Wednesday, January 3, 2007

January 3

The County's first murder was the fatal stabbing of 48-year old Arthur G. Brown Jr. in Landsdowne.

Got a babydaddy in jail and want to show off his mug shot? There's a place on the "Prison Talk" forum.

And ANOTHER shooting: a juvenile shot in the head on Belnord Avenue near Patterson Park in the southeastern has died (homicde number four).
1. Leon Nelson, 17, China Garden
2. Man, early 20's at Windsor Forest apt. complex, 4900 Challedon Road
3. Woman in 2000 W. North Avenue Rowhouse (see link above)
4. Another 17-year-old on Belnord, SE

A man shot in April who died in November became 2006's homicide #275 (and police still haven't called his family).
Two-seventy-five for the City, 350 for the Metro Area in '06-- such tidy numbers!

Dick Irwin reports on the juvenile shot in the head and also an unID'd man in the Eastern shot in the chest. And a carjacking in the Central, and lots of theft.

The 20-year-old man found shot dead in the Edgewood flowerbed was ID'd as Walter Antonio Overton.

Hamm: let's spend state $ treating cracky.

Your tax $ at work: An ongoing ACLU lawsuit against the city and the federal government on behalf of black public-housing residents has cost the city $6.6 million so far.

Harold Singfield Jr., 22, got a new trial when a judge ruled another judge should have asked potential jurors if they could be fair. Why this warrants a whole story is beyond me. I guess procedural slip-ups like that are usually frosted over, but this time an appeals judge put his foot down?
Update: Wrote someone from Luke Broadwater's mailbox,
There's a growing amount of case law that says judges must ask jurors direct questions about certain types of cases to determine whether the very nature of those cases elicit strong feelings, thereby resulting in bias.

Maybe it's only an interesting story to me -- I don't know. But, at least to some degree, I think it illustrates the difficulty prosecutors face in successfully convicting accused murderers.

Gregory Kane reveals that his cousin, Uncle George Floyd's boy Louis, was a bit of a black sheep; advocates "good" prisoners beating down the "dangerous" ones.
Er, wouldn't that make the good prisoners into dangerous ones by definition?

Hate those hit-and-run drivers! Eg. Jason Dehn, 24, who drunkenly killed two dialysis patients.

Phony $20s are showing up in Somerset County (sub req.).

"Meet the New Boss"-- CP has a Q & A with Ms. Dixon.
On Crime:
"I'm not making any bold promises as relates to a number [of murders] and reducing crime. What I want to see is that the State's Attorney's office and the police department have a better working relationship."
About as modest a goal as it gets, as it's all uphill from here!

A hypothetical question to Mrs. J and the BPD:
"Are we all in the business for reducing crime? ... what is it going to take from your department and what is it going to take from the police department? We need to have a frank, honest conversation, because there are weaknesses on both sides."
On fingers:
"Instead of pointing the fingers, recognizing that and really asking--like at the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council I asked that question, as City Council president. I ask that every time I go to the meeting, to the judges and parole and probation office, the governor's office, etc. I ask: Are we really in this to reduce crime or are we just here because of your titles and it's a job? Because that's kind of the sense I have from some of the individuals who serve."
But she's not pointing any fingers!
Meet the New Old Status Quo!
(Wonder whappened to that Urban Blight project of hers?)

Dan Rodricks' column reminds me of a lady I saw wailing on her kid at the mall, screaming, "you know better than to hit your brother!"
Like it would help anything to try to have a parenting discussion with a bitch crazy enough to take toddlers to the mall!
(How should a concerned citizen handle the public-child-abuse spectacle? WWJM*D?
(*Judith Martin)

16 comments:

John Galt said...

We're Number One!



Yeah, and this town's a big ol' pile of Number Two.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Now, now, no name-calling! This is our town, so you're calling yourself and all of us poo flies. That's not nice talk, that's naughty talk. Why don't you take a few quiet minutes to think about why it's not nice to call names?

