Profiles in Ass-Kissery

A man was stabbed to death in the 1500 block of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Prolific serial robber has hit eight area banks.

So the session has ended, with $19 million going to film credits* (House of Cards alone claims to have spent $155 million in the state). Compare that to the Harbor Point project, an office complex for Excelon which had no choice but to be situated in the state and will net $393 million in taxpayer funds.* 

A crowd of about 200 is now booing the mayor pic.twitter.com/hTmuFRt0On
— Luke Broadwater (@lukebroadwater) April 8, 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.

Cash, Bass or Ass

The employees of Mother's Grille were robbed at 6:30 a.m. early Sunday,* four employees were pistol-whipped.

Two teenagers, 15-year-old Alonzo Gorham-Ramos and a 14-year-old Allen Pinkney, were arrested for robbing and beating* to death 51-year-old Kim Leto in Highlandtown.

Allan Foster, a March of Dimes volunteer, was killed on Thursday.

Shooting: E. Oliver & N. Collington St. Adult male reported to be shot. Homicide Detectives notified. Dispatched time: 11:21PM
— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) February 1, 2014

The death of Ricky Bailey, shot in 1998, has been ruled a homicide, making 27 official murders for the month on January, compared to 14 last January.

One Kenneth Jackson got life + 20 for the robbery and murder of Andrew Davis.

Club Pussycat and the Circus Bar are in trouble with the liquor board after charges of prostitution on-premesis.

"There oughta be a law" dept: remember there was a bridge proposed by Harbor Point developers to link Harbor Point with their other development, Harbor East? Thanks to DOT director William Johnson, taxpayers will be paying as much as $3.4 million towards that bridge now in addition to the $29.8 million that has been diverted from other city roads projects. The total cost to taxpayers for the project is estimated at about $400 million.*

Oh, and the mayor wants $160,000 from the Board of Estimates for a speed camera consultant.

Three people were shot outside a hookah lounge in Randallstown.

What? CNN reports that in MoCo last week an off-duty officer shot his son as he stabbed his mother, both mother and son died.

In Anne Arundel county officers shot Vern, a family's Chesapeake Bay retriever.* At Arundel Mills Mall a man walked out of the Bass Pro Shop with a shotgun. And 18-year-old Elisha Ransome was arrested for stealing a man's wallet at knifepoint.

Police: Gold Car Led to Alleged HoCo Pimp

Hipster Oppression

Yadina Morales

Life in prison for Karla Porter, whose husband was killed at her behest in front of the Towson Hess station.

Yes, it's okay to drink a little bit when you're breastfeeding. Not okay: getting blackout drunk and passing out on top of the baby, smothering it to death, as Yadina Morales of Hagerstown is alleged to have done.

You know that weirdo "sovereign citizen" defense that Robert G. Moore was trying on for size? Apparently said defense is being brought back* courtesy of the Moorish American Science Temple.

Remember when Towson was a sleepy suburban burg where not much ever happened? Those days are apparently muerto -- a Towson student was stabbed on Burke Avenue and taken to Shock Trauma, and on Friday two students were robbed on Aigburth Road.

Sad: Terry Douglass, the woman who was mauled to death by her pit bull suffered from cerebral palsy. And the dog, "Boosie," had also attacked her as well as her grandson in the past and been taken by animal control but had been returned to her. Daughter: "she's probably in heaven saying he didn't mean to do it."

Sometime CP photographer Noah Scialom was arrested after not removing his "monkey ass" from 322 Howard Street, which police allege was operating as an illegal bottle club. Fenton has the police report, which includes rather more incriminating details and a certain "green leafy substance." Police seem pretty hot to trot lately when it comes to busting bootleg party spaces, or maybe it just seems that way because they're busting talkative and connected hipsters.

Detective Joseph Walker

Remember the cop from New Jersey who shot a motorist in a road rage incident on 97? He's claiming self-defense and gave an interview to the NY Post.

Lt. Parker Elliot, who was in charge of the NE District the day Tyrone West died* last July 18, has been reassigned to an undisclosed position. Still no cause of death has been released.

The CP's got the EPA's remarks on the Harbor Point site, and they're doozies: "[air and water test] results that are impossible, mathematically and practically," and references to obsolete equipment and improperly placed equipment. The Brew has more deets as well.

Gun arrest: 200 block E. 24th Street. Northeast District officers arrest 26-year old Lindell Session with a loaded handgun.
— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) November 3, 2013

Shooting: 3200 block Normount Ave. Man reported to be shot in the hip. Southwest District Detectives investigating.
— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) November 2, 2013

Shooting: 1300 block Ensor Street. Man reported to be shot at location. Detectives investigating.
— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) November 2, 2013

aquam fellis

Another Edmondson Avenue shooting, this one in the 3300 block. And a shooting on South Pulaski and Christian Streets.*

Via Justin George, a woman stabbed in front of the Metro Gallery on Charles Street, under the watchful eye of Mr. Boh.

