August 8

Two more murders overnight, both as-yet-unid'd men. The first shooting occurred about 11:15 p.m. in the 1400 block of N. Milton Ave., and the man was pronounced dead at 11:30. The other man died 15 minutes later in the 2300 block of E. Oliver St.
(Thanks M!)

The Ink has 13 murders from July 23 - August 5, plus updates, and Anna says it's "Lorado" and he died on Saturday the 4th on Lombard Street.

Bennie Fullard, 49, was the man arrested Monday for stabbing his girlfriend in Woodlawn after his family turned him in. This morning he waived his right to seek bail. Also, "a man with the same name and born in the same year as Fullard has at least three previous convictions."
That's one wacky coincidence!

Murder victim Eric Ford was id'd as the man killed in the 3400 block of Baltimore street, and four shootings in the Blotter:

• a man walking in the rear of the 4100 block of Stokes Drive about 1:30 a.m. yesterday and gunman shot him in the left arm, - a person fired several shots outside a bar in the 800 block of W. Cross St. about 2 a.m. Sunday, and one of them grazed a guy's left eye ,


• Darrell Smith, 22, whose address was not released, remained in critical condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after he was shot in the back of the neck about 4 p.m. Monday in the 300 block of E. 21st St. (this item also appeared yesterday),


• and in Towson a man was shot in a leg during "an incident" in a house in the 1300 block of Dartmouth Ave. about 7:40 p.m. yesterday.

The Marcus Brown pension scandal isn't finished yet ... the president of Baltimore's FOP Lodge 3, said that the union has authorized its law firm to explore the possibility of suing the city and the Police Department.

Thank you Luke Broadwater for putting "boyfriend" in quotes there...
if a guy slaughters you in cold blood (all together now ladies) he's just not that into you.
Wow, only 24 homicides in all of Baltimore County so far this year.

How did Kenneth Barnes become the Roland Park pervert? Or is he a misunderstood psychotic? The CP's Chris Landers investigates.
ps. have you noticed there have been almost no perverts reported in a few weeks, after months of having like, two a day?
They must've caught them all...

Fascinating! Freakonomics.com has a Q&A with Sudhir Venkatesh, the then grad-student in the book who studied Chicago gangs. (Turns out they love "The Wire" but not the crack)
Venkatesh makes the excellent points that anti-gang laws are usually racist, won't stand up in court, and too vague to be of any use.
Cases in point, head of the county’s gang-suppression unit Cpl. Thomas Gamble, who says gang indentity is all about "clothes," and the HarfCo elementary-school boy who threw a sign in the class picture.

Speaking of "The Wire," bad news for wannabe Marlos and goatherds: a new City rule allows residents to keep no more than 125 pigeons as pets. And, "you need three acres to have goats, sheep ponies and pigs."
What kind of twisted mutant is a sheep pony?!

Politics: Dixon knows the less she says the better! She's letting her $2 million anti-trash tagline* do the talking and simply not showing up to candidate forums, citing schedule conflicts. But there will be at least one televised debate. We'll have to find a bar with a giant TV for that experience!
*That would be, "Don't make excuses. Make a difference." Said Celeste Amato, the coordinator of the Clean Out Baltimore initiative, "the underlying message is about personal responsibility."

The Sun election blog recaps the Dixon sweetheart-contracts scandal.
Did you know? Not only did her sister work for Utech, a company awarded city contracts against ethics rules, but "the city found, after The Sun's reports, that the company did not have the capacity to perform the public work it was winning."
She also employed "creative" work orders to keep from having to report that she gave her campaign chairman's company half a million bucks! No wonder she didn't want to say anything harsh about the Brown Schammdal!