Monday, October 15, 2007

Crime Farther Afield

Sad to hear about the possible murder of Dean Johnson of Dean & the Weenies fame in NY.
Here he is below singing one of the most brilliant songs of all time.



Also in the news... drunk Frednecks steal oversize keys

49 comments:

ppatin said...

A drive-by shooting in Northwest Baltimore killed a man and injured a pregnant woman yesterday evening.

BmoreCareful said...

shooting a women whos 9 month pregnant? wtf is goin on...anyone got crime statistics for the wabash/liberty heights section bmore city/county..thinkn of moving out there

ppatin said...

Two of the things that attacked Zach Sowers have a court hearing today to try to get their cases transferred to juvenile court. I'm not going to say what I think should be done to any judge who would even consider granting that motion...

Anonymous said...

I remember seeing Dean and the Weenies circa mid-'80s in some movie about NY's underground scene... what a disturbing way to go. Thanks for the link!

burgersub said...

what the hell is the wabash/liberty heights section? that's like a huge swath of the city. and you want data for the county, too?

that general area is mostly black, mostly single family homes, mostly well-kept, not much in the way of businesses and stuff to walk to if you like that sort of thing. i don't live there so i can't speak too definitively on crime, but it doesn't seem that bad. but again, you're talking about multiple neighborhoods that all have differences.

burgersub said...

the sun's P.O.S. murder map says we're at 238 but even including the ones over the weekend that have been reported i only have 237. and the map itself isn't helpful because, as it says at the bottom, "data current through october 6th." jerks can't even rip off my idea competently. anyhow, does anybody know of an extra murder recently that hasn't been reported anywhere yet?

VSGsD said...

burgersub, sorry i can't help find the addn murder but if you wait a few days i am confident one will turn up

BTW, what is the rationale for suspending sentences? Do we not have enough prison space?

Anonymous said...

I don't understand how anyone would allow their child to go to Hopkins. I read the JHU security alerts and it seems as if almost every other day at least, there is another incident in Charles Village of three or four males, age 14 to 20, attacking a Hopkins student, punching and kicking them, and stealing something from them. At Hopkins' competition (Ivy League and such), it is unlikely that there are even one or two muggings a YEAR. What the hell is going on?

John Galt said...

You don't seem to understand.

Baltimore City is the prison space.

There are 33,000 active, supervised parole & probation cases running around on the loose here. And that excludes all the juvies, PBJs, and null prossed items which would be prosecuted anywhere else.

That's a lotta criminals.

burgersub said...

oooh scary charles village!

Anonymous said...

Well, uh, yeah, unless you're moving here from Mexico City or Sao Paulo, I DO consider a "neighborhood" where innocent people are attacked by thugs on a daily basis, where a woman is stabbed almost to death on a sunny afternoon while carrying her groceries, where another woman is abducted in broad daylight and forced at gunpoint to empty her bank account, where cars are broken into over and over again, well, yeah, I would call that scary. Oh, but St.Paul Street has real pretty pastel colored houses. I forgot.

burgersub said...

thanks for actually typing out the sound "uh" in that post, i really love being condescended to. i have a feeling that a lot of hopkins kids and yuppie gentrifiers seem to be constantly under attack by people in this city, whereas i somehow never seem to have any major problems, because they act in some way that makes people want to take them down a peg. not that i'm excusing criminal behavior.

John Galt said...

Burg,

This kinda stuff is not mainstream America.

It's nasty.

Maybe not as nasty as Berea/Clifton, but that place should be cordoned off and Martial Law imposed.

And I do notice that you've chosen to live in lower-crime Hampden, right?

Crime victimization is a funny thing: it never really seems to shake you up much vicariously and it's easy to lay off on 'people who don't know how to live in the city'. But once it happens to you up close and personal, your view changes a great deal. Being stabbed with impunity at random has changed me.

I probably cannot convince you. You'll just have to see when violence happens to you.

BmoreCareful said...

