The Bold and the Stupidful

Police say they are increasing police presence around the 3400 block of Mary Ave in #BPDNED after 2 sexual assaults in the past 15 months
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) March 28, 2014

Sketchy rapist

.. this is the fat rapist in the Northeast with Jocelyn Wildenstein lips who has broken into (at least) two women's homes* and assaulted them (left). Is it too judgy of me, or is it okay to say that the sketches coming out of the police department in the past year or so have just not been very good?

Another DUI* for 98 Rock DJ Stephen "Stash" Smith.

"Federal fake-pot crackdown continues"

Palmer?
Damn nearly killed 'er!

Blargh, Janay Palmer, the woman who was cold-clocked by Ray Rice in an Atlantic City elevator, married him on Friday. In case you were wondering, NJ's marital-privilege law doesn't apply to domestic abuse and wouldn't apply to an incident that happened before they were married. And the incident was caught on video anyway. So I guess she did it for love. Or money. Or stupid. Barf. Gag.

Senator Jamie Raskin and Delegate Sandy Rosenburg have introduced measures to require a warrant for drone tracking but nobody's going for it.

Passage of trans-rights bill has reportedly riled the crazies. But the bathrooms! Won't someone please think of the bathrooms?! Come quickly Lord Jesus!!  /s

Larence Godfrey

Dayum, in AAC an inmate scaled razor wire.* He put a blanket over it, but still, that's pretty hardcore there Larence.

Really out to get you

Spooky comment on the blog this morning--

Today's date of this posting is (October 7, 2013)... As I was driving down Interstate 95-S just past the 295 Baltimore/Washington Pkwy. at 12:45 a.m. this past mid April when I suddenly saw a large drone (about the size of a helicopter)hovering just off of the northbound side of 95-N with red lights flashing on and off underneath it, when all of a sudden, bright white lights touched down in front of my car, then on top of my car and then circled onto the northbound side on top of another car. That was probably the spookiest thing I've ever seen. I feel like we are now living in a twilight zone dictatorship called Obamba-land and no longer the good ole U.S.A. land of the free! We are living in scary times!!!

Yes they are, but spying is a bipartisan effort! And speaking of the federales, the New York Times has uncovered that the government shutdown has been planned for months, and guess which evil duo is behind it? That would be the Koch Brothers, founders of the Tea Party, who are no doubt pleased as punch that the government shutdown means less nosy gubmint poking into their activities, activities such as illegal sales to Iran, fracking and drilling for oil in national parks (which continue in spite of the "shutdown"). The shutdown is win-win for them, and we can expect it to go on for a long time.

The FBI couldn't figure out how to seize the Bitcoins of the founder of the Silk Road, so they seized users' funds instead. Fun fact: Silk Road operated on a TOR network, TOR being an acronym for "The Onion Router," so-called because of its encryption layers. The network was a creation of the U.S. government, which wanted to offer anonymity to users in repressive regimes. The FBI likely took down Ross "Dread Pirate Roberts" Ulbricht by using a backdoor in Firefox to insert malware that identified specific networking devices.

And court records were unsealed that reveal why Ladar Levison shut down Lavabit, the e-mail service provider to Edward Snowden and about 400,000 other people: the Feds demanded that Levison turn over SSL keys that would give them access to every single user's metadata and fined him $5,000 a day when he refused.

Don't think extralegal government activities are something you should worry about? Read this plz, and mull over the fact that Maryland State Police spied on Peace protestors-- not just here or there, but monitored their activities for more than a year.

Oh, and drones

Mueller admitted what BCrime readers have known for a year: drones b swarming. We even have our own model, the Raven, (surely) inspired by and tested over Baltimore, built in Simi Valley and deployed to Afghanistan,

نعب للغراب

نعب للغراب

byotcihz.

Don't date, don't drive, and never, ever buy tickets

Monte Carter

Another online-dating murder?! Jennifer Conyers, 32, was murdered and her house set on fire allegedly by a guy she met online.* She was murdered Friday and Monte Delano Carter, 38, was arrested Saturday, driving her car and with blood *still* on his pants and shoes. FWIW he (allegedly) used her ATM card to get cash and buy stuff he traded for heroin. How about instead of doing a background check on someone before dating them, just never dating anyone ever.

