Wednesday, February 11, 2009

29

CHuM's 3rd murder victim of the year was ID'd as Tracy Kinchen, 34.

The suspicious body found floating in the Patapsco was ID'd as Eric Pendergrass, 26; the ME's office said he died of asphyxiation.

Fox reports that a 16-year-old boy was stabbed at Carver Vo-Tech

Ex-gf of former Oriole Roberto Alomar is suing him for having sex with her even though he had full-blown AIDS(!!)

An AP reporter & photogThe Washington Post's Aaron C. Davis and photographer Marvin Joseph got inside Fowler's freezer.
(The ME is certainly a lot more outgoing than usual lately-- are the FOIA requests and persistent questions about the "undetermineds" getting to him?)

The Goucher French teacher accused of participating in Rwandan genocide has been arrested for a visa offense
(same story at "Exhibit A" if you're not registered on Washpost)

Prosecutor: genius Baltimorean brought $1 million worth of heroin (some of it "inside of MOSES' body") on a plane from Panama to ATL.

LOLz du jour: Like baggy pants on a pit bull, Sen. George W. Della Jr.'s "Effort to ban beer pong quickly abandoned"

8 comments:

Baltimore Slumlord Watch said...

20 grand to smuggle that much heroin into the country? That hardly seems like a fair salary. She would have been better off staying in Baltimore and playing beer pong with George Della.

Stewie del Gato said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Stewie del Gato said...

Our esteemed ex-citizen Mr. Kinchen has quite the record. And I ain't talkin' 'bout no Grammy.
I would like to know what the murder rate is for the true victims who are not part of the game. Subtract all the thuggies and what are we left with? Somebody's got that stat.

Maurice Bradbury said...

No, no one has that stat, sounds like a great project for you.
Search the records of the last 100 victims, figure out the "in the game" criteria (at least one drug charge and one weapon charge within the past three years, say) classify said records into "definitely in the game" or "not in the game" and see what you come up with.

buzoncrime said...

Perhaps Stephen has stumbled across the reason that it seems everyone is "outraged" at the murders, but there isn't much real outrage.

A research project like MJB suggests would get bogged down in all sorts of definitional problems about who and when someone was a thug and when he/she is a victim, and they were just trying to turn their life around, etc. So, any answer we came up with would foster counter arguments.

However, it is pretty clear that the vast majority of murders are a result of what Professor David Kennedy (of Boston's Ceasefire Project) called "Baltimore's peculiarly resilient street culture". {I hate when murder is attributed to "drugs", or "gangs"--they are awfully simplistic tags.)

But a gut judgment and reading of the years' murder cases indicates that there are a couple of handfuls of murders that are robbery victims, a couple of more handfuls domestic violence, some innocent bystanders, but the vast majority, anecdotally now, are what might be called "street stuff"--interpersonal disputes, disrespect, revenge, jealousy [sexual and otherwise], and "business disputes" regarding illegal activities.

It is probably no accident that the demographic and criminal history profiles of murder victims and suspects are very similar.

Maurice Bradbury said...

well, you're right of course, buz. Same issue with trying to figure out how many 'addicts' there are in Baltimore at any given time. Who's addicted? Who's a 'casual user'? Does alcohol count? Prescription drug addicts? At what point does someone taking pain pills for a legitimate injury become an addict, anyway? It sounds like a simple proposition but it gets very hairy very fast.

Cham said...

It is worth it to look into the criminal histories of the victims, I often do. Some of them have very long interesting records that start when they are 16 (juvenile criminal histories aren't listed). But what is also interesting is many victims have the same name as their fathers and other relatives so you can see the long criminal histories of the them as well. Not to mention all the sordid domestic assaults the victims have with their girlfriends and baby mommas.

And then sometimes you search for a criminal history and it isn't there because the victim was a reasonably good guy, as in the case of Lemuel Wallace. We can all feel smug that the self cleaning oven is working at full capacity these days, but I must pause, regardless of what the victim's criminal history lists does anyone really deserve to die because of (and I quote) "street stuff"?:

"interpersonal disputes, disrespect, revenge, jealousy [sexual and otherwise], and "business disputes" regarding illegal activities."

As far as I'm concerned, I never elected anyone other than the judicial system to be judge, jury and executioner.

Kofi Bofah said...

I feel like I just walked into an episode of The Wire.

And I never heard about that thing on Robby Alomar.