Antonio Gilmore, age 38, store manager of Blockbuster Video at Waverly Crossings on Homestead Street was murdered last night by gunshot in an attempted armed robbery. Police are investigating. I was inside the supermarket across the street at the time. The ambo and the black and whites showed up around 8:45 p.m. Gilmore is the brother of an officer in BCPD. The two gunmen were presumably caught on tape.
"I'm just sick to my stomach, it just gives me the goosebumps. I don't understand what's going on to this neighborhood," said Roy Nam of Green's Carryout. "I've been here ten years now, met a lot of people, seen a lot die too." (from wjz)
From the AARP debate:
"I think crime has gone up no matter what [O'Malley] says," said Gary Watts, a 71-year-old Baltimore resident and Ehrlich supporter. "I used to not have to lock my door. Now, I won't even go to the corner store without locking it." (in the Sun)
While the audience broadly dismissed O'Malley's claims that crime in Baltimore is down, most notable was Governor Ehrlich's recognition of sources stating that the City administration appears to be manipulating the data. Ok, so initiate a formal investigation, please?
In the Police Blotter, mostly burglary and theft, but a stabbing on West North and a robbery at Mondawmin Mall in the parking lot.
From the Courthouse
In courtroom news, multiple murderer-rapist Raymont Hopewell was sentenced to four life sentences without parole by Judge John M. Glynn. While the 35 year-old claimed regret, none of the victims' families seemed to be buying it.
Former Jessup Corrections Officer Rasheem Jamal Robionson was sentenced to five years in prison plus on federal charges of selling coke to federal agents at Security Square Mall.
East side, West side, all around town
Also, lotsa bodies seem to be turning up under different circumstances in Arbutus, Perry Hall(Baltimore County), Aberdeen, and Edgewood(Harford).
A few robberies and a lotta vehicle theft in the Northern reported in the Messenger's Crime Log.
30 comments:
"Baltimore is actually a very safe city if you are not involved in the drug trade," Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson said (in a February 9, 2005 article in the NY Times).
I remember this quote and get pissed about it every time a crime like this happens. I'm sure Mr. Gilmore's family and the families of Carlton Crawford, Lydia Wingfield, Constance Wills, Sarah Shannon, and Sadie Mack (Raymont Hopewell's victims) take great comfort in knowing how safe Baltimore is.
(Oh. Obviously I'm back. It's great to be home, now when can I get the f--- out?)
Howdy, Chuck. Welcome back to.... uh, Baltimore.
"If you take out the killings, Washington actually has a very very low crime rate."
-Marion Barry
Not a prob.
BW and Harwood are not all that different in substance. The reason they seem to be is primarily architectural. Harwood is tight, dense rowhouse 'hood. BW is both rowhouse and detached, victorian, wood frame. Because it has a fair number of side yards, it seems greener and for that reason, perhaps more home-like. But the populations are largely the same. In fact, the people tend to jump between the two residentially.
The biggest difference, and which is immediately apparent, is that Harwood is like, 98% black, while BW is just under 10% white. These are mostly ne'er-do-well scions of families from old blue-collar Waverly, but some are over the hill hippies in search of diversity. Waverlies were a hippie haven in the late 60's-early 70's. It was part of why I liked Waverly.
Outside of advocacy for more and better policing from municipal government, there really isn't anything to do to improve the neighborhood. The essential ingredient just cannot be provided by a nongovernment, unless you like vigilante squads, of course. We've tried the bit about functional residents having a greater presence. They tire of it very quickly, because the hoods are not intruders. They rule here, and they, we, and the police all know it.
In Systems Biology we have a paradigm for this called hawk-dove dynamics. The problem with getting functional people out in numbers is that functional people are doves, not hawks, and hawks don't run from doves. The ecologiocal function of the police is that they are the equivalent of a superpredator by action of statute. A behavioral code is legislated for the superpredator and imposed upon hawks and doves alike.
Our superpredator police force doesn't respect the legislated behavioral code, however, and is a rogue predator with fairly unpredictable conduct. It would be nice of the Governors office would place the City Police Department under State supervision, given the seemingly daily irregularities and abuses.
Strategies to be conducted by you and me:
What you're left with is largely helping individual problem people with their personal shortcomings, which just doesn't get anywhere soon. Examples would be job-readiness training at the Goodwill Family Center on Montpelier, which I used to do. Also, the grass-roots football team could use a check for uniforms. You could clean the garbage that our neighbors toss around the streets. I guess the problem is that these things are not personally rewarding. They are instead relieving someone else (a mother, a father, a litterer) of their responsibility, basically because those listed dropped the ball. Having done those things for so many years, I guess I'm feeling kinda angry that the hammer doesn't come down on whosoever dropped the ball. Apparently ever.
So, I wax kinda Ol' Testament.
I'd like a cop to write a ticket, not to the homeowner where the garbage blew, but to the creep who dropped it. I'd like the same cop to grab lil' Johnny, the juvenile delinquent, and take him home to Momma and ask her why she's not attending to his mischief. And I suppose I'd like Judges to start telling guys who haven't had a job for a decade that breaking into an empty house to sleep in it and vandalize it is going to land them in the pokey for a spell, rather than declaring "Poor baby.".
leave me your e-mail so I can get in touch
today has been a banner day for finding unidentified bodies along forested roadsides.
one in arbutus, one in perry hall, and one near aberdeen proving ground.
love the blog i read it daily since i found it. the last link for the examiner is working
Hopkins is suspect, because it is only in it for the PR. Hopkins wants to sit on Commitees, talk the talk, but not walk the walk.
Years ago, many years ago, Hopkins undergrads provided much of the economic vitality which kept Greenmount healthy. Then as Waverly came to be of darker complexion and