Yea maybe i wasnt too clear...well the place im thinkn about moving to is directly next to the North West Plaza, which is off of wabash..couple light before u get to northern prkwy...the reason i brought up liberty heights is b/c that is main road to the right of the house..liberty heights and wabash are connected by patterson avenue..anyways thanks for the info, i was asking b/c liberty heights is real "shady" at night time even though its the county and wabash is the city so we kno how that goes...thanks again burger.

burgersub said...

i moved to hampden because it was cheaper and more of my friends live there.

maybe you're right that i will change my tune once something really bad finally happens to me. but why hasn't something really bad happened to me yet? am i just extraordinarily lucky or am i doing something fundamentally different than the jamietabbs and the craigslist comment guy that was spouting off about hampden back when the golden west murder rumor was going around? those kinds of people make it seem like somebody makes them fear for their lives every single day.

burgersub said...

is northwest plaza the same thing as reisterstown road plaza? if so, i wouldn't move there just because traffic around there is a nightmare, and it's really far away from every place i ever go with any frequency. they do have a taco bell/kfc combo restaurant directly next door to a long john silver's/A&W combo restaurant though, so that's a plus.

ppatin said...

"I don't understand how anyone would allow their child to go to Hopkins."

Maybe because they aren't paranoid and don't let fear rule their lives. I went to Hopkins for four years, and lived in the area for two more years after graduation. Of all my close friends not one of us was a crime victim during that time. Does the area around Hopkins have problems? Absolutely, however this is Baltimore not Baghdad, and with a little bit of common sense and care there's no need to feel threatened.

burgersub said...

see even ppatin agrees with me on this one!

John Galt said...

bmore:

try this map. It's the latest 60-day period, just to give you an idea.

BmoreCareful said...

hahah yea burger now your talking! i know exactlty where the KFC and the A&W root beer place is!!! although ill probably still move there b/c lets face it, its probably as safe as ill get living in Bmore...with that being said it definantly doesnt look safe at night but where in Bmore does? its sad what we have to go through, but atleast we can say we can mostly likely survive in any other city if we've survived in bmore....About the HOPKINS issue....yea if i was a student there i would stay my ass on campus...these students coming from out of town and other counties in Maryland are CLUELESS to how dangerous Bmore is! so are there parents..that school should have cerfews or somthing, im surprised more havent been shot down (they would be but the drug dealers wouldnt want the cop heat..sad but true, dead students bring cop heat, unless of course you go to morgan state like the kid on Cold Spring)....and to PPALT...yea Bmore is not baghdad..but more americans die there then in baghdad, like the 30 murders in May..cmon lets face it Bmore is the most dangerous city in the USA, thats saying something.

burgersub said...

it's definitely not as safe as it'll get in the city, but to get safer you'd probably have to spend a lot more.

i am absolutely not convinced that charles village is any more dangerous than university city in philly, mt. pleasant/adams morgan in DC, any of the 50 recently-gentrified neighborhoods in brooklyn, etc. baltimore is the most dangerous city in the country because of places like carrollton ridge and sandtown, not charles village.

ppatin said...

Bmorecareful:

You are correct that Baltimore is a relatively dangerous city, however the level of danger varies greatly depending on your lifestyle, where you live, and how well you take care of yourself. The risk of being a crime victim here will always be greater than in say, rural Vermont, but with a bit of sense it isn't that bad. I might get murdered tonight, but I might also die in a car crash on my way home from work today. Be smart, use common sense & take care of yourself, but don't let fear and paranoia dictate your every move.

You are of course correct that a lot of JHU students are clueless about taking care of themselves. Remember the Chris Elser murder? The frat house where that took place had a f***ing unlucked door! How much more careless can you get! A curfew is a silly and over the top idea though. It's a university, not an elementary school, and students should be responsible for taking care of themselves.

ppatin said...

Burger:

I suspect there is a lot of property crime in Charles Village (that term describes a pretty big area anyways, some parts of which are much safer than others) because there are too many students with too much money and too little common sense. Stop walking around alone at night while listening to a friggin iPod guys!

burgersub said...

well, the rumor about the chris elser murder is that the frat hired one or more hookers that night, used their services, and refused to pay them, causing a knife-wielding pimp to come looking for retribution. no idea if there's any truth to that at all.

John Galt said...

Guys, I'd lived in North Charles Village for years and years spanning three decades. When you live in university housing, or near university facilities, you are under the protective umbrella.

The university now (after the Trinh murder) spends big time bucks protecting students outside of campus, because the crime in Charles Village is uncontrolled and the City seems helpless. So Hopkins stepped up.

Criminals understand that the likelihood of being caught & convicted in Circuit Court of a violent crime goes up monumentally if a Hopkins kid is involved. Then again, some don't think very much.

But that's only under the umbrella, which extends as far east as Calvert and as far south as maybe 29th. The rest of Charles Village is fair game.

When you move out of the university-affiliated apartments just off-campus into a rowhouse/apt. on like Guilford & 29th, everything changes. Crime becomes a high risk. And a serious one. Violence is not a guarantee; it's a matter of probability, particularly after sunset.

