Friday, February 7, 2014

The Glamorous Fire

O'Malley and jail spokesflak Rick Binetti say that cell phone blockage at the detention center has been achieved.*

Ina Jenkins
The burnt body found in an alley behind Pinehurst Avenue has been identified as that of Ina Gail Jenkins, 35,* the ME says she died from blunt-force trauma. According to her LinkedIn page, she was a marketer for Far Above Rubies magazine in Bowie, a Daily Bread volunteer and graduate of Anne Arundel Community College, living on East End Drive in Curtis Bay, 25 miles from where she was found. Last August she noted on her Facebook page, "Oh and by the way, I have a Baltimore Italian man, stalking me, and maybe a few others."  and, curiously, "Can I say to all the Pasadena, Maryland residents whom may read my Facebook page, you have a psychotic, mentally ill, and immature, scary, mailman in your town." and later, "So, now I have Michael Lloyd stalking me. I know, a little or a lot retarded."

Batts met in Annapolis with the city's six senators,* and they are pissed. Batts' counterclaim: we're working on it, I need more people, and "Violent crimes are down by 34 percent over the previous year."  Huh? How does he figure? Homicides, nonfatal shootings, larcenies, car thefts and street robberies were all up last year,* so what's left? Is the BPD is not reporting rapes again?*
How timely--
it's the 110th anniversary of the Baltimore Fire!
  4.8 officers per 1,000 people*, the third-highest ratio in the country, surpassing even Chicago or Deteroit. According to the $280k consultant report that Batts commissioned, the problem isn't too few officers, it's officers in the wrong places-- posts being staffed unnecessarily, detectives doing the jobs of clerks, and 40 percent of posts on each shift being staffed with overtime. So it makes you wonder if he's even read his own $280k report.
   And does the BPD really need more people? As of 2011, Baltimore had about 4.8 officers per 1,000 people, more than double the national average and the 3rd-highest rate in the country.
   Said Batts to WMAR's Brian Kuebler, "It's more glamorous to say 'run for your lives the city is on fire' but the city continues to progress and go in the right direction and it is getting safer."

In the Baltimore Guide blotter of the southeast, a woman was robbed whilst clearing snow off of her car on N. Collington Avenue, a woman was robbed while pushing her daughter in a stroller, a boy robbed while playing on the playground behind Patterson Park High School, a girl was pushed by a man "into a rear alley, where she pleaded with him not to rape her. The report is cut off here."

Daniel T. Nicholson IV, the detective in the Phylicia Barnes case, was acquitted of two charges and the jury is deadlocked on a third.*

Ashley Roane
Ashley Roane, a 26-year-old officer, got five years for extortion and identity theft. She was the one who searched the BPD database to tell a drug dealer who was an informant, and she also stole people's identities for a tax scam.*

Two Yemenites, Abdullah Aljaradi, age 52, and Ahmed Ayedh Al-Jabrati, age 58, owners of the Second Obama Express and D&M Deli and Grocery, pleaded guilty to food stamp fraud.

:( Essay: "Baltimore, You're Breaking My Heart" ... "I'm looking at you Mayor Rawlings-Blake."

City Paper readers react to D. Watkins' story on Salon, "Too Poor for Pop Culture." Chill out, people, if he's desperate enough to take a job as an adjunct at the University of Baltimore he is plenty poor!

The EPA has sent Harbor Point developers back to the drawing board to improve the site's safety plan.

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