Inside: Delightful Chinese New Year party. Outside: Stabbing on Charles Street. Metro Gallery hemmed by crime scene tape. #Baltimore
— Julie Bykowicz (@bykowicz) February 10, 2013

Also on Friday, a shooting on Homestead St.


Really, Daily Record?! "Capital Punishment Already Dead in Maryland" ... just because a crass headline comes over the wire it doesn't mean you have to publish it, geeze

"Just give us the cash, yo." Nice-guy Medfield robbers let a victim keep his wallet, reports the Patch.

Haha, winning. The Sun obtains the Mayor's office's bitchy emails about speed camera coverage.* Also, Larry Young of WOLB apparently helped provide the Mayor's office with "talking points." Shady.

Carl Stokes wants to vacate the never-enforced law that bars high event-ticket surcharges.

Not Baltimore, but worth a mention: MSN claims that Christopher Dorner, a guy allegedly stalking and targeting members of the LAPD, is the "first drone target on U.S. soil." Not true, that honor goes to one Rodney Brossart of North Dakota. Also unless the drone is equipped with Hellfire missiles, not sure how it is any different than using a helicopter.

Meet the two old white guys who will be head of the Tribune Co. .. apparently the CEO sees the news audience as old and male, so which came first? Does the news reflect old male perspectives because old males are the primary consumer, or are old males the primary consumer because the news is from an old male perspective?

Sad and Happy Endings

A man was shot to death and found on Southern Ave. in Lauraville yesterday morning*

Good for you, Ed Ericson Jr., doing the tough and tedious work to trace Johns Hopkins U's $49 million payout for developing military drones, an activity rather at odds against the University founder's Quaker principles.

Day 763 of the Phylicia Barnes case. Fenton tweets that the Medical Examiner is testified her death was from asphyxia (lack of oxygen) and that after being bitched out and threatened with jail by Judge Sweeney yesterday Phylicia's father and stepfather are now sitting next to each other. The Deuce reports jurors were shown autopsy photos and that the defense floated the possibility she could have jumped into the water on her own.

Also from the CP: more on the assault of inmate Kenneth Davis at Roxbury; the end of Joshua Goldberg's epic mortgage fraud scheme

Headline of the week: "Men got 'Happy Endings' at York Spa massage parlor, thanks to City Paper ads." (Q: are topless rubdowns legal even if happy endings aren't?) or maybe it's "Ray Lewis denies using deer antler spray"

PA gun-store robbers caught in Baltimore, police say the robbers hoped to trade the guns for money and/or drugs.

Lawyers for Robert Gladden, the accused Perry Hall High shooter, argued today that his case should go to juvenile court.

Hampden man stole bike, crashed bike, got caught.

The principal of Mt St Joe's has resigned after accusations of "inappropriate" communications with students.

I always feel like somebody's watching me...

Flaming drone near Salisbury, from CNN

Quality op/ed in today's NYT regarding "The End of Privacy," which ended sometime between 2001 and 2007 when the guvmint began collecting everyone's emails and watching us from the air.  $176 million for a drone-- imagine how many schools that could get up to code, or swimming pools and rec centers those dollars could fund, sheesh.

And, yet, the one instance where the violation of someone's privacy could seriously protect citizens' life and limbs from psycho killers, and also potentially exonerate people -- by which I mean the DNA swabbing of suspects-- the MD court won't allow that. Gives one no doubts about whose interests are really being served by MD's courts, no?

In other news of Baltimore denizens getting boned by The Man, go get those big banks, George Nilson.

Here Come the Swarming Drones

Perhaps you weren't freaked out about reports awhile back of drones crisscrossing Baltimore and trailing citizens' cars. And maybe you were unruffled when you found out drones have been cleared for use for commercial purposes (muses one flying-camera operator, "Maybe the F.A.A. should give a driver’s license for this ... Do a background check to make sure I’m not a terrorist.”) But how do you feel about Harvard engineering hummingbird-sized drones that can swarm you with cameras, poison darts or God-knows-what? Anyone else see the military-industrial complex's planes showing off over the city yesterday and heave a sigh of relief that they weren't bombing *us*...

Drones over Baltimore!

You're not paranoid if they're really out to get you! -- more than one reader has reported seeing what sounds like "Raven" law-enforcement drones flying over Baltimore's East-side neighborhoods, 95 and the Harbor area, hovering around houses and also trailing specific cars.
.. anyone else see these??