January of 2009 kicked off with Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld
personally arresting two people and seizing the sawed-off shotguns they were shooting in the air, and the month went on with 22 murders, including five teenagers.
Maryland kicked off DNA collection, wonder how long the backlog is? And did the
lab ever fix the 15 "essential" procedural criteria that, in violation of state and federal laws, the BPD continues to conceal from the public?
and
Holy Crap! The Mayor was Indicted!February kicked off
with the "gold medal winner of bong hits," and "A Baltimore man filed a $210 million civil lawsuit ... in connection with a 2006 incident during which he says a band of rogue cops held him at gunpoint in the street, stripped him and searched his rectum in front of about 30 onlookers."
Wonder what happened to that one?
And February marked the end of
The Examiner, which would become the beginning of
Investigative Voice.
March kicked off with a murder outside of Coconuts, we learned of a
murderous girl gang known as the Bounty Hunters and heard tales of
Bloods-affiliated prison guards, plus the
story of "Kanibal Lecktor," who led the Bloods from his Cumberland prison cell.
And don't forget, who Rikki Spector
weaseled out of a traffic ticket and claimed the officer whose order she ignored needed more training.
In
April, dog owners foamed at the mouth at new $1,000 leash fines. Indictments revealed how the Black Guerilla family got
cell phones and Grey Goose vodka in jail. And there were
the very sad stories of Lemuel Wallace and the family murders at the Towson Sheraton.
May kicked off with
Patrick Byers spared the death penalty for the murder of Carl Lackl, and continued with
pedestrians attacked by packs of wilding teens, a trend that would go on to rage through the summer. And Helen Holton
thanked the Almighty for getting her off the hook! HALLELUJAH!
In
June there was a
hextuple at Shirley's Honey Hole, Bealefeld keeled over during the police 10k, and the CP
debuted the charming feature, "Guerilla Family Portraits." And we met
scary Sirliar Stokes, who shot a dancer in the woods and then went back to the strip club. And in June the year's oldest murder
victim, Ethel Henderson, was set on fire, allegedly by her drug-addicted grandson who was angry she wouldn't give him money.
July brought more street attacks. In NY, a baby shower for the wife of Jamie Hector, the actor who played Marlo Stanfield in The Wire,
ended in a gunfight that left a 17-year-old dead and two men injured. And the
Sun turned to Twitter in a big way.
August was
Jon Cardin's douchey proposal and
lots of Harbor violence.
In
September,
Ponts killed Rice with the samurai sword, and hidden cameras revealed how
helpful and friendly Baltimore ACORN staffers are.
And we got this stat:
"The 234 people killed last year had a combined 2,404 prior arrests - 162 related to guns and 898 related to drugs. That's an average of 10 arrests per suspect and 10.3 arrests per victim."
In
October,
Hopkins student Miriam Frankl was mowed down by a rampaging drunk after cops repeatedly ignored 911 calls.
November's claim to fame is the trial-- and conviction-- of the Mayor, who still refuses to step down. Still no word on who's going to pay for her crack team of esquires.
And here in
December, we saw an
81-year-old put in jail by mistake, a
soldier on leave from Afghanistan killed on a trip to the store, and our youngest murder victim, 20-month-old Janaya Wallace. And at 237 official homicides, we're wrapping up the year with three more murders than last year. For what it's worth.
and 
-- both good reads.