October 11

A man was shot in the buttocks on Mosher Street for no apparent reason.

Dixon: our prisons are country clubs!

If you didn't go to the Block earlier this year, you missed hooch-swilling 15-year-olds, back-room "intimate interactions," plenty of drugs and a Foxy Lady named Lot of Bottom.

The Post serves up a TV-news-worthy lede: "The question has vexed us all: Where did I leave my cellphone? Consider the added anxiety, then, of having misplaced it near a murder scene -- a murder scene authorities suspect you created. Allegations made public this week suggest that James F. Swann put himself exactly in that bind. The 32-year-old is charged with first-degree murder in connection with the Oct. 3 shooting in Waldorf of Joseph G. Hickman..."

JZ: Rap and Fling Latest in Long String

"A woman was dragged from a bench and rapped at the Nursery Road Rail Station Tuesday afternoon ... After a few minutes she advised, all of a sudden he just grabbed her and forced her into a wooded area ... [she] managed to break free telling officers she swam to the Patpasco River back to the train station ... Officers say [the suspect] also flung to the Patpasco River where officers finally found him. Police say this is just the latest of a long string of similar arrest."
UPDATE: WJZ fixed all of the entertaining typos! :(
(For more grody details, read the Sun story!)

More on the NE district domestic-violence pilot project from the Wretched's Brendan Kearney and Luke Broadwater at the Examiner. Who wrote it better?

A Baltimore County judge Tuesday sentenced high school teacher Christian Liverman, right, to one year of probation after he pleaded guilty to assaulting a 16-year-old girl in his classroom.

Two gun felons and a thieving NIH employee met their fates in US District Court.

"Police called it one of the county's worst animal cruelty cases of all time.
But veteran District Court Judge Robert C. Wilcox said the investigation of the alleged Severna Park dogfighting ring is one of the worst examples of police work he's seen."
Meow!

The Baltimore City Grand Jury indicted Carroll Bell, 56, of Philadelphia on charges of first-degree murder and first-degree rape. Court documents allege on January 25, 1990, a woman, later identified as Beverly Dixon, 31, was found dead and partially nude in an alley in the 2200 block of McCulloh Street. In 2006 evidence was retrieved and tested. On May 15, 2007 the evidence was matched to Carroll Bell. An arraignment is scheduled for April 8, 2008 before Judge Martin P. Welch, Room 228, Courthouse East.

Judge John M. Glynn sentenced Shardae Denise Coles, 21, of the 1300 block of Harlem Avenue, to 20 years in prison. Judge Glynn recommended that Coles be placed in the youthful offender program at Pautuxent Correctional Facility. Coles pled guilty to second-degree murder March 22, 2007. On May 7, 2006 Zion Treyvon Clemmons, 16 months old, was left in the care of Coles while his mother sought drug treatment. While in Coles’ care, Clemmons suffered blunt force trauma which resulted in his death. Coles admitted grabbing Clemmons and hurling him into the edge of a sofa at her apartment at 1305 Harlem Avenue. Assistant State’s Attorney Julie Drake, Chief of the Felony Family Violence Division, prosecuted this case.

October 10

Fed attorney Jason Weinstein explains GUNSTAT, and why some gun cases get The Rod:

"we've asked them [city police?] to track what you'd call 'federally significant convictions,' which are crimes of violence, felony drug crimes, that are the kind of prior offenses which increase your federal time to go above the five-year mandatory in the state court. So, people with two or more 'federally-significant' convictions are people who are looking at more federal time than state time. So, one of the things we do is, every two weeks, we go through and make sure that if there's someone with more than two federal convictions, that we've gotten a referral of that case."

Baltimore's 27th police-involved shooting was some crazy redneck shit! An officer making a traffic stop was dragged by the suspect SUV, until he shot the driver in the neck!

Ink updates include the closing of the cases of Shirley Cooper and Lorado Williams by exception.

Edgewood Grandma to thugs: "I don't give a damn what you think. I'm old-school."

Cops to sex offenders: no hole-in-the-candy-bowl tricks will be tolerated on Halloween!

News of the Weird: Cecil Co. man finds Weasel the Crackhead napping in his bed

October 9

Scandalized headline Du Jour: "Policy calls for shooting victims' arrest"
... but the story goes on to explain, "If the victim was committing a crime when he was shot — such as carrying drugs, possessing a handgun, committing a robbery — parole officials seek a warrant from a judge for his arrest."
Well duh!

The man shot October 5 in the 2300 block of Eutaw Place was identified as 30-year-old Tyrone Blanding.

Joining the populous ranks of Carroll County's sex offenders is Deborah Frock, 38, charged with pimping a teenager to a trucker.

