Elmo libre

 Kevin Kiadii

Sheldon Stephens

Three lawsuits dropped against native son Kevin Clash b/c of time limits; the alleged actions in, on and upon Cecil Singleton, Kevin Kiadii and an anonymous accuser allegedly happened six years ago, and in 2006 NY established a 5-year statute of limitations on civil claims on sex abuse claims.
BUUTTT there is still one more suit to go, filed by Sheldon Stephens in Pennsylvania district court in March of this year. PA has a 12-years-after-18 statute of limitations, and Stephens' lawsuit involves sleazy lawyers, crystal meth, nitrate poppers and a masturbating chauffeur.

Well, back to Baltimore, where seven people were shot over the weekend.*

.@BaltimorePolice reporting a shooting about 8 blocks from where @MayorSRB endorsed @LtGovBrown this morning
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) July 2, 2013

And what the fuckty fuck. One Lukasz Szkiluk, 63, "accused of killing his estranged wife had tied up another woman in his Highlandtown home before the killing, according to court records, and the captive told police she chewed through the ropes and escaped after the man showed her his wife’s body."*

Indecent exposure car

A triple murder over by the Mondawmin mall* in the 2200 block of N. Fulton Avenue.

Whoa, man! The state Senate passed (30-16) Curt Anderson's bill (SB 297) that decriminalizes possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana (pot, weed, ganj, green, trees, &tc.). The bill goes to the house on March 28. Gawd that would be such a help in Baltimore city-- in spite of whatever FHBIII said in NYMag's "Truce on Drugs" article, the city still puts thousands of people in jail for minor amounts of weed every year. Promising sign: last year the House passed a bill that lowered the penalty for less than 10 grams from a year in jail and a $1000 fine to 90 days and a $500 fine. Should it pass, HB 1453 lowers the fine down to $100 and gets rid of the criminal penalties completely.

At the same time, the city is cracking down on booze, barring liquor stores from operating in areas zoned 'residential.'

So there have been three home-invasion-ish robberies in the Villages of Homeland development (where Woodburne Ave turns into Homeland Ave). Not to mention about three motorists robbed/carjacked on that stretch of York Rd.

The city is paying $150,000 to a guy who was arrested by mistake-- and held for eight months.

Wait, what? Law enforcement doesn't need a warrant to read your emails -- so long as someone has opened them and/or they're more than six months old? What the heck is that?

State police are swamped with gun license applications.

Victim ID updates: Gerald Commodore, 22, killed on Windsor Ave yesterday; D'Andre Thomas, 25, killed on Fox St
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) March 19, 2013

Oh noo, a fourth lawsuit for Kevin "Elmo" Clash from his first accuser, Sheldon Stephens,* and the words "crystal meth sex parties" are involved. Stephens has filed in PA, a state with a more lenient statute of limitations than NY (or for that matter, MD).

& if you're into 30-something Hispanic guys with spiky hair WBAL advises you to "Watch for car linked to indecent exposures cases." Oh dang, sorry ladies, they got him.

Sausage parties, gay trollies and football

RT @baltimorepolice: Homicide detectives are investigating a stabbing that occurred overnight in the 1800 block of N. Fulton Ave.
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) December 7, 2012

Four people were shot night-before-last*

Sheila Dixon will be in court today for a probation-violation hearing*

Senator Lisa Gladden (D-41) in the courtroom, either for moral support or may have a trial of her own? Donald English representing Dixon!

— MrGiordano (@MrGiordano) December 7, 2012

The poop-storm of robberies continues in the SE, this week's Baltimore Guide collection includes the mugger who said "thank you," an escort forced to drive her her home by two suspects who then robbed her, a woman robbed after she refused to buy food for a guy lurking around a carryout.

Marc Steiner had a sausage party last night to talk homicides (which I guess is cool, given most perps and victims are also male), guests included Fenton and Guglielmi, here's a link to the podcast.

