Thursday, October 1, 2009

So Much Dirty

"Southeast's top police officer is suspended," and nobody's saying why

Fancy watches, a money-counting machine, and Clomid?! Wacky stuff found in dirty cop Mark Lunsford's stash

The final brutality suit against officer Jerome K. Hill ended with a $1500 settlement, and Hill with a job in the records division. (how can you sodomize someone with a ripped-up $20 bill?)

Two trials for the mayor

More on the drug-overdose doctor

Names and details in this week's Ink

Ooh la la, c'est beaucoup de francs! New transaction terms save Constellation energy $1.2 billion in taxes.
(If you haven't fired BGE yet, here's a handy way to get bids from suppliers from TDR.)

4 comments:

John Galt said...

This is why I get so frustrated with the thinking in Baltimore.

"I just don't understand the lack of motivation.", he says.

If we had in mind that kids have to have a rec center every ten blocks, then using Baltimore's land area we can conclude that 240 rec centers would be needed.

And the mother says that's too far anyway.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, is getting ready to fund 240 rec centers, people. Have you ever seen just how few kids are in each of these local recs? It's ridiculous.

Rec Centers are NOT the solution to safety and idle youth. Deterrence is.

ppatin said...

I was surprised to hear about Major Bergeron being suspended, from what little I know about him he seemed like a reasonably good police commander.

buzoncrime said...

Galt---the PAL idea under Fraizier, no matter what else you may think of him, was probably on the right track. The idea was to have the police viewed as a positive force in the community. But the ball was dropped on its implementation. There seemed to be no linkage between the police and the rec center and the kids and the community; other than the signs on the building, you wouldn't even know that it was a police program--the officers hardly ever wore even semi-police uniforms for example.

There's been a fair amount of research lately on the power of social networking: your friends can make you fat, e.g., or do smack, or become thugs. Thus any influence of good citizenship would probably be helpful, though I'm not sure how much research is out there on this.

At some point someone has to be the adult: the city just doesn't have the money to fund all programs to make all people happy. (Though the 3 ladies running this city would have more moral authority if they gave up their raises earlier this year, along with those of the mayor's 2 retired police go-fers, but I digress).

The saddest thing in the story is the firmness about which it was stated that it would be dangerous to go 10 blocks into "other" territory to visit the other rec center. Um, I thought crime was down and the city government controlled the streets.

I don't know about the PAL or rec centers nowadays, but when I was a kid (a couple of years ago), I lived right across the street from the oldSoutheast District police station on Bank Street, and was a member of the Police Boys' Club (no girls back then). And I hardly ever went because if you didn't shoot pool or play ping pong, there really wasn't much to do.

On the other hand, I often went to the rec center next to the Patterson Park pool where the actual Virginia Baker worked, learned how to play chess, etc. I also learned how to swim at the Patterson Park pool, a skill I still use to this day.

PP--I was very surprised also: this is an extremely rare event. However, I saw a comment on Facebook at the post on the Club Eldorado shooting. It was obviously from a cop, wondering if the shift commander had come to work that night, that he came and went how he pleased, and how he was buddies with command , who didn't do anything. And there was something about playing in a band instead of coming to work, hmmmmmmm. Might have something to do with this suspension without pay.

John Galt said...

I support PALs.

I actually believe that positive influences on the more responsive/better segment of the juvenile population pay off. But that happens at a more regional facility, and serves quite a lot of kids per dollar expended.

The foresaken superlocal facilities are just depressing. Two kids with an underinflated basketball who are only there because mom didn't want to pay for a sitter?

No.

There has to be a certain scale to attain a level of dynamism which makes the setting attractive for a significant number of receptive kids. A big, popular YMCA, for instance, just makes you want to join.

I think that part of the problem is that city residents have been brainwashed into thinking that someone at the school or someone at the rec center should be responsible for looking after 'our youth'. As in,.. not Mom and certainly.. not Dad.

If there's a good Rec Center ten blocks away, then escort your child to it. If you absolutely by any means cannot, well, then you apparently live in a place which is fundamentally unsafe and ought to be under martial law. And the residents should be asking for that, rather than rec centers as a nonfunctional substitute for policing.

If the Rec Center is the only safe place in your city,... don't open another Rec Center; close your city.