Paul Stella, a 43-year-old Baltimore funeral director, pleaded guilty today to defrauding people who signed up for prepaid funerals out of more than $900,000.

Thomas Walker, age 25, got 20 Rosenstein-years for robbing a van full of clothes with a shotgun (a Mossberg, Model 500A, 12-gauge shotgun, no less, "Intended for use in harsh and dirty conditions, such as waterfowl hunting or combat.")

Events This Week

Tomorrow night C. Love is moderating a "Town Hall Meeting" for "Members of the Hip Hop generation" at the 5 Seasons Restaurant & Lounge at 830 Guilford Avenue from 6-8 p.m.

Wednesday the 10th at 5 p.m., Barack Obama will be at PG Community College with Elijah Cummings and Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler. Guests: $25, Students: $15.

This Thursday the 11th at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium the Friends School Diversity Council is hosting a free chat with David M. Kennedy, Director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control and a professor of anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. His talk will be entitled "Race, Culture and Crime: Facing Facts and Finding Common Ground.”

A good & long interview with Bealefeld aired on MPT tonight ... but the only other chance to see it will be Saturday at 5 a.m. He kind of explained the gun registry: we're doing it because NYC is doing it, being extra-hard on gun offenders is going to be our thing, and the people on the list will basically be one gun charge away from being federally Rodified, so building a tidy case against them will be high priority. That's how I heard it anyway.

Indigenous People's Day

Details of Saturday's murders: Damon Coleman, 35, was the victim shot at around 6 a.m. on the east side of the basketball court in a public housing project in the 1400 block of May Court.
The man shot in the back who died Saturday night on Homestead was identified as Darwin Kelly Jr., 20.

A man was pepper-sprayed and carjacked, police have no suspects.

Wow. Of the four robbers who held up Sgt. Christopher Nyberg in Federal Hill, only one will serve any time. Each had faced life sentences.
Nutrageous!

A man turned himself in to police in Parkville after kidnapping and "roughing up" his ex in North Point. No word on what happened to the children.

An inmate was stabbed to death at around noon in the city detention center.

October 7

WJZ's Adam May reported a murder of a teenager on a basketball court, and a man shot to death in the back in the 1700 block of Homestead Avenue.

A Sun article uses killer Corey McMillon, killer of young father-to-be Jamel St. Clair, (right) as a jump-off point to ask some experts from whence cometh the "killer impulse."
If you're interested in neurolaw, the NYT Magazine article from March, "The Brain on the Stand," covers the issue in much greater depth.
There's also a bit in Scientific American about an experiment by Ernst Fehr ("ultimatum game" guy), this one about punishment aversion.

Not as safe as being in prison...

Apparently, it's dramatically safer to be surrounded by murderers in prison than it is to be surrounded by our neighbors.

In 2005, 56 prisoners were murdered. There are roughly 2 million inmates held in state prisons, meaning that the homicide rate per 100,000 prisoners last year was only 2.8. That number is less than half the rate of New York City (6.6 per 100,000) and an order of magnitude lower than Baltimore (42 per 100,000).

October 6

A murder in the Northwest (no word anywhere on who, where, what time) ended a an entire week without a murder.
Is some new method working, or was it happenstance... or was it The Bealefeld Effect?

More good* news, on Orleans Street last night, an officer shot and wounded a suspect who was firing at another man, probably preventing a homicide. (*wounding is good news if death is the only other option, right?)

"A 24-year-old man who was shot last week was shot a second time about 3 a.m. Thursday while walking down a street in West Baltimore."
Plus a date rape in the Blotter.
(Ed: It would be an interesting project to compare the various crimes on the police map vs. the ones in the Blotter to come up with a percentage of what the Blotter covers. I'll bet with robberies it's like, 1/500th)

Vandals broke into Armistead Gardens Elementary School two nights in a row.

Our carjack-victim readers will be happy to hear that one 19-year-old Calvin Williams got more than 12 years for his role in two NW thefts.

Charles Brockington, the guy who shot the guy over car rims, is free.

In the week following Bealefeld's appointment, various leaders voiced their good cheer and fond wishes. Everyone, that is, but "Doc" Cheatham, who made certain to register his regret about the Commissioner's oystery complexion and suspect heritage in the local tabloid before setting his sights upon Carroll County, where his dear friend the Reverend Al Sharpton was planning to attend a rally to demand that criminal civil rights charges be brought against six detention-school employees who had been implicated the death of Isaiah Simmons III, crushed to unconsciousness one chaotic night at the now-closed Taneytown Bowling Brook Preparatory school.

