Two guys on the side of 695 set a tow truck driver on fire yesterday morning. (Sun coverage.)
In a completely shocking and unexpected turn of events, someone got shot on N. Carey St.
The fifth graders are packing heat.
"This is why I'm disgusted. The system has failed the people in the community. The Police Department is suffering from a lack of oversight and a lack of character. Today was a victory, no doubt, and it shows that an average lay citizen can bring charges and follow through it with limited resources and still bring a guilty verdict." (Examiner coverage.)
Poor Vernice Harris. Nobody wanted to help her. Nobody cared. So how could it possibly be her fault that she gave methadone to little Bryanna? Poor, poor Vernice.
Joseph McInnis Jr. got nailed for a rape 24 years after the fact. As part of his plea deal, charges related to a murder 21 years ago were dropped.
56 comments:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.ci.harbor23apr23,0,4242922.story
"Police Shift Inner Harbor Patrol Command"
The article states that the Inner Harbor Commander is responsible for the "area between Fells Point and Harbor East", which of course does not encompass the Inner Harbor at all....
Pathetic that a Sun reporter does not know the difference between Federal Hill and Fells Point.
That Vernice Harris article made me sick. She's a piece of trash should've been thrown in prison.
Ha, Fells Point to Harbor East. That's a good one. The Baltimore Sun at its finest.
the military should come in and burn baltimore to a crisp and rebuild it, making houses too expensive for the thugs to live and rebuild bmore to the beauty it can be...it sounds wrong but its not as wrong as all the killing thats going on, so fuckem
Actually, the thugs have little to fear from increasing rents.
They largely cohabit between prison stays with one or more baby mamas with Section 8 housing vouchers. Those vouchers are adjusted to market, so that when the rent goes up it's principally the City that pays the increase.
Increased rent expense only impacts those of us who work, which is a minority in this town.
Cut Section 8.
heck yea, cut section 8!!! but i believe that there are single mothers on section 8 that actually care, and raise their kids right and work hard to support them, people like these should recieve assistance...but as far for the others, they should be kicked out onto the street like the maggets they are...why not put the army reserves in the streets?? ide love to see them!! let the young parasites shoot at them
and im no racist, i have plenty of black and white friends!!! but i honestly think that Sheila Dixon is taking it easy on alot of the scumbags because they are black like she is....im not sayin a white mayor would help more, just saying that you can never rule anything out! sounds crazy but is it really?
Assaulted art teacher Jolita Berry is apparently dragging her feet in filing criminal charges because the school system fails to convincingly offer protection.
Meanwhile, amazingly, two of the students charged in the beating of Sarah Kreager now have the temerity to file an action against the MTA, the School System, and the bus driver because they were suspended and denied bus privileges.
Filing reports of all violent conduct and summarily removing problem students must be obligatory.
The problem is that we subsidize crappy, out of wedlock parents. Maybe if we didn't hand out welfare, foodstamps and section 8 vouchers to every babymomma who's too dumb to use a condom then all of the parasites in this city would have an incentive to stop breeding like rabbits.
Right. Good luck with incentivizing abstinence. It's worked so well for the Bush administration.
As for birth control, when you're down at the bottom of the socioeconomic food chain and you're presented with 10 minutes of sex-fueled escape from your crappy life, repercussions that are 9 months away might as well not even exist.
As the band Pulp said, "you'll never watch your life slide out of view / and dance and drink and screw / because there's nothing else to do."
Who said anything about abstinence? I'm no sex hating bible-thumper, I just wish people would use contraception. Birth control is not rocket science. Hell, free contraception is one government handout I would totally support. If you prevent one out of wedlock pregnancy you've just saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in future incarceration costs.
And, perhaps owing to an absence of contraception, we have yet another primary school kid arrested for pulling a gun on a classmate.
First of all, the military is not coming to rule Baltimore or burn it to a crisp, as long as I live here. They're having enough trouble in Baghdad where the people are less armed.
