Monday, November 28, 2011

"things happen differently"

... so what did I miss, Baltimore?
It looks like police arrested one Alvin Ray Wright Sr.*, 48, for the rape of a 13-year-old girl in an abandoned rowhouse on N. Caroline Street in October. He doesn't have a record of prior sex offenses, just drug and car-theft charges, but DNA evidence implicated his evil ass after his sample was given high priority in the testing queue.

A woman robbed with a toy gun in Roland Park and a shootout in the 5400 block of York Road in the North Baltimore Patch Blotter

The Conaway/Meister drama continues, and here's a nugget that will make you crap a book on how to puke: Conaway's lawyer J. Wyndal Gordon says Conaway is being investigated because both Meister and Bernstein are Jewish*: "When you have a situation where you have a Jewish victim and an African-American male, you have things happen differently than if it happened to be a regular case ... perhaps because of their commonality in their religion."

Ehrlich aides' robocall trial kicks off today. Hilariously, the wife of the judge in the case got one of the calls, but Judge Lawrence Fletcher Hill says that won't affect his judgment.

Bernstein has hired a young hotshot to do some prosecutin' up in the state's attorney's office*, heading up a division that is "new" and "major." His notable achievements so far include attending basketball games, making a baby, and encouraging prosecutors to paint their offices (with coveralls over their suits, one hopes).

WTF?! County man committed suicide by setting himself on fire in front of cops

ps. this is weird, the Sun reported yesterday* that James L. Owens is suing the city of Baltimore for $15 million ... but the suit was filed (and widely reported) on October 12. A worthwhile story to be sure, but why write about it now?

* Sun link ... I'll try to warn you from here on out so you can save your monthly clicks!

10 comments:

Justin Fenton said...

A lot of stories get written and held because of the holidays - like one of my bylines (scheduled for) tomorrow!

ppatin said...

I'll never understand why people use self-immolation to kill themselves. It seems like the most painful method of suicide imaginable.

Anonymous said...

"All the world's a stage...", ppatin.

On another tack, they're trying to let more criminals out of prison and back onto the streets again.

I suppose I just don't understand the thinking about bias in lawmaking. It is being argued that tough sanctions on possession of crack are unfair to poor blacks.

Is it not then also true that laws against speeding are biased against drivers under 30 ??

I really think we're going overboard with bias claims. I don't want a return to the violent 80's with loose-cannon crackheads all over Baltimore. Even if many of them are black or poor.

Fact is, incarceration is the only thing short of capital punishment that works.

Maurice Bradbury said...

well, prison works to turn inmates into better criminals. It doesn't seem to do a whole lot of reforming.

... the Fair Sentencing Act wasn't passed because sentences were unfair to poor blacks (though they were/are), but because because lawmakers in the 80s believed crack to be 100 times more addictive than cocaine, which turned out to not be true. I'm sure the shiteous economy played a big part, too: with a 5-year minimum sentence per crackhead at about $40k a year, those crackheads can really add up. But apparently if you smoke 25 grams of crack or you snort 25 grams of cocaine, you are the same amount of effed up and just as apt to get addicted-- crack just works faster. So the law is still disparate.

Anonymous said...

Uh,.. so who's interested in reforming? I'd just as soon turn them into soylent green.

Anonymous said...

LOL...prosecutors painting their own offices. That is sooo NOT new; been going on for YEARS! I guess you have to hang your hat on something. Bwah.

Maurice Bradbury said...

wow, so they do actually *literally* paint their own offices?

Anonymous said...

Are you kidding, MJ?

Have you never painted the interiors of your local public school? We do that every year because the City (and school system) want to use the tax money for junkets to St. Thomas and the like. Otherwise, the paint will be falling onto our kids' heads.

Many of the necessary & essential public services in this town are offloaded to nonprofits and community groups because the City needs the money for gift cards for Sheila Dixon and other bullcrap.

The single biggest line item in the budget is titled Waste, Fraud, & Abuse

Baltimore Sux

Maurice Bradbury said...

No, I haven't, geez, that's horrible! Horrible about the kids, and also horrible that lawyers are spending their time doing that-- surely after graduating law school and passing the bar one's hours are worth a bit more than that of an entry-level DPW employee. ... O'Malley and Sam Arora are in India as I type. Arora's paying his own way, he says, wonder who's paying the guv's?

Cham said...

Perhaps the lawyers should spend less time painting their offices and more time working on their caseload. Who cares what color palette is on the baseboards.