Fell's Point residents are concerned about the dangerous chemicals soon to be seeping from the Harbor Point site.

Unshocking news: more robberies in Canton

City Liquor Board chair claims that the liquor board is going to start doing actual work now.* Uh huh.

Geeze, CVS has to pay a $250,000 fine after admitting to selling expired medication and playing it fast and loose with customer's personal information.

Wow, JZ, you really need to moderate the comments on your web site.
UPDATE: the article's comments appear to be shut down for now, but if you're really dying to know what they said someone on Reddit collected some of the klassier selections. The story was linked to the front page of the Drudge Report.

A good listener

View Larger MapThe City is expected to give final approval for the sale of $107 million in bonds tonight, upon which the city will pay $174 million in interest. Of that $107 million, $35 million will be lent to the city by the developer himself, Michael Beatty, who will earn an additional $20 million in interest on the loan. All told the project is expected to cost city taxpayers about $600 million. The project, BTW, will sit atop a shit-ton of plastic-and-concrete entombed* hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen made famous by Erin Brockovich that is known to cause lung and intestinal cancers and damage DNA. Beatty has said that developers will re-cap the devil's brew of toxic chemicals after construction is finished ... in about a decade.
Fun facts: the developer's name is pronounced "Beety," at least one of his sons goes to Gilman and he has been known to wear khaki skinny jeans.* (WTF?) He claims to be impervious to critics, "I was never a good listener."

A 2012 Honda Civic Hybrid was stolen Saturday night in Evergreen in North Baltimore, Maryland tag #28373CA, silver 4-door. Call 911 if you see the car.

September 12 at 6:30 p.m. the Metro Gallery will be hosting "The Grateful Zeb Show," a benefit for Zeb Drinkwater, who was shot at 40th St and Roland Avenues.

And tonight at 7 p.m. is the "Walk of Hope," a neighborhood walk starting at 22nd and Barclay.

Tomorrow morning there's some kind of anti-corrupt-judge flash mob at the federal courthouse at 101 W. Lombard.

OoooooOoo Yeh

Police have in custody three juveniles they believe are responsible for the recent rash of phone-jackings and occasional shootings in the Northern, reports the Patch's Adam Bednar. But where are the mugshots? I need mugshots and nicknames, ppl! ... oh, right, they're juveniles. But the Deuce says one is being charged as an adult! So we get one mugshot! Bring me his head.

Tide Point

In other real estate news, Harbor Point developer Michael Beatty is buying his own city-issued bonds* at a discount, using the interest he's saving to pay for a construction loan. Points out Douglas Miles of BUILD Baltimore: "If [Beatty] can afford to buy $35 million worth of bonds, he could have afforded to invest in the project and reduce the TIF."
Update: Even Rodricks* is peeved about this. (But how is the bond scandal good public relations?)

... so what do you think about Hampden Merchants wanting the local methadone clinic to close*? Sounds like NIMBYism to me, especially considering most of the addicts are from Hampden. That clinic is probably the only thing keeping the merchants from being targeted more .. and the reason rents on the Avenue are still so cheap.

you assholes!

Harbor Point approved.*
Now including $95 million of federal highway funds.
$88 million enterprise tax credits (including $44 million tax reimbursements from the state)
$24 brownfield credits (even though the site was cleared for building in 1997)
$95 million federal highway funds for bridges and roads
$13 million utilities
$2 million Crossroads Academy $$
___
$266 million
+
$174 million interest on $107 million loan
___
$440 million
+ $200 million in lost in state education funding

$596 million cost to taxpayers.

Nothng better to do with that money

After nine days without a homicide, a fatal shooting at the NY Fried Chicken* and W. Baltimore and SCarey street was the 142nd homicide of 2013.

Gilman dog sculpture stolen. Also, Gilman 5th graders have so much money they have nothing better to do with it than buy a $550 cement greyhound.* Local rival gangs likely to blame include the Lakers, the Mawrtians, the Quakers and the Roland Park Smurfs.

Down in AAC, good guys chased down and tackled a guy who snatched a woman's purse from the JC Penney shoe department at the mall.

Well duh. A NY judge found that the city's stop-and-frisk policy violates rights.

Eric Holder suggests he may do away with mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

Thanks for the tax dollars, bitchezz!!