Second, people like to have babies. When one copulates they are thinking about unconditional love and being looked upon as a parent by their peers. If you watch Haiti where everyone has as many children as possible, nobody really thinks about how they are going to shelter and feed their future children at a later date, even mass starvation isn't slowing them down in the baby making department. The federal, state and local governments of the US will never agree to free birth control, too many God-fearing people would oppose this idea.
You could stop welfare, Independence cards, WIC and Medicaid simultaneously and the only thing that would happen is everyone would relocate to live under a bridge and you would increase the number of panhandlers 1000 fold.
The thugs tend to follow the drug trade, so as long as there is demand for drugs there will be thugs in Baltimore.
HL Menken once said, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” He's right.
Cham:
Sorry, but I just don't agree. I can't believe that subsidizing out of wedlock babies doesn't encourage people to behave irresponsibly. Even better, provide people with financial incentives to use contraception. I hate the thought of paying people to do the right thing, but I'm also pragmatic enough to support it if it results in fewer teenage babymommas.
I think you're sort of right about the free contraception thing in many parts of the country, but in MD I think you could get away with it. This is a pretty liberal state.
BTW, I don't pretend that any one fix, whether it's a harsher judicial system, less welfare, or reforming drug laws, will solve Baltimore's problems. I do think they could all help the situation though, and right now even a small improvement would be nice.
Well-spoken, Cham.
Free birth control works only as well as the person's commitment to use it responsibly. Depo shots make it easier, but then you're relying on either (a) an individual to remember that they need a shot every three months, or (b) a free health care agency to be well-enough organized (and funded) that they can track down birth control recipients at the proper time. I don't see either scenario happening. I am a so-called functional and responsible member of society, and I can't even remember to keep up with the one medication I have to take -- and my incentive to remember is the fact that I avoid immediate and nearly unbearable pain. I forget at least once a week.
Free birth control might fly in MD. Paying people to take birth control gets into a whole mess of issues, and I can't see it ever working.
Now, maybe if you did some combination of free birth control and legalized drugs, you might make some progress.
"Now, maybe if you did some combination of free birth control and legalized drugs, you might make some progress."
Heroin with Depo?
Wow. Not what I had in mind, but you just might be a genius.
The fact that a word like "babymomma" has even made its way into common vernacular indicates how the concept has become culturally mainstream. Cham has a point here, in that decreasing entitlement programs is going to have almost a nil effect on what a 14-year old does. Biochemically, the average teen's brain is simply NOT developed to the point where the full effect of long-term consequences for their actions can be appreciated by that teen. The average teen pregnancy is a combination of the biochemical/hormonal biology at play and the cultural entrenchment of the status given to teens by their peers and the community (which would be unlikely to change with a reduction in entitlements) and the immature and short-sighted idea that having a baby will bind that baby's father to them irrevocably. Even when that relationship turns sour, there is a pathologic desire to ensure that they have a lasting connection to that person, rooted in the absence of positive male role models in this segment of society.
Now, I'm all for bringing entitlement programs back under control (many of the more conservative individuals here might enjoy www.pandabearmd.com). But I believe it is largely a separate issue when it comes to the topic of teen pregnancy. Sociologically, the reason teens have unprotected sex, get pregnant, and decide to keep the baby has very little connection with entitlements. I'll try and do some digging on pubmed and find if there are any actual studies to back up my assertions. But note that I do feel there is a connection when you consider an older age group of first-time single parents at the same socio-economic level. Here, I am simply speaking about the connection with teens.
Lucid:
Is pandabearMD the guy who would gripe about how residency sucked worse than Marine Corps basic training?
Speaking about sex...Bmore is 2nd in the NATION in AIDS! so lets do the math once again...all the DOCUMENTED cases is what leads to the ranking....now what about the UNDOCUMENTED AIDS cases (ie. lil jamal bangs a hooker b/c she wants free H and he wants a good time, never gets a blood test done, passes it to lil keisha and lil keisha give it her babydaddy lil tyrone etc etc etc x100)...so in reality Bmore is INFESTED with AIDS, most likely spreading it to the county....in conclusion, if you live in bmore city or bmore county you better bmore careful and use 3 condoms (at once,not 3 condoms your whole life! ha)....
bmore:
There's some website out there that offers reviews & advice for people who hire street hookers, and I just wanted to throw up after taking a look at it. Who in their right mind would hire a streetwalker in a city like this. You know she's probably carrying every STD known to man. Admittedly hiring a hooker off of the street is never a good idea, but in B'more that's exceptionally gross. Talk about desperation...
ppatin,
I'm not sure I would summarize Panda's views on residency quite that way, but yes, that's the same blogger.