In other sausage party news, The Daily Beast has yet more deets on the Kevin Clash case. (Wonder if they'll phase Elmo out, the whole scandal rather tarnishes the brand, no?) Here's a Jezebel/Gawker summary if you don't want to read all them words.

Down in Greenbelt, the 4th is hearing the case of Anthony McIntosh, a prison guard accused of failing to get medical help for inmate Ronnie White.


More bad speed cameras-- imagine that, a profit-driven corporation cutting corners to maximize profit. Now the one on University Parkway has been demonstrated to have given out a ticket to a car that the camera tracked at 45 mph but was actually going 7.* Yes, 7. Meanwhile last Saturday Xerox/ACS closed down three lanes of Cold Spring to test the camera there and found no problems. Hrm. Last month a state audit found that Xerox/ACS didn't test the cameras before installing them using the standards they were supposed to, and didn't perform calibration checks once they were installed.

A prisoner, Brian Dargan, is being charged with attempted murder after shooting an officer in the leg at St. Joseph's hospital.

Two CV appliance-booglars, Chambers Agurs and Derrick Moffatt, were in court yesterday; both agreed to the statement of facts but pleaded not guilty and both got time served, were ordered to pay restitution and got two years of supervised probation (which Steve G. notes costs the supervisee $75 a month), though now Moffatt (caught red-handed toting a refrigerator door) wants to appeal.

Can we quit acting like it's an isolated incident when people who get beat about the head for a living turn out to be a touch mental? Anyway, happy purple Friday, some Raven got his guns taken away after being accused of domestic violence by his babies' mom.

Also in North Baltimore, five stolen government cell phones, a stolen 1988 Oldsmobile, a burgled yoga studio (how many yoga studios are there in Hampden these days?), a stolen marriage certificate.

The owner of an Annapolis trolley company says he'll shut down rather than be forced to trolley same-sex newlyweds. Note that discrimination against sexual orientation has been against the law in MD since 2002-- guess this Matt Grubbs guy was cool with same-sex hand-holding tourists so long as they were still second-class citizens when it came to marriage. Speaking of marriage, the coverage of the issuing of licenses here has been notably blase, compared to the excited tone of coverage in WA. .. I called down to the courthouse, where a guy named John told me six marriage licenses were issued for Baltimore city yesterday, and that the reaction around the state was similarly underwhelming. (In contrast, Seattle issued about 400 licenses yesterday.) But this is sweet: curmudgeonly traditionalist Frank Conaway Sr. told Pat Warren, "I’m going to see that if the court wants to open on New Year’s Eve, I’ll be here at 12:01. If they want to get married, I’ll be happy to do it." Aww! 

Down at Ft. Meade, the commander who made Bradley Manning stand at attention while naked will take the stand. 

Eenteresting Tweet from Fenton: Oakland has now been put in receivership, which will put it under the purview of a federal judge, a compliance director, and technically also the plaintiffs of its 12-year-old lawsuit if the plan is approved next Wednesday. It looks like it's the first police department ever to be in such a situation, and as the KQED story notes, none in this troika of bosses is actually responsible for running the department.

'this scar was invisible because it was on his soul'

Must read: NYMag on "The Truce on Drugs: what happens now that the war has failed?" ... Which uses Baltimore as the prime example of said failure/truce, and details FHBIII's relatively radical shift away from drugs towards guns. Holy crap, in 2005 in our city 108,000 people were arrested-- one sixth of the entire population arrested in a single year. Now only 1/10th of the population is arrested every year!

The Ink recounts last week's six murders

Really? a UC Berkeley study claims Baltimore is the country's 17th most "under-policed" cities,* and Fenton sez puts the cost of crime at $3,400 per citizen (don't see where that figure is in the study and dunno how they came up with it, but here's a link to the study if you want to try to figure it out).