Why the waffling on Harbor Point, Sun? Their own poll shows 73% of their readers are against the $393+ million project.
"Will Harbor Point be good for the city?" I guess if by "the city" you mean the 1% of assholes who don't mind paying to park for the privilege of shopping next to some office complex, maybe, but aren't they already served by Harbor East?
     "Somewhat secretive nature of the process"? Oh, so those secret closed-door meetings were only somewhat illegal? But "future such discussions will now be public." And why would one think that? Future developers now understand that there are no real consequences to breaking open meetings laws.
     Harbor Point is an in-your-face assraping of city taxpayers the likes of which this city has never seen before, and our children and children's children will be paying for it long after the project goes the way of West side redevelopment, the city-owned Hilton, the revival of SoWeBo, the Metro to nowhere, and well, every other city project since the Schaefer years. It's not their first time at the rodeo; the Sun's editors know even if 99.9% of citizens are against it the city council is going to pass their bill anyway.* So why so much milquetoast, Sun? Afraid Michael Beatty will use some of his billions to sue? Second reading of the bill is tonight, BYOPeanuts, or if you're trying to purge to lose weight The City That Breeds will be streaming it live.

Barf, barf, barf.

E.L. Reisinger III

W.H. Cole

 Branch

M. Beatty

A city council committee meeting of three councilmen-- Warren Branch (13th), William H. Cole IV*(11th) and Edward Reisinger*-- approved $107 the million in financing that will cost taxpayers $398 million, as requested by Harbor Point developer Michael Beatty and vigorously protested by every other person in town. Beatty also shot down the church members' $25 million request but promised to put $3 million towards affordable housing because it's "the right thing to do."
     Things apparently got loud, because  Road-Trippin Trikki Rikki Spector, city councilperson notorious for repping the 5th district, living in the 10th, and charging taxpayers for her gas, called public observers a "peanut gallery."
     Now that you mention it, Rikki, all of those greasy grifters really should be pelted with peanuts wherever they go. Also waiters should sneak pubes in their food, women (and/or men) should refuse to have sex with them and schoolchildren should compose mocking jumprope rhymes using their names.

Sleazy William Cole, sit on a pole!
Dirty Warren Branch, move to the bunny ranch!
Backdoor Michael Beatty! Go live in Haiti!
Edward Reisinger the 3rd ...

They should be menaced by paperboys until the day they die, old and alone, perhaps asphyxiated in a vault, fetalized on top of their ill-gotten gains. Their children, children and children's children should be condemned to reside in one of the slums next to the development until every taxpayer of Baltimore is repaid the $663,333 in goods and services that the project will cost us.

'I will not let you know when your time has run out'

Fenton chronicles the foretold death of Quintin Poindexter*

The Medical Examiner says that autopsy results on Tyrone West could take weeks,* West died last month during an attempted arrest by city police.

Tavon White pleaded guilty to racketeering and attempted murder*

Prison officials got a threatening letter from the inmate accused of stabbing a corrections officer at North Branch, but they didn't warn said officer.* The union says that there have been 15 assaults on officers in the past 30 days (!)

The bomb squad was called to Elijah Cummings' office over a mysterious putty-like substance, the stuff was found to be not explosive.

The Fells Point residents' association has decided they do not not oppose the $398 million Harbor Point project, and the Downtown Management Authority (DMA) has also come out as opposed, which the Brew calls "a blunt wake-up call" to the mayor and city Development Director Brenda McKenzie.

Directly following the "Night Out" against crime a man was shot in the 1400 block of Guilford Avenue. And in nearby Waverly, residents are trying to curtail the hours of longtime trouble spot Yau Bros.

A body was found outside of Hillcrest Elementary school in Catonsville July 30

Stand up straight! Suck in that gut! Look like you know where you're going! A Canadian study found that street robbers pick their victims based on the way they walk (thanks EM)

Vegetables for the children!

Don't miss Carol Ott of Baltimore Slumlord Watch talking to CBS evening news. A poignant piece, but wish Jeff Pegues had reported anything about why there are so many vacants and what the city is(n't) doing about them.

Look who's taking too: city insiders are using clergymen as a front to get at a $25 million piece of the Harbor Point project. ... but it's for vegetables and Internet for the children! Think of the children! What kind of Nazi Teahadist could take a radish out of the hands of a preacher who is going to get a kickback to feed it to an innocent child? A racist one, probably.

Tavon White has entered a guilty plea. Speaking of children, wonder what will become of all of his?