If you scurry home and scurry out, you minimize you time in public, so not that much happens. But that's not living, is it? If you walk a dog or perambulate the neighborhood regularly, you'll likely have a bad experience or two. Doing so at 2:00 a.m. is just tempting fate, I suppose, but in a decently-policed city it shouldn't be a death sentence, either.

Charles Village is not so high-violence, but it is quite high in property crime, even for victims who lock their doors, stash their i-pods, etc. For systemic violence you'd need to head about two blocks further in an easterly or southerly direction.

Two blocks shouldn't give you much of a sense of security. That kinda margin can vanish pretty quickly, as Charles Villagers found out the last time we went into a real estate crash.

And it's coming again, so brace yourselves.

BmoreCareful said...

yea maybe a cerfew is silly...and ure right about the frat house...i guess im just thinking of an alternative to calling 911, since that doesnt work...But at the same time there is a difference between paranoia and fear of what might happen and fear of what WILL happen if you keep playing the odds...hey if your a student and you wanna live "close to campus" as in "the hood" then your a dumbass lets be honest, if you cant tell your surroundings then your a sitting duck..shit after dark you better stay inside or face the 15yr old serial killers that roam, and yes you better believe theres 15 yr old serial killers roaming

i have never been to Charles Village, but I recently relocated from DC and i can tell you Adams Morgan is a pretty decent place, you have the occasional mugging outside the bars but its not what i would call a "dangerous" place, and I wouldnt know what to compare it with since i have not seen Charles Village..but if there more a couple murders a month there then it is much worse then adams morgan..the difference between DC and Baltimore is that the "good and bad" areas of baltimore are wayyyy to close to eachother,where as in DC you have the good area, and you have to actually travel to the bad area, unlike Bmore where its right around the corner.

John Galt said...

Here's a result in the wheel-rim thief's murder. I don't buy it. An accidental discharge that just happened to hit him on-target in the head ?? They pled it down because they didn't want to make their case before a sympatheic Baltimore jury.

John Galt said...

Adams-Morgan is traditionally one of the most heavily-patrolled areas in D.C. That's how it's kept peaceful and low-crime. The crime there is largely larcenous, rather than armed robbery.

Baltimore simply refuses to provide the necessary & essential services it takes to be a major city. So it sucks. It has nothing to do with difficulty hiring; they've been underpoliced for well over a decade. That's not an oops. It's a choice.

Baltimore City chooses to be the most dangerous city in the U.S., diverting its fiscal resources to handout programs instead of bread-and-butter public services. And it does successfully get these morons into public office, who would never be qualified in any decent city. So, for them, #1 in murder works.

ppatin said...

Galt:

It doesn't help that the victim was also obviously a criminal. Still, five years seems very light. The guy was a felon in posession of a firearm! That alone should get him five years even if he hadn't killed anyone!

Burger:

I had never heard the Chris Elser/angry pimp rumor before. It seems like it would have gotten out if SAE was hiring prostitutes at paties though, unless I am really clueless and naive.

John Galt said...

It's a pretty intuitive relationship. I post it once again from a study of mid-sized U.S. cities.

BmoreCareful said...

haha he accidently shoots the guy in the head..hey and it was on Wabash! nice...home sweet home..i guess operation exile isnt in affect anymore..and i hate to say it but the town needs Gulliani! 10 yrs for a couple heroin capsule will get the point across (yes i know that its not the answer but hey what is??)...

Anonymous said...

Hopkins students are fortunate to be provided with timely information from the school about campus crime. This is not the case at all schools (although after Virginia Tech, I think many schools probably made crime bulletins to students a priority).
As far as I know Princeton is not located in Camden and Harvard is not in Roxbury. Hopkins may have a national rep for being comparable to an Ivy League school, but I don't think there has ever been a perception that Baltimore is a safe city (particularly before 1980). I don't think the outrageous crime rate in Baltimore is OK by any means, but prospective students for any of Baltimore's urban campuses need to consider the realities of city living before moving here.

John Galt said...

While understood to be a city with urban problems, Baltimore's Charles Village of 1980 was nothing like it is now in terms of safety. It was more akin to today's Towson. Crime (other than petty stuff) was quite unusual and when it occurred, people took notice.

Nowadays, you hear much more about how "since it didn't happen to me, it must have been someone's own fault." The privatization of public offenses.

VSGsD said...

5 years for murder seems to be the going rate.