Fun stats:
Ratio of Baltimore City residents to # of sex offenders: 396 to 1.
Ratio in Taneytown: 218 to 1

A source reports four more t-shirt boys arrested in Hampden, cuffed & sitting on the curb on 36th street yesterday afternoon. Book 'em Kramer!

Tidell Harris' Killers get Three Lifetimes

At a sentencing hearing today Judge Robert Kershaw sentenced Elliott McClain, 31, of the 5200 block of St. Charles Ave. to two consecutive life prison terms plus a consecutive 25 years. A City jury convicted him July 27, 2007 of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and handgun counts. Today’s sentence in the maximum amount of prison time Judge Kershaw could have imposed.

On June 1, 2004 at approximately 1:00 a.m. in the 600 block of Hazel Street, McClain and co-defendant Kevin Fletcher approach the victim, Tidell Harris, on the street. They each pulled a gun. Fifteen shots were fired and Harris is hit five times, twice in the chest and three in the face and head and is pronounced dead at the scene.

Fletcher confessed and had a plea deal (life, suspend all but 25 years in prison) in which he was to testify against McClain. However, he refused to testify in January when called to the stand during a pretrial motions hearing, and Judge John M. Glynn sentenced Fletcher to life in prison plus 20 years. Fletcher and his mother had contact with McClain while awaiting trial and Fletcher requested protective custody at the Baltimore City Detention Center. Fletcher did testify in McClain’s trial but his court testimony was inconsistent with his taped police confession, which was played in court. Authorities have not located Fletcher’s mother.

Assistant State’s Attorney Tonya LaPolla of the FIVE Division prosecuted this case.
-- ASA's office

October 5

Is it possible that we'll have had no murders in a whole week?
The last was 24-year-old Jason Fortune.

The Sun has Bealefeld video:
"I haven't signed a contract. I haven't even seen such a document yet. You might find that hard to believe." Not really!
He also discloses his salary ($120,000 + $8 a day), says "I'm not ashamed to say I've taken something from [Commissioner Norris]."
So far so good!
If you can't get enough of that Bealefeld stuff, WBAL has a heckofalotta audio.

QtD: "Incidents are going to happen, but that happens at any bar or tavern." -- bar manager Omar Smith, whose establishment racked up incidents of mice, roaches, underage drinking, violating a health department order, a drug-dealing manager, three murders in two years and a broken-bottle assault before the liquor board revoked the Top Shelf's Liquor license

Wow, today is almost all good news!
I declare Friday October 5 the City's best news day of the whole year!

Even the Blotter is sedate! A carjacking, but it was in Cockeysville!

Aren't you glad you don't live in the county?

In HoCo, a crazy cat lady must pay $10k in restitution.

In Charles County, a 71-year-old man, Joseph Gilford Hickman, was shot dead on the porch of his townhouse.

MoCo's got a widening scandal, officers charged with double-dipping: 10 officers who allegedly took freelance jobs while still on the clock with the county. Four face felony charges, and six have pleaded guilty to misconduct so far.

Teens Trussed in Playground Bust!

Spotted at about 3:30 p.m.: seven white t-shirt teenagers getting busted at the playground in the 3400 block of Elm Avenue in Hampden.

October 4

Elliott McClain, 31, was sentenced yesterday to two life sentences plus 25 years in prison for the murder of Tidell Harris, 23, on Hazel Street in Curtis Bay in 2004.

Broadwater has the September murder roundup.
"said University of Baltimore criminologist Jeffrey Ian Ross, 'obviously, there’s a disconnect and there’s a failure in the criminal justice system.'"
This suspended-sentence nonsense does seem to be a huge problem-- why do we allow suspended sentences, and what would it take to make judges cut that shit out?

The fine print: An adult male was listed in serious but stable condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after he was shot in the face about 2 p.m. yesterday in the 2400 block of Wilkens Ave.; a man was stabbed in the 1700 block of Cherry Hill Road about 8 p.m. Monday; in Essex police are seeking a gunman who forced his way into a house in the 1200 block of Punjab Drive about 1:20 a.m. Tuesday and chased a man, 18, and a woman, 21, throughout the dwelling while firing a gun.

In spite of a front-page Washington Post story refuting the proliferation of human trafficking, Jessamy's holding a press conference to announce she and Gansler are launching a task force to tackle the non-problem.

Rumors Squashed: There was no, I repeat, no murder in Hampden yesterday! There was, apparently, some blood-like viscous liquid found in front of the Golden West Cafe on 36th street. This somehow spiraled into a rumor about some kind of thrill-kill gang/ serial vigilante going around shanking druggies! Not true-- no battered corpse has been found in Hampden for almost an entire two weeks (that we know of).
But thanks for writing, tipsters!