With the Vernice Harris thing, even if they couldn't prove that she gave her daughter methadone, why wasn't she charged with child neglect?
... speaking of people who ought to be in jail, if the U.S.' incarceration rate is 751 per 100,000, what's Baltimore City's?
Speaking of child neglect, how bad do things have to get before social services becomes involved in Baltimore? There's an alcoholic lady who lives up our street who'll leave her fairly young kids at home to go drinking, and then scream outside our house at 3 AM. I'm thinking she could use a stern talking-to.
bad enough for someone to call CPS I guess. Maybe that someone is you?
it's (410) 361-2235
(CPS)
I love it how when you look up CPS on Google it offers to let you "write a review."
mjb:
Seeing as how this is Baltimore I figured CPS might laugh at me unless I could show that she was beating her children or pimping them out for booze money. Thanks for the number though, I suppose I should at least give them a call.
Let's talk about hiring street walkers, prostitutes or the nice ladies from Craigs List. Why is there a market for paid sex? It's not necessarily Jamal, Keisha and Tyrone but more like Bob, Joe and Ashley.
As a man ages the powers of bad diet, smoking and drinking has a cumulative negative effect on his ability to obtain female attention. Combo that with personality issues, absence of a strong income, hygiene challenges and, well, you have men that wants sex and intimacy but won't be getting it through dating.
Just about every place we have people one will find prostitution. Street walkers are on the lowest socioeconomic rung, catering to men who have limited financial resources and probably some control issues as they target those ladies that are most desperate for money and who will do just about anything for it.
Why do these guys not use a condom? That's an easy one. Try getting an erection at 50, 60 or 70 years of age. Then try doing it with health problems. These guys are lucky if they can get it up, strapping on a condom on a semi-erect penis would be next to impossible. What these guys want more than anything is a blow job, a few open mouth sores probably won't deter their enthusiasm for the $20 price tag.
Just like the thugs, as long as there is a drug trade there will be street walkers, HIV+, syphilis, herpes and just about every other sexually transmittable disease.
Well, a good estimate of the Baltimore City share of the DPSCS institutional population would be like 16,200. With a population base of 641,000, that gives you around 2,500 per 100,000, but bear in mind that that excludes federal prisoners, which Baltimore provides disproportionate to its population. Also, recall that this State likes to use 'community corrections' (aka dumping parolees and probationers into our neighboroods) so that you and I can bear the burden of being the Warden and babysitting them.
But institutional population per capita is the wrong measure. The real issue is institutional populaton relative to resident hoodlum population.
Detroit,Camden, Newark, and Compton have in common with Baltimore that decent people are hard to come by and that entire neighborhoods containing a majority of hoodlums persist.
In such places, an incarceration rate of upwards of 50% would not be inappropriate.
Cham,
Why assign such a unique role to the drug trade?
I deal with these hoods daily.
If you legalize drugs tomorrow, you would NOT find them seeking a legit job the next day.
They would simply find another unlawful racket, whether it be burglary, truck-jacking, or low-end identity theft.
Drugs are just the crime du jour. Look at Lepke Buchalter after the repeal of prohibition. Did he stop rum-running? Yes. Did he go straight? Not for a second.
To add to what Mr. Galt has to say, Baltimore City provides a one stop shop to anyone on hard times. All sorts of government services for the poor and downtrodden are available within walking distance. It is amazing how quickly those that develop a substance abuse problem in the neighboring counties show up on the city's doorstep to take full advantage.
"What these guys want more than anything is a blow job, a few open mouth sores probably won't deter their enthusiasm for the $20 price tag."