I have also noticed the way suspended sentences get reported, sort of under the newscasters breath....THIRTY YEARS whisper all but 25 suspended. What a joke!

BmoreCareful said...

im startn to think its a better idea to get a gun license and carry it even though ure not supposed to carry it, b/c ide rather explain why i had it then get shot for not having it..and also, with all these felons with gun charges in their past escaping imprisonment, how the hell would I go to jail? and doesnt it suck that we have to pay 300 bux for a registerd gun when on street its like 40 bucks lol

Anonymous said...

"thanks for actually typing out the sound "uh" in that post, i really love being condescended to. i have a feeling that a lot of hopkins kids and yuppie gentrifiers seem to be constantly under attack by people in this city, whereas i somehow never seem to have any major problems, because they act in some way that makes people want to take them down a peg. not that i'm excusing criminal behavior."
Man, burgersub, for a guy into statistics, you can come up with some pretty idiotic shit! I guess you're the tough but educated dude in the ghetto that feels the suffering of the poor and the need the misunderstood hoodie feels for taking down the scumbag yuppie infiltrators a peg! As far as levels of dangerousness, can you understand the difference between 450 murders/8,500,000 pop and 325 murders/650,000 pop? You never had any problems(and I sincerely hope you never do) because you're friggin lucky. In NYC, almost anywhere, you can be very sloppy and careless and STILL it's highly unlikely that anything will ever happen to you. Here, you can be vigilant, paranoid, etc, and you're still highly likely to eventually be victimized. It's just statistics, as Galt has pointed out with his charts. The scumbags here know they can get away with almost anything, so they keep at it. In a nutshell, you are 100 to 500 times more likely to be assaulted/mugged here than in NY.

ppatin said...

bmorecareful:

I'm a big fan of law-abiding citizens carrying concealed weapons, but doing so without a valid permit is a VERY bad idea.

Anonymous said...

The only thing going for this shit hole over NYC is that for $1500/month you can practically live like a king while in NYC that means you're sleeping in the living room of a third floor walk up on the outskirts of Park Slope while your art school roommate scarfs up your share of the left over pizza.

Anonymous said...

Before living in Baltimore I had never believed it could be possible that almost the entire energy of the anministration (Dixon) and police (Hamm, before he became canned Hamm) would be spent lying about, concealing, downgrading, and suppressing crime statistics, rather than, say, actually fighting crime. Please god, send us a Ray Kelly, a Giuliani (circa '92), or hell, at this point, even a Bernie Goetz or two.

Anonymous said...

"Come to Charles Village! You can be beaten to a pulp for your $50 ipod on far, far more charming, tree lined streets than you ever could in Philly or NYC! And if the mugger misses your last few dollars, rest assured in knowing that we have the highest property tax rate around! And if that's not enough, know that you're lucky enough to pay even more tax to the Charles Village Benefits District! Believe!"

John Galt said...

On that subject, whatever happened to the independent crime stats audit that the Mayor & Commissioner agreed to ??

burgersub said...

i love how anytime i tell someone on here that i think they must be doing something different than i (and pretty much everyone i actually know in real life) to be victimized so much, the target of my criticism comes back with "oh you must think you're some kind of badass!" or "you must think you understand the common man so well!" sorry, neither of those, i just think you're probably a dick and everybody else can tell just by looking at you.

burgersub said...

also, LOL at you calling charles village a "ghetto."

and LOL at you asking if i understand the difference between those two murder rates. remind me again how many murders charles village has had this year. also remind me again when the last time baltimore had 325 murders was.

John Galt said...

Is that your hypothesis about the Sowers assault, Burg ? A ruling is in on adult/juvenile prosecution.

burgersub said...

zach sowers didn't get the shit beaten out of him in charles village and i never read any hysterical internet diatribes authored by him so i don't think that i have enough information to answer that, galt.

Anonymous said...

burgersub, kiss my white ass. I stand by my assessment of Charles Village as a friggin f-ed up ghetto. Read the jhu security alerts. Unless they're making this shit up, CV is a dangerous hell hole.

burgersub said...

i don't need to read the security reports because i have my own 7 years worth of experiences there to draw upon in order to make a judgement. also, thanks for letting me know the color of your ass.

burgersub said...

also, i can't take credit for the phrase "oooh scary charles village." i just adapted that from the popular "oooh scary west philly" often uttered in debates about the upenn area. said debates are pretty much exactly the same as this one. hey, isn't upenn an ivy league school?

Anonymous said...

REDDEVIL****

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