A woman was shot in the leg in a drive-by shooting near Langston Hughes Elementary*

An Owings Mills woman claims she got a beatdown from four men during a "road rage incident" on Thanksgiving

In Cumberland, Jerod Pridget, a 20-year-old prisoner from Baltimore was beaten nearly to death in his cell*

A drug courier from Czechoslovakia, Dmytro Holovko, is one of the latest defendants v horké vodě from the Brown organization,* which you may recall is a violent pot-smuggling group with ties to Jamaica and Mexico, implicated in the grisly murder and dismemberment of alleged cash courier Michael Knight of Woodlawn.

Van Smith profiles William Bond, nee William Crockett Rovtar, a guy who killed his dad with a hammer in Ohio as a teen and now is crusading against perceived corruption in the local judiciary.

Today in Kevin Clash news: Gawker re-enacts the scandal with Spiderman and the Derpy Doo "My Little Pony" ("the bad things he did with Elmo scarred him, like when you skin your knee on the sidewalk, only this scar was invisible because it was on his soul"), the ravenous bottom-feeders at TMZ tell us Clash's nom de boudoir was "Mr. Tickler" (plus a whole lot more, which I shall now repress, lalalala) and New York magazine reports on Sesame Street's ace crisis-PR team, which includes the former CEO of Newsweek and a flak from the H. W. Bush White House. ... but srsly, what should the penalty be for a 40- or 50-something who engages in frottage with a 16-year-old? It's not right and it's not okay, but it's also not like molesting a 10-year-old either, exactly. ... FWIW, the age of consent in NY is 17.

Furry TV Creatures

So a third Kevin Clash accuser has surfaced, and this one's writing a book (and holding a press conference and also filing a lawsuit for to get some amount of cash). Why didn't any of these guys go to the police? ... Apparently while NY has no statute of limitations on prosecuting first-degree child sex assault involving victims under 16, there is a five-year SOL for second-degree a/o non-forcible abuse that starts when the victim turns 18. Clash's latest accuser is 29, accuser #2, Cecil Singleton, is now 24 (and claims he and Clash "dry humped" but didn't swap fluids 'til Singleton turned 18). The first accuser, Sheldon Stephens, is now 24 (and apparently available for totally pointless interviews).

Did you ever wonder why, when you called Katz Insurance, they didn't check your credit? Because Hal Katz was (allegedly) pocketing your cash! Katz Insurance has lost his license to insure in MD after the Insurance Administration uncovered some sketchy dealings, including $795k in missing money. And now his creditors are suing. RIP, Katz Insurance ads ... don't let the door hitcha where the good lord splitcha. 

And over in the Chillage, Steven Gewirtz is keeping tabs on trials forthcoming.

Elmo out!

An overnight shooting in Woodlawn

Carl Snowden was found guilty of a misdemeanor drug possession charge*

An unrepentant illegal dirt biker got 165 days in prison

Justin Fenton ‏@justin_fenton

Robberies reported recently in SE District, anecdotally, seemed high. Stats: Total over last 30 days was 44% higher than same period last yr

Oh no! Kevin Clash has resigned from Sesame Street - a second accuser, one Cecil Singleton, has come forward claiming he had sex with the puppeteer when he was 15, almost 20 years ago, and ps. he wants $5 million. (Why have both of these accusers gone to Clash's bosses at Sesame Street or to TMZ, but not to the police?)

TSA agent Michael Scott Wilson got two years in prison for possessing child pornography

In HarfCo, a homeowner stabbed a would-be robber

No taint on Elmo

.. but you knew that already. The accusations were brought to you by the letters B and S, and by the number "unknown six figures" (if "close sources" are to be believed). Winning comment from Gawker: "Good lord. Will we ever get a look at this guy? He's like the Snuffleupagus of sex accusers. Not since the blue dot accused a Kennedy of rape has someone remained so mysterious." (But why pay him off if nothing is true? But if they are true, why go to Sesame Workshop before the police?)

Also from the TMZ, a local bus driver delivering a beatdown to a student playing loud music.