability from North Avenue. Students from this group have been arrested at the Nancy Grasmick State Education Building for trying to serve a citizens arrest, and they have also conducted sit-ins at city school board meetings where their concerns were not being met.
A book about Moses called Radical Equations is available at Red Emmas. bookstore on 800 St Paul St
The Baltimore Free Store offers free clothing, books, toys and other domestic products at "really free markets" around the city. These space not only serve to provide needed items to people who might not other be able to buy it, but the Free Store is also a community space where community members take leadership roles, coordinating the markets, distributing informational materials, and talking about community issues at the free markets and festivals.
What the city more likely needs are programs like the Alliance of Concerned Men. This group of black male role models became famous after a spree of murders in the Benning Terrace Projects including the killing of a 14 year old. The Alliance went into the neighborhood and over a period of several weeks, months and years introduced themselves to all of the young men, organized them into meetings, got a ceasefire announced, and got jobs and other resources for many of the kids. There is a movie about them that is great, but i can't find it.
Another organization of interest is Ceasefire Chicago, a public health based organization affiliated with the University of Illinois, Chicago. I don't really know enough to elaborate on that last item.
I hope to study medicine and public health at SUNY Downstate and take that experience back to the streets of Baltimore in a transformative way.
Thanks for asking
and sorry for the typos,
In a hurry as always
Simon
I suppose I take issue with the notion that Baltimore needs more community organizing. It's already over-organized.
Algebra project is doing the work of teaching: what the hell are the members of the teachers union doing with all the time we've paid them for.
UWA is simply a low-income workers' union. It does very little other than to seek to increase its membership and withhold their labor.
Baltimore has Goodwill and VFW thrift stores. There's really no need for a Free Store. It's a disguise for a political entity.
The primary function of the Alliance has been to put a familiar, black face onto the voice that recommends: stop killing each other, get out of the Game, and get a job. I have to wonder, if the message is compelling, why should it matter that it be delivered by a 'black role model'? I think a more productive exercise would be to teach these kids that there are a lot of good ideas out there attached to unfamiliar faces of all races and genders, and that they're only selling themselves short by narrowly excluding most of those voices.
I teach that it is the strength of your mind which makes you functionally independent of the chumps around you in Baltimore, and that anyone who cannot or more importantly will not keep up may well need to be left behind.
On the subject of the Algebra Project, again, why politicize mathematical literacy with the language of empowerment? Why dumb down abstract thinking to make literacy available as a mere tool? Mathematical fundaments and symbolic reasoning are important, and it is a disservice to afford kids a superficial understanding just because they are 'from the 'hood'. They should have the same opportunity to excel (or fail) that I had in my cushy suburbs.
(sorry, this has strayed REALLY far from Baltimore Crime)
Chuck,
The Urbanite crowd is important to attract $$ to the city, but things like this city attract those who feel that other aspects of the city are ignored by the local media. The Urbanite serves a good role, but the Baltimore Sun should serve a different role and it fails. I think the local paper should serve as a check on local government and not play the role of the rose-tinted glasses. The Sun doesn't. It's a combination of rose-tint and promotion of its own political agenda. I was attracted to this site because it publishes what the Sun ignores. I hope it can serve as a check in the way the Sun fails to do.
My work personally improves the city in ways I won't discuss.
Chuck, don't forget to check the Examiner for stories. Here's another story about the illegal arrests going on in Baltimore City.
As for O'Malley, it's no longer an issue of whether or not he is encouraging all the arrests in Baltimore, his failure to speak out against how the citizens of Baltimore are being treated by the police is inexcusable. If the police do not have a policy encouraging arrests, O'Malley should demand an explanation for how these things could happen on his watch!
Also, there's a follow-up article on the decision of the police not to investigate the death of Robert Clay.
Y'know, I just reviewed the time-seies of murders in Baltimore. D'yknow that that other than the crack-induced spree from 1990-99, Baltimore murders haven't been this high since about 1974?
And in the early 70's most of the murders were kinda concentrated in the Western District (up to 25% of the citywide total).
Net, net, we're about as bad as we've ever been, excepting the Crack Decade.
Just a little hysterical perspective from ol' Johnny.
Chuck, you do well to note that things get awfully complainy around here. You can't deny that the medium is part of the cause, a simple list of some of the worst shit going on, day after day after day after day. You can't help feel like Galt sometimes (though I think his life is a little more immersed in the system in general)
That's one of the great things about Baltimore Crime, I think. The stories are astounding all listed together like that. Cybrarian, if I might, and you, do a good job serving up the slop everyday, banging the drum. In a way it's it's own sort of activism. If you've been linking and typing it up for a few weeks, it's gotta be draining for you. It can be off centering just reading it. All that hopelessness (I know Galt, you're itching to say "that's because it is hopeless").