It's Official!

After letting the city go 76 days without a Police Commissioner and making some noise about DC's Charles Ramsey (apparently the only other candidate), the mayor has appointed Frederick H. Bealefeld III to the job.
Pretending to agree with her cockamamie gun registry plan must have been the final test!
Now let's hope he gets to rounding up some officers and lets that dog of a notion crawl off to die a quiet death!

Pervert!

WMAR has video of Stephen Gayer being taken away by the Feds while neighbors jeer. ("We're not clear yet why the FBI was involved with this arrest." That's because taking lurid pictures of naked little girls is a federal crime, Jenny!)

And yesterday, Matthew Justin Perry, 28, of Edgewood, Maryland, pled guilty to receipt of child pornography. Roddy J. locks perverts away!

..and smack dealers! Javon Brewer, age 26, got 198 months for peddling "Chocolate City" and "Hypnotic" brands.

NYT: "For Baltimore, Housing Slump Slows a Revival"

Public Art

Bealefeld, Frederick H. III, and Dixon, Sheila, "90 Days in Waverly," 2007
Gift of the John Galt Collection
BCR 2007.1480360728

Ooof!

In a major ballkick to the State's Attorney's office, a Baltimore jury today acquitted the owners of a city bail bond company who were being tried on obstruction of justice and perjury charges after only 90 minutes of deliberations on 21 counts following two weeks of testimony.
Rumor has it that 4 Aces Bail Bonds is a front for one of BMore's largest drug organizations.

VJayJay Day

Compare coverage of the Roland Park rape (Four stories in the Sun, six in the Examiner) with the 80 words given to a rape in the SE.
(Or, for that matter, the extended coverage of the stolen tomato.)

The Court of Appeals is trying to decide whether consensual sex can become rape if a woman says no in the middle of the act.

WYPR: Martha's Place, a drug recovery house for women, is "changing lives in one drug-infested Baltimore community."

Perv of the Day: Stephen Gayer of Parkville, who apparently has been violating Sex Childs for years.

Galt has more stories in comments.

October 2

In a court order dated August 24, 2007 and received October 1, 2007 by prosecutors in the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, Judge Marcella A. Holland has denied James Thompson’s Petition for Post Conviction Relief and a Motion for a New Trial. The Post Conviction hearing was held on June 27, 2007 before J. Holland. In 1988, Thompson was convicted of the August 2, 1987 murder of Colleen Willar. Thompson was sentenced to life in prison. In the ruling of August 24, 2007 Judge Holland states:

“The DNA evidence does not remove the Petitioner from the scene of the crime. The DNA evidence does eliminate the Petitioner from being the ultimate rapist. Yet, even in the Petitioner’s testimony at the trial of James Owens, he never claims to be the actual murderer or rapist. His claim was that he stood by as the event occurred. Since the DNA evidence does not show that the Petitioner is innocent of the underlying crime of burglary, coupled with his confession stating that he burglarized the house as the victim was murdered, this Court does not concur with the Petitioner that the DNA evidence exculpates him of the primary crime of which he is accused – felony murder. This Court denies the Petitioner’s Motion for a New Trial.”

"A small group of protesters gathered outside Baltimore police headquarters Monday night to call attention to police brutality in the city, invoking the spirit of the Jena 6 rallies. 'We’re here for justice,' said Fenyanga Muhammad, who was shot four times by police after they mistook a Popsicle stick in his mouth for drugs."
(Matt Jablow disputed this account at the time, claiming that shots were only fired after Muhammad tried to grab an officer's gun. Charges are still pending against Muhammad, government name Donnie Ray Chestnut. Thanks galt)

The good news: "A growing number of police departments across Maryland are adopting a domestic violence program that uses a series of pointed questions to identify those most at risk of being killed."
Domestic violence is the leading cause of death for African-American women aged 15–34. So far in the Baltimore area, only the city's Northeast District uses the lethality assessment.

An NYT Op-Ed piece opines that the links above are related to each other, Isiah Thomas and OJ. What do you think?

Judge: The Baltimore police department "must return the personal laptop computer seized from a lieutenant suspected of using it to send offensive e-mails through the department’s network during working hours."

Nutjobs Farther Afield
Bobby Collins, 32, of Brooklyn, N.Y. "made hundreds of crank calls to Maryland police agencies because he was angry over a two-year-old speeding ticket he received while in the state."

Judge Barbara Jung convicted dog groomer Celeste Rainone of animal cruelty and mutilation in the Feb. 17 death of a poodle.

WSJ invokes Royal "we": "Every state has its problems, but we're especially glad this month that we don't live in Maryland." (subscribers only)