A corrections officer was stabbed five times with a "makeshift weapon" at North Branch, an assault "attributed to gang activity"

The coke-dealing Byrd brothers got 10 years

Report of a shooting in area of 3900 blocks of Potee/S Hanover in Brooklyn.. #BPDSD
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) August 6, 2013

Recent homicide victims names: James Godsey, 21, killed Fri in 1600 blk Hartsdale Rd; Dwayne Powell, 22, killed Thurs in 6400 blk Harford Rd
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) August 6, 2013

In court this am where a BGF member who pled guilty to murder two weeks ago is asking to take it back, go to trial
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) August 6, 2013

Parallel Construction

Journalists can't protect their sources any more (now even TOR has been compromised), but the DEA's "SOD" [Special Operations Division] is apparently so good at protecting theirs that even judges and lawyers never know their sources existed. Vocab of the day: parallel construction: wherein investigators invent a cause for arrest where none previously existed in order to establish a legal reason to be investigating someone the NSA/DEA is already investigating. Example: "Agent Heywood Jablowme wanted to protect his informant Snitchy McPlea, and wasn't sure the warrantless GPS tracking, phone or email records he got from the DICE database would hold up, so he asked city police to pull over Pookie Green for a busted tail light when he knew Pookie was riding dirty to create a parallel construction for the bust and prosecution of the D-Bag drug crew."
Related: USA Today reported that the FBI let informants commit 5,658 crimes in 2011. 

All's well that ends.. horribly. Officer James Smith, who shot his fiancee Kendra Diggs in the back in front of police and medical crews* as she tried to escape him, has committed suicide in prison.*

Two men shot overnight in the Perkins Homes*

A city grand jury indicted James Berry III and three associates of the D-block drug crew for their roles in a revenge plot that killed seven* people

 Murderer

Scott Thompson, 47 (and not to be mistaken for the Canadian actor) was shot on Rosedale Street on Sunday and has died.*

On  March 3, 2013, the sketched  suspect  at  right  stabbed  and  murdered Twain  Robinson  in  the  3100  block of  Milford Avenue. 

Police arrested suspect Darryl Knight, who has his zip code (21234) tattooed on his face.

Jury selection began today for Karla Porter,* accused of arranging the murder of her husband William at a Towson gas station. Because of her alleged videotaped confession Porter likely would have faced the death penalty had the state not repealed it.*

Local gadfly Adam Meister escaped an attempted robbery last Friday night: 

"two black males around 16 to 18 years old approached me from the median on Eutaw as I approached Lafayette. One pulled out a gun which appeared to have a large barrel and pointed it at me as the other one said something to me that was very hard to understand because his English was so horrible ("give me...." is all I could make out). Upon seeing the weapon I instinctively turned my back to them and started sprinting north on Eutaw." 

Meiser escaped and the perps are still at large.

Remember the aspiring rapper with the weird-shaped head and tattooed eyebrows that spell "MAD MAN" whose wife stabbed a guy at the Fish Head Cantina in Halethorpe? Well,  Fish Head Cantina's been fined $2,000 for* its rowdy crowd.

The City That Breeds has a roundup of all the numbers in the Harbor Point development project/scandal. Note that Excelon is required to build in the city, so the employment numbers would be similar no matter where they built it.

a very important work of art

Four people were shot yesterday.*

Four guys arrested on N. Calvert Street for stabbing 22-year-old Jerod Andre Gilmore to death on N. Calvert and E. Baltimore Streets* on Friday, an event police watched live on city crime cameras. Gilmore's death was the city's 135 homicide of 2013. Notably, none of the four arrested have adult or juvenile criminal records, but Gilmore had more than a couple of arrests to his name, including for assault, armed robbery, illegal guns and drugs. 

One Troy Keene arrested for a murder in the 900 block of Bennett Place last Tuesday.

Sources: Downtown stabbing believed to be gang dispute, and for once it's not BGF: this one's believed to be Bloods v. Crips
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) July 29, 2013

Law violated
 by panel

A state panel found that the city violated the law* by holding secret meetings on the Harbor Point deal-- but that finding doesn't change a thing. Can we please stop calling it a $107 million project? The city is borrowing $107 million, but interest on the loan will be $174 million and tax breaks will be $113 million, so let's call it what it is, a $394 million deal. And have we mentioned that Excelon's merger requires them to build in the city no matter what? ... Help a friend steal $394, go to jail. Help your friend steal $394 million, pose your boob flab in a cocktail dress for the Sun magazine.*

Dayum, Sun-- at least eight staffers have left recently, including AAC crime and courts reporter Andrea Siegel, impish entertainment scribe Sam Sessa, and apparently whoever airbrushes the boob flab out of the vanity pieces in the magazine. How much thinner can that paper possibly get?

A man in Essex was shot multiple times by home invader* Kenneth David Cox, 24 ... then the victim somehow beat Cox to death with an unnamed "blunt object." I imagine it went just like this, but with three guys, a gun, and blood everywhere.

In Pasadena a man shot his girlfriend's Yorkie.*

Tomorrow at 12:45 JM Giordano will be talking about his photo series "The Summer of the Gun" with Kojo Nnmandi on 88.5 WAMU.

Bwahaha, Julius Henson's appeal in his robocall case was rejected and he still owes that $1 million fine. Hope he saved some of that "Jump the Broom" money.