My guess is that the people reading aren't reading for the entertainment factor but for the social factor. My guess is that there are a lot of people who work within the system in one way shape or form, whether it's city council reading, judges, states attorneys, probation officers, defense attorneys, reentry workers, social workers, community activists, concerned citizens, politicians, campaign strategizers, police officers, corrections officers, socialists, drug treatment workers, hospital workers, Sun writers, Examiner writers. . .
Things do get awfully complainy, it's easy to do. To come up with solutions that actually work or that make a difference, that's the hard part.
And then it's whether it's the right decision or way to go about things! God forbid African American men get it in their mind to be good role models to the people in their community. Gawd. Who's excluding you? Seriously why is it a problem that someone from the community stands up to work in their community? I don't think I know that community's culture better or can talk more sense to a group of people who wouldn't listen to me otherwise. Or maybe they would, I don't know. But seriously, who complains about that shit, seriously? It blows my mind. And CHILDREN? Children working to make a diff? For children to mentor other children and make connections with people that will probably do more to foster empathy, connectedness, self-efficacy (all characteristics antisocials lack) all while making money in some other way than selling drugs and that's something to complain about? Shit.
I don't see anybody else coming up with anything better than to say to their neighbors "Use your head, knucklehead, or you're gonna end up where you knuckleheads belong".
Except for the people not talking. My guess is that people are doing more than they're letting on.
I suppose it's a question of how high you set the bar for your neighbors. Set it too low and they're unchallenged. Set it too high and they're frustrated.
The State's Attorney for Balto. City is dropping fully half of those cases which were in fact charged. They lay it off on the police department. I'd like to know how many cases had no police witness show up at trial.
http://www.examiner.com/a-178922~_Overwhelmed__city_prosecutors_drop_half_of_criminal_cases.html
News flash: the Patapsco Bank branch on W. 33rd Street just had its door crashed through. The perp fled down an alley off Chestnut Ave. with 5-0 in pursuit.
I kinda like it here. That's why I stay. I live here by choice.
I'm interested in hearing why you continue to live here if you hate Baltimore, "John Galt". Its not like anything is going to change drastically. O'malley will become governor, Dixon will become mayor, and the crime rate will cycle up and down forever.
I mean, if you call your hometown a "f-ed up place", why stay? There are other places to live that have a reasonable cost of living and half-decent job opportunities. Pittsburgh comes to mind. You can sell your house in Baltimore and easily buy a nicer piece of house in Pittsburgh and live happily ever after.
Or are you merely a contrarian who must complain about something in order to feel good?
Oh, ok, then let's just sell drugs and steal from the government, like the rest of Baltimore.
'Get In On It.'
Govt-sponsored crime, that is.
Or, as I suspect you do, I could live in one of our segregated enclaves, so that life can be civilized. Kinda like pre-1965 Montgomery, AL.
Baltimore: a monument to backwardness.
re: the pseud-anonymous john galt.
You sure do talk a lot about things you know nothing about. While in general I think that your analysis of gentrification is somewhat compelling.
But United Workers Association is not a union, they don't ask their members to "withold their labor." In fact, you should probably ask Rush Limbaugh what that even means so you can explain it to me.
You obviously don't know anything about the Algebra Project, so suffice to say nothing you have said about it makes much sense to me. Also, the overpaid "members of the teachers union" (meaning teachers I assume) are paid less than you are, I'm sure and have a much harder job.
and the Alliance of Concerned Men are not some "black face" group fronting for a dancing Al Jolson or something like that. The black men who are members are the groups leadership, make the decisions and have a lot to teach all of us interested in lowering mortality and violence in young black men. The group is what it is and their strategies work.
Simon,
You seem increasingly to be responding ad hominem.
The stated purposes of UWA is to garner higher wages per unit of labor in traditionally low-wage low-skilled service industries. In particular, they seek to mandate that day laborers at Camden Yards be employed by a co-op paying the so-called living wage. Since the demand curve for day labor slopes downward, at a higher wage, fewer workers can be engaged, sidelining labor.
So, by any other name, Simon, it's a frickin' union.
Regarding the Algebra Project, oh Enlightened One, I've almost certainly been teaching Mathematics to innercity kids in this town since before you were born. Algebra Project has done a decent job of getting kids literate, but does so by attaching a great deal of political baggage which is unnecessarily distracting. The three R's work just fine, thank you. Now, as for their lobbying efforts to secure access to decent public schools, I have already expressed my support of that goal. One of the biggest problems in the school system generating inertia is that it is forced to carry the dead weight of a lot of lousy teachers because it is unionized. Fact. The Project organizers have a fundamental conflict of interest in this regard, so that outside analysts are needed to prescribe operational solutions. Recuse away.
Regarding the ACM, I never said anything about Al Jolson, you did. What I object to is the reinforcement of the proposition that young black men cannot avail themselves of means of accessing the mainstream unless they encounter a culturally-specific interface.
