Monday, May 21, 2007

May 21

On Friday the Baltimore City Grand Jury indicted Nicholas Brunson, 20, of the 2600 block of W. Cold Spring Lane on charges of first-degree murder, deadly weapon and first-degree arson. Court documents allege on April 12, 2007 Nicholas Brunson was identified as the suspect in the murder and arson incident. The body of an unknown male, later identified as 16-year-old Brent Flanagan, was found beaten, stabbed and body partially dismembered in a house fire in the 2600 block of W. Cold Spring Lane. It is alleged the two had an altercation during the morning hours that later escalated to the incident. It is also alleged both Flanagan and Brunson are "Bloods" gang members.

A 16-year-old girl is being sought for stabbing another girl in the gut on E. Chase Street, a dognapping, a carjacking and an attempted murder arrest in the Blotter.

Alvin Parson died nine days after he was run down by a van driven by two men with whom he was arguing.

The end of an era: beaten, stabbed socialist A. Robert Kaufman is moving out of Walbrook to a condo complex with a pool.

Examiner: "High police overtime doesn't surprise O'Malley"
Meanwhile "brutal" Detective Albert "Mad Dog" Marcus claimed incredible 3,695 overtime hours last year, the equivalent of working 18-22 hours a day.
Says Hamm, "Publishing the names and salaries of every member of the Baltimore Police Department — as The Examiner did two days ago — is perhaps the most irresponsible, ill-informed and mean-spirited act that I have ever known a news organization to commit," and accuses the paper of compromising "dozens of undercover officers."

AAC kids steal car, crash it into house.

Three AAC twentysomethings, Thomas Sparacino, Randy Garner and Brittney Pheobus, were arrested for a drive-by shooting in Friendship (the intended victim wasn't hurt). When police went to arrest the trio they also found firearms, including an assault rifle, and child pornography.

Marilyn St. Louis Walkes apparently thought "taking care of a developmentally disabled woman" meant stealing her money.

Baltimore County thieves are breaking into garages and stealing dirt bikes.

Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant wants murderers and gang members to stop sinning.

Three people were shot outside a community center in Frederick County.

Eazy-E Op-Ed: "no one [in city government] understands the real needs of each [city] department. It allows lazy planning and makes it easy to hide waste and fraud."

worst. visual. ever.An autopsy will be performed on a Chesapeake Bay floater found by a boater, and JZ illustrates the story with a visual of ... the shadow of a giant gingerbread man looming over a mountain, of course!

21 comments:

John Galt said...

Lenny Hamm acknowledges that he offers inadequate pay to attract police cadets.

burgersub said...

so this guy that got run over by a van, is this going to be a murder? sounds a lot like what happened to that erdman guy.

Maurice Bradbury said...

I was going to say, I added him, but now I'm wondering, I think vehicular homicide might not be counted, even if it was a totally intentionall mowdown. I dunno, what do you and Chuck think?

burgersub said...

sometimes it does count. charles erdman counted and kurt fulp in 2005 counted. i guess we'll just have to wait and see if any more articles pop up saying they've declared it a murder.

taotechuck said...

I've seen vehicular charges go both ways, but this sounds like it'd go towards the homicide count. I agree that we should wait and see how it's charged. The article in the paper said that the people in the van were only given citations, but I assume that will change now that the victim died.

burgersub said...

or i guess you could call the police department and just ask them. they took kind of a lot of flack for waiting so long after mr. erdman's death before giving the case to homicide, so maybe they'll be more on the ball this time.

John Galt said...

Readers:

New York City now has about 140 homicides for the year-to-date, versus Baltimore's 115. About the same.

Of course, New York City has 13 times our population. And 15 times our police manpower.

Nice to know Baltimore's pre-eminent in something.

John Galt said...

Well, it seems that the case of Dontrelle Nesmith (#96) has been closed by the Medical Examiner as undetermined manner.

If you recall, she was found alongside the boyfriend she'd been trying to get away from. He was declared a suicide.

And so it will stand, apparently.

I assume that means the BCPD won't be investigating, either.

A bad place to die, this is.

John Galt said...

And speaking of cold cases, the murder of Antonio Gilmore, the manager of the Blockbuster (across the street from the Waverly Giant), which is now closed up since the shooting, appears to be in police limbo, in spite of the fact that his brother is a cop. It seems either no one saw or no one will speak. I was standing about 100 feet away shopping inside the Giant about the time it was happening.