I seem to recall in "Homicide" David Simon said that a cheap BJ in Baltimore would run you twenty bucks, but that book was written in the mid 1980s. Apparently inflation has not affected the price of fellatio.
"Drugs are just the crime du jour. Look at Lepke Buchalter after the repeal of prohibition. Did he stop rum-running? Yes. Did he go straight? Not for a second."
Yeah, but despite the fact that the bootleggers didn't go straight I think everyone agrees society was better off after prohibition was repealed. Again, I'm not going to pretend that drug law reform will magically make this city's problems go away, but the current "war on drugs" is accomplishing absolutely nothing.
Mr Galt:
The drug trade is different from burglarly, truck-jacking and identity theft. When you have drugs you need a territory to market those drugs. The territory is most likely a neighborhood, rife with alleys for quick get aways and homes to package your product and streets to put your salespeople on which will allow for drive-thru service. The drug trade encourages those that live in the neighborhood to relocate and the thugs to set up occupation. With it comes all sorts of other crime, raping, robbing, prostitution and, of course, murder.
Identity theft can happen anywhere, you don't need the territory. Truck-jacking will occur where there are trucks and burglary will occur where there are burglary opportunities. The thugs will still be thugs but they won't be operating in a concentrated neighborhood space.
I've already demonstrated that among young males, over a third are quite recently convicted (or in some cases, charged but null prossed or STETed without exoneration) by Maryland courts.
That excludes all those arrested for cause but uncharged and those not arrested or whose offenses were not cleared. (The clearance rate for property crime here is abyssmal.)
Also, that's a citywide number, and so is much diluted by better places like Guilford, Homeland, Roland Park, etc.
If you look at typical Baltimore B neighborhoods, the criminal population as a percentage among young males becomes much higher.
"Look at Lepke Buchalter after the repeal of prohibition. Did he stop rum-running? Yes. Did he go straight? Not for a second."
From Wikipedia:
"Louis "Lepke" Buchalter (12 February 1897 – 4 March 1944) was a Jewish- American mobster of the 1930s. He is the only major mob boss ever to have been executed by state or federal authorities for his crimes."
There's a good way to ensure that criminals will never re-offend...
Ppatin: The price of a blowjob, if you look on that message board, has remained steady at $20 for a long time. But then again, wages for many jobs haven't changed much either for the last 20 years.
Cham, most non-white collar rackets quickly become spatial competitions among organized crime cells. Consider numbers, protection, and pimping/prostitution: territoriality is emergent because of the deterrent effect of physical violence.
You will find analogs in municipal hauling, garment district drayage, and labor supply on most large docks.
The one interesting feature of the narcotic commodity is that its use enhances the desperation of its customer. In that way, it perhaps has something in common with abusive gambling.
On the subject of BJ's, that's probably more a feature of NeoKeynesian 'sticky prices' than of a lack of cost-push inflation.
"On the subject of BJ's, that's probably more a feature of NeoKeynesian 'sticky prices' than of a lack of cost-push inflation."
Someone in academia has probably done a PhD thesis on this.
BJ...?
sticky prices...?
cost-push...?
Remind you of anyone ??
"When one copulates they are thinking about unconditional love and being looked upon as a parent by their peers."
Really? Hmm... Or they're thinking "Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah... OH YEAHHHH!!!! Ahhh..."
Let's get Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, J.M. Keynes, and Mata Hari in a room to discuss why the price of a BJ is impervious to inflation.
The price of a blowjob is not impervious to inflation, but based on supply and demand. The demand has probably stayed steady but the supply, impacted by an increase in heroin, crack and crystal meth usage in the Baltimore area, has increased. There may be more women willing to provide blowjob services. Hence, the $20 price.
"The demand has probably stayed steady but the supply, impacted by an increase in heroin, crack and crystal meth usage in the Baltimore area, has increased. There may be more women willing to provide blowjob services. Hence, the $20 price."
I'm not so sure about the demand part increasing. Baltimore was already a pretty fucked up city back then.
"The demand has probably stayed steady but the supply, impacted by an increase in heroin, crack and crystal meth usage in the Baltimore area, has increased."
