Tuesday, July 3, 2007

July 3

Lots of murder news in the city:
  • Two men were shot yesterday afternoon in the 2000 block of Guilford Ave. in Barclay, just up the street from the public school headquarters. 39-year-old Allen Burton died from his wounds at Shock Trauma shortly after the shooting.
  • 30-year-old Nathaniel Price was reported missing on Saturday; his body was found in the back of his 2007 Jeep yesterday in the 4900 block of Greencrest Rd. in the Northeastern.
  • The unidentified body found in a garbage bag behind a rowhouse in the 1500 block of Bond St. had a gunshot wound to the upper torso, and has been declared a homicide.
  • Davon Turner was the man who was murdered Sunday in the 800 block of N. Patterson Park Ave.
  • Gerald Smith was shot to death behind the wheel of his idling car in the 4800 block of Herring Run Dr.
  • Jewels Cook was the man whose body was found last week in the 2300 block of Cylburn Ave, near the Cylburn Arboretum.


Hey, all you Baltimore County people, you've got a few also:
  • A 38-year-old man was fatally shot in the 8000 block of Philadelphia Rd. in Rosedale last night at about 9:00. He was the 21st murder victim in the county this year.
  • 23-year-old Taavon Chambers was the man who was shot to death in the parking lot of the Windsor Inn in Woodlawn just after closing time on Monday morning (or Sunday morning, according to the Sun). Chambers was the nephew of a Baltimore County police officer, and did not appear to know his attacker.


13-year-old Briona Jasmine Porter died after being shot during a robbery attempt of her mother's new ice cream truck.

The family of murder victim and alleged rim stealer Joseph Johnson claims that he and Charles Brockington have had disputes in the past.

Luke Broadwater's monthly recap in the Examiner focuses on Marine reservist Michael Simms, and gives us a few fun facts: Every police district in the city has had at least nine murders; police have closed 48 of this year's 151 homicides; our population is apathetic towards violent crime; and a pastor on Edmonson Ave. is preaching on the street outside her church to try to stem the flow of blood.

David Lee Miller, the alleged murderer of Elizabeth Walters and their unborn child, will face first-degree murder charges for the fetus' death.

There were four shootings in two separate incidents in AAC over the weekend. (Actually, the article lists five victims, but the headline says four. Go figure.)

Fascinating evidence that MO'M and his zero-tolerance approach might not have been as effective as the former mayor claimed.

There's a good article on BPD foot patrols in the Sun that poses questions and observations like "Is it (the foot patrols) going to be sustained?" and "How this will prevent violent crime ... isn't readily apparent. But then, preventive measures rarely are dramatic or immediate."

Accusations of excessive force were made against officer James Wilder of the BPD for his behavior at the scene of an accident on 39th St. and N. Charles St.

Kenneth Pinckney was charged with first- and second-degree assault for stabbing a man who was talking to Pinckney's wife at the Deutsches Gasthaus in Aberdeen.

A porn shop in Aberdeen was burned on Sunday morning.

As of yesterday, felons who have completed their sentences can vote in Maryland.

Guardian Angels will begin training Edgewood residents within the next few weeks.

Someone stole a banner from a PFLAG booth at the Columbia City Fair last weekend.

Lawrence Williams stole Viagra from the military and sold it for his own profit.

Rats have infested the playground at the old Memorial Stadium site in Waverly. (Okay, so it's not a crime, but it's really gross.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your accusation on excessive use of force link goes to an empty page.

John Galt said...

Regarding the correlation between arrests and homicide, several observations:

You should first eliminate all unchargeable arrests - they're just crap, not zero tolerance.


You should also eliminate the approximate percentage each year which were charged, but null prossed because they were crap. (see above regarding crap)

Valid, chargeable low-level arrests are known to reduce property crime foremost, if you do it properly. But incarcerations do have the effect of whittling down the number of total felons (including violent ones guilty of nonviolent offenses) on the street.

That cuts the criminal:police ratio, which permits greater attention by cops, which will cut homicide over time.

So you cannot compare 2006 homicide with 2006 arrests. It's what we call an autoregression, with lagged dependence on state variables. But you cannot just compare the graphs in a given year.

You also must fairly correctly specify the determinants of crime. The aging of the population and (arguably) even the availabiity of abortion to low-income mothers turn out to have a good deal of explanatory power, which surprises many in the field.

Zero tolerance worked well in the 90's in places where they actually wanted to inhibit crime. Sheila Dixon only seems to want to inhibit the very most politically-embarrasing crime. All the rest, it seems, is OK by her, which is basically contrary to statute. (Don't let that stop you, Baltimore.)

Please dont judge zero-tolerance by Baltimore's moronic implementation.

The best quote of the article:

“We can’t just enforce, enforce, enforce,” [Hamm] said.

Clearly, because you don't, dont, don't. And you haven't in earnest even tried, tried, tried.

Thought: if the job of the police is to enforce; and the Commissioner states publicly he cannot/will not, then why is he not mandatorily fired ???

John Galt said...

A more indicative summary measure would be to compare the number of active, supervised Parole & Probaton cases(offenders) on the streets in a given year (which reflects attrition both through rearrest incarceration and through departure from criminal enterprise) with measures of a) violent crime and b) property crime for that year. You will probably see a time-lagged but obvious correlation.

Anonymous said...

thanks for fixing the link.

taotechuck said...

Anon,
Thanks for the heads-up on the link. The fixed version adds info about a Washington cop who claims he was harassed by Officer Wilder around the same time as the incident on N. Charles.

Gor said...

Sara I. Milstein, the local YMCA's chief marketing officer "...We're not going to expose children to an unsafe environment."

Then what are they doing here in Baltimore?