Anonymous said...

Tell mommy when you're ready to come use kind and respectful language with your friends...

So what did you think of that "Where is the Outrage?" Op-Ed?

burgersub said...

fuck that urban blight project. i really love all the old architecture in this town and am sick of everybody always wanting to tear down everything. i mean, if it's an abandoned public housing project that was built in the 60's and looks like a military barracks then fine, but turn of the century rowhouses are awesome and beautiful. sure, a lot of them are so run down that it might be cheaper to tear them down and start over, in which case we should be trying to encourage all the rich people that are supposedly moving here to get in on some cheap property and spend their money sprucing it up instead of buying a half a million dollar condo on the 15th floor of some piece of shit high rise. that ain't going to happen until the crime goes down though. everything is always intertwined with the crime.

Maurice Bradbury said...

No doubt why developers are the biggest political contributors in the city and the state, to both Republicans and Democrats.

Developers get the state to give them tax breaks to tear old stuff down and build new buildings, then they get tax breaks when the property depreciates, then they sell and get out of town. Like that guy who built Belvedere Square.

John Galt said...

Think about the logic of the high rises:

maximize private space relative to public space to which it's exposed


What characterizes the successful low-rise urban village? The public space you have to go through to get to it is safe, and thereby becomes a great asset, rather than a liability.

But Nnnnnnnnnnoooooooooo.

Baltimore City government doesn't really believe in using tax money for public purposes. (I know that sounds insane, but think about it. It's true.) Instead it subsidizes private projects and hands out fundamentally private consumption goods.

The hoodlums have fairly successfully been chased out of Baltimore A downtown and into our B neighborhoods. Meanwhile we get to live in Baltimore B with well over six times the per capita homicides and six times the unchargeable arrest rate of New York.

Anonymous said...

Hey D's... this is waaay off topic but I need you to contact me I lost your email. I have a friend who I wrote about on my blog who was stabbed in central booking due to a CO popping the cell and letting other inmates in after lockdown... he needs a lawyer for this, and the CO is locked up now but they are trying to keep it hush hush.... tell me if you know what he should do next.

Sorry if TMI D's

Maurice Bradbury said...

"Instead it subsidizes private projects and hands out fundamentally private consumption goods."

Very GOP, for a Democratic city!

Maurice Bradbury said...

I tried to but it bounced back... write me at marciej@verizon.net.
Yeah I know a few lawyers...

Anonymous said...

Thanks...I'll be sending it shortly

John Galt said...

Sis, if he doesn't already have an attorney from his trial, you might stop in at Prisoners' Aid on 25th and maybe Calvert or Guilford.

Anonymous said...

Well he has/had a lawyer for his case, but I was told, and maybe incorrectly, that because it was an offense inside of the jail , only certain lawyers would handle the case.Maybe I was misinformed but I want to make sure they "Pay what they owe" as Riley on the Boondocks would say

ppatin said...

Pristontalk is a great forum to go to if you want to vomit. They have such wonderful sections as "loving a violent offender" and "loving a sex offender." What is wrong with those women?

Maurice Bradbury said...

There's a forum for everyone on the Internets... there's even a crime blogging forum!

John Galt said...

I suspect you will find that the available relief is injunctive, rather than compensatory, in nature. To find a CO liable for the violent misconduct of an inmate would generally require evidence of substantive collaboration, rather than just contributory negligence. MD courts have previously recognized that correctional facilities contain inherently hazardous populations and therefore limited the responsibility of correctional employees. There are usually videotapes of common areas. From your understanding, would the tape demonstrate some extraordinary conduct on the part of some CO?

Anonymous said...

Hammbone turned legislator... I'll support his work in making bills when he does a halfway decent job running the police here.

I was worried that I would lose out on a city based nemesis with O'Moron leaving... how wrong I was. Who do you think O'Malley will support for his state police superintendent?