But as drug use increases, demand for heroin increases and price increases. Therefore that "extra" $20 that would have been spent on a BJ, now gets pumped into a vein. Whores need the H too, to the price of a BJ should increase with the price of drugs. When the price of H goes up, competition should come in and bring it back down and hence the price of a BJ is tied to the price of H. Drugs and BJ's can be considered complimentary goods (I knew my MBA would come in handy some day). It's easy to see, you could go on and on with this (and many have) but apparently prostitution does not follow traditional economic theory.
Stephen: The price of heroin has plummeted. The US government saw fit to drive out the Taliban in Afghanistan, so the poppies are once again abloom in those arid mountainous regions. Poppies sell for 8 times what a farmer can get for growing wheat. Viet Nam has also joined the ranks of countries that produce poppies. Who says capitalism doesn't work? The cold war is so over so the old silk road now is busy with global transport, but this time with kilos of heroin. And with Baltimore's ships, trucks and trains, well, do the math.
Heroin used to be a troublesome drug, filled with cut and only useful if injected. Now it comes to our doorstep at 90% purity. No more messy needles when you can smoke it up with ease. What used to cost $20 in 1980 now costs $5. And, in an extreme case when you can't find heroin around here, there is plenty of pharmaceutical grade oxycontin (thanks China!), methadone and Percoset available.
Over the weekend I did a park clean-up. We found only 4 syringes but hundreds of glassine bags. Here is an example of the smallest bag I found that probably holds a rock or possibly 10 mgs or less of heroin.
There's at least one major flaw with your argument, Stephen. You're assuming heroin addicts are the ones purchasing BJs, which doesn't appear to be true based on either (a) reading usasexguide, or (b) several years of observing the market in my neighborhood.
Additionally, while there are obvious ties between drug usage and prostitution, to call heroin and BJs complimentary is like calling cars and CDs/iPods complimentary because people like to listen to music while they drive.
There is a certain population of men that will pay for sex. If supply drops due to a decrease in the number of addicted prostitutes, demand won't necessarily drop as well. More likely, consumers will simply find different suppliers (e.g., pros on Craigslist or starving college students).
I certainly was making that assumption. Enlighten me...who is purchasing the BJ's? Dealers? Lower level dealers? They tend to be addicts as well, right? White suburban dads? There was an interesting paper put out a few years ago where they correlated increase in income to a decrease in demand for prostitutes. The controversial finding was that prostitutes and brides are essentially substitute goods.
The people who use the services over on Wilkins Avenue are not drug addicts. Drug addicts want drugs not blow jobs. Envision men, not the best looking ones, in their 40s, 50s, 60s. They can be local to Baltimore City but a number of them come from around the Beltway and from points south along the I-95 corridor to cruise Pigtown. Figure long-time blue collar employees, some are married too. Dealers don't need street walkers, they trade product for services, the women come to them.
Based on what I see in my neighborhood, the guys who are driving around hiring prostitutes are working class guys. Occasionally I'll see a work truck/van (such as a tow truck or a contractor's van), other times I see either late model compacts (Corollas, Civics, etc) or slightly older higher-end sedans. (Some guy was mongering in a '68 Camaro a few months back. Way to be low-key, asshat.) Nearly all the clients are white, and tend to be between 35 and 55.
Yes, I am aware that working class white guys with jobs and/or enough money to buy a decent and reliable Japanese car can be heroin addicts. But it's the exception, not the rule.
Many of the men seem to have regular relationships with the women they pick up, as I'll often hear a girl on the street greet a guy by name and with what looks like a genuine smile when she gets into his car.
Fascinating. I just can't imagine a BJ from an H-Ho being more appealing than a quick yank in the bathroom. Thanks for sharing your profound knowledge of the BJ industry. BTW, how do you know so much....just jokin'.
How do we know so much? Start reading.
Oh great. As if I don't spend too much time reading this blog.
I watched Fox news at 6:30 last night and they repeated the "Fells Point and Harbor East" boner!
Hyuk!
Re Stephen's remark & boners, don't the white drugs make people lose interest and ability in the crotchal region? (or is that a "Just Say No"- era myth?)
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