A small businesswoman has told me that she learned a lifetime's worth about small business, having been raised in the 'hood all her life, by conversing with her Jewish landlords and learning from what they had to say. She recognized them for what they were, an asset. Were they white? Wealthy? Jewish? Sure. But they were an asset.
One of the failures of Shabazz-style 'empowerment' theories is the emphasis on exclusiion. Access the full range of resources. If young people are not taught to do that, it's the same effect as Separate But Equal.
On that subject, why would we only be interested in "lowering violence and mortality among young black men." ?
It's the same problem as teaching 'mathematics for disadvantaged black people'. It's just math. It has no melanin. Nor politics.
If you intend to make a difference in Public Health contexts, Simon, you must learn to sideline your passions and listen to your analytic mind.
Galt, your analysis is simply wrong.
The Maryland Stadium Authority pays A Lot of money per man hour for cleaners, they just use contractors, subcontractors and temp agencies. The money is already being paid, just not to the workers. If you cut out the temp agencies, there is already money to pay a decent wage and hire more workers.
With regard to the Algebra project, i do not understand your objections besides a ideological objection to unions. I think you need to put that prejudice aside. I also think that the "ideological baggage" you talk about is more like historical context. What other students in Baltimore are teaching others math, analysing the structure of state and local politics, and discussing the legacy of the Freedom Summer?
Are there bad teachers in Baltimore. Surely, but the problems are more structural, if you were a teacher in City public schools, you surely know that.
With regard to the ACM, Al Jolson was a joke about a quote from you about "black face." I agree that work with marginalized communities should integrate the youth from these communities with other groups of people and expose them to the large world outside of Baltimore/the 'hood/etc.
The ACM offer a model that any individual, regardless of race, can follow. But its important to gain the trust of the people you are working with. For most outsiders in the Benning Terraces, it would have been an extremely difficult challenge, but the ACM managed to bridge the gap quickly.
I am certainly interested in lowering moretality and violence in all communities, and I think, while the experience of Alliance of Concerned Men most directly instructs us on how to work with young black men, it offers a lot of valuable lessons for working with other communities.
I emphasized young black men because, this should be no surprise, their mortality in Baltimore City is much higher than the mortality of other demographic groups.
Warning: this is completely off-topic.
Si,
If the Stadium Authority is paying way too much for what it gets (and who would ever imagine that happening in the context of government contracting?), then the solution is for it to pay less, not to take the excessive monies and end-around the contractor. Competitive bidding is how you get there. Solution: open the bidding up to everyone able to bond their work - no setasides. And yes, that would include UWA. If UWA is the (real) low bidder, then god bless: they've joined the ranks of the capitalists. But just forget about compelling the Authority to hire them through political means. That's as wrong for low-wage workers as it is for Sheila Dixon's sister.
I'm a great supporter of teaching critical thinking in American history with a focus on socioeconomic underpinnings of policy. One of my greatest concerns in Baltimore schooling is what a twisted perception of the civil rights movement many of these kids walk away with because insufficient time is dedicated to that turbulent period in our history, so much time being allocated to babysitting distracting kids in classrooms. Many of them have never read source works of Dr. King, Shabazz, or explanations of the split from DuBois.
They should also understand mistakes made in the name of The Struggle, such as the Black Guerilla Family movement. They should read the U.S. Supreme Court Rulings on Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board to understand how institutional thinking has come around, and areas where it may still be stuck in the past. They should understand how Ralph Abernathy led the SCLC to fragmentation and impotence, while stokely Carmichael helped splinter the Students' Nonviolent Coord. Committee into the tragedy of militant black activism, which divided the movement. They should know that Julian Bond was once with SNCC and think of how NAACP and its leadership have been coopted over the years. They should know that A. Philip Randolph was in the trenches at the Pullman Co. when Dr. King was still in diapers (regardless of my personal tastes about unions) and that Freedom Summer was just one season in a long life.
But not in math class. Math is what it is. For tall kids, for short kids. It is internally consistent, which means it does not depend upon context or audience. If something needs to be modified to teach a particularly challenged group of students, it surely must be their teachers, because the content has remained essentially unchanged for thousands of years. To that end, teachers need to be given an environment in which to teach which is largely free of babysitting obligations. When I misbehaved in school, I was unceremoniously dragged out of the classroom by the scruff of my neck. Why? Because everyone else in that room had things to do. Like math.
Yes, of course math is internally consistent as you say, but that does not say anything about the TEACHING of math to school kids. You are conflating mathematics with the teaching of mathematics.
I hope, for the sake of your students, that you do attempt to make some connections to real-world relevancy when you teach math. If not, you will alienate your pupils.
As for the value of the algebra project... more power to them! It engages students in positive things.
How does everything which is not destructive become advisable?
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