Again, a very bad place to die.

Gor said...

At a minimum, he should be charged with;

§ 2-209. Manslaughter by vehicle or vessel.

(a) "Vehicle" defined.- In this section , "vehicle" includes a motor vehicle ...,
(b) Prohibited.- A person may not cause the death of another as a result of the person's driving, operating, or controlling a vehicle or vessel in a grossly negligent manner.
(d) Penalty.- A person who ...is guilty ... is subject to imprisonment not exceeding 10 years ...


Also, compared to New York, does that mean we are 500 officers short to be on par with them and not just the 200 officers I've been hearing about?

John Galt said...

The city council sets an authorized manpower level in its budget. That number, which means little to criminal justice folks, is a fiscal authorization only. We have been about 200 full-time sworn officers below that level of 3,200 for some time. At present we are below 2,900.

If our manpower bore proportion to our share of national homicides, we'd have about 7,500.

I think a good figure would be to hire up to 6,000, and then whittle down the total to 5,600-5,800 by eliminating some of the dead wood, such as Jemini Jones. This is his route right past my store, eluding police with an unauthorized handgun.

Here can be found the time-series of actual manpower levels over the last 12 years.

The way manpower should be set is according to the number of free criminals at loose needing supervision, which in Baltimore is tremendous. Think of it as a student-to-teacher ratio. On that basis, we're way, way, way behind New York. They have like 45,000 cops, you see.

Gor said...

Thanks galt, where can I find the actual figures? I'm compiling a data base and am looking for those man-power numbers.

Maurice Bradbury said...

ooh, a database? What kind?

Gor said...

Well, I have one of murder rates for 2007 (current and projected) for Maryland (all the counties & Baltimore) and DC, based on population with cross references of the school spending, public libraries, and such. (I update every couple of days, using your's and burgersub's numbers).

But the one I am trying to build is based on the FBI data and major US cities. I like reseaching and building spreadsheets and my current job gives me plenty of time ro do both.

Is there anything you're looking for?

John Galt said...

Use FBI UCR city-level data for incidents and personnel data and LEMAS data for agencies. Caution: some agencies have different boundaries than their cities. ie. Memphis and Shelby County

A useful spreadsheet is to scatterplot the crime incidence vs. sworn officers for the top 30 or so cities. You'll find that Baltimore & Detroit are kinda out there on their own, while New York is way on the other side of the centerline, X=Y.

What you'd really want to see is offender counts, but since different cities are generally in different states, which are sovereign lawmaking entities, their definitions of 'offender' differ according to statute. Further, many aggregate correctional data other than according to city boundaries, so you have to kinda wing it.

Maurice Bradbury said...

I don't mean to poop on your parade, but we don't lack numbers and databases, it's not a puzzle, it's a mystery.

Shezis, as I was typing there's kids in big white t-shirts outside my window going down the block and peering in car windows and trying locks, carrying what looked like a wire bike lock (but was, I realized as I hung up, probably some kind of hot-wiring cable business). Called 911 at 12:54 to report le "suspicious activity", let's see how long it takes till I hear those spark-knockin' 'merican engines come over the hill... tick tick...

Ah 12:57, there go two cars. 12:59, one of the cars (#359) just drove back the other direction.
1:05, there s/he goes by again for a third time. Why am I seemingly the only person in the city who has seen nothing but amazing attentiveness from the police? ... 1:08, car 359 just drove by again for the fourth time.

Anyhoo, the numbers I would want would be based on new information. Like I was thinking the other day we have thousands of female prisoners and the state supplies them everything, so I was like, wow, I wonder how much the state of Maryland spends on bras and Tampax?

Holy crap, 1:13, the car just drove by for the fifth time! I guess they scared off the little bastards.

John Galt said...

Geez, where do you live ? That's maybe a week's worth of patrols where I am.

burgersub said...

yeah but don't you live in like roland park? (or one of those little neighborhoods that's basically surrounded by roland park?) :)

John Galt said...

Um, you mean the Greenmount corridor where the guys were shot on 27th & 29th streets last week? Yeah, that part of Roland Park.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Donchew wish yer districh was hawt like mine,
Dochew wish yer district had cops like mine... donchew... donchew, baby?!

burgersub said...

omg galt, maybe i didn't explicitly say that i was directing the roland park comment to cybrarian and not you, but from reading it and knowing that i actually do have some idea where stuff is in baltimore you should have been able to figure it out. persecution complex much?