Saturday, November 19, 2005

November 19

A methadone addict in Dundalk is charged with murder in the death of her methadone-addicted 2-month-old daughter.

Arson in West Baltimore left two people dead and 27 people homeless. One of the dead is a 41-year-old woman who was homeless until a few months ago.

Alleged corrupt former senator Thomas Bromwell was taped by the FBI in a building downtown. JHU was apparently one of many victims in a kickback scheme.

Accusations of an ineffective police investigation have been raised in the Canton murder of Brian Jones.

Steven R. Chamberlain, CEO of Lanham-based Integral Systems, Inc., is charged with liking little girls way too much.

The Baltimore pastor who is charged with liking little boys and little girls way too much is also being investigated by police in Minnesota and Barbados.

Unlike Baltimore City's Northern District, Carroll County doesn't put up with home invasions. Great story by Sheridon Lyons.

Four Maryland convenience stores have been robbed of "cash, cigarettes, and cheap liquor" by a woman in her late 20s.

Drunk driver Rudi Vasquez of PG County will serve eight years for two counts of involuntary manslaughter for the crash that killed Juan Valle, 26, and Audelino Valle, 30.

Bea Gaddy's legacy is in bad trouble this year. To help with the shortage, the center at 425 N. Chester St. in East Baltimore will be open 24/7 until Thanksgiving to accept donations. The phone number is 410-563-2749.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A quick thought about crime reporting problems:

Even absent the police department's distortion of reports of crime, it is nonetheless the case that whites are over 25% more likely to report crime than blacks and middle income victims are over 25% more likely to report than low income victims, ceteris paribus.

Consequently, even if the reality of crime is actually equal between neighborhoods, if police are deployed according to reported crime statistics, then living in a lower-income, black neighborhood will supply me with 36% less policing than if I lived in a middle-class white area, even though the actual crime occurence rates are identical.

So, segregation is a good idea, from the perspective of the individual. It gets you better policing, if deployments are made on the basis of reported stats. This is not good. The way to offset the effect is to weight the deployments by the prevalence, rather than incidence, of crime. In other words, deploy according to the concentration of criminals, rather than crimes. Because this measure is based upon repeat offenders, it will underindicate first offenses, but there's no a priori reason to think these should be nonuniformly distributed over neighborhoods.

Anonymous said...

The following accurately describes life for the law-abiding in my neighborhood in Northern. Note that the hoodlums are quite aware of the ability to congest the rather limited police manpower.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.harwood20nov20,1,862442.story?page=1&coll=bal-local-headlines

Maurice Bradbury said...

What's scary/sad is that I find the Stephen Chamberlain thing the most "wow." If this was a site that depended on ciculation and ad revenue, I'd have to "lead" with that, because there's only so many times you can expect a 'consumer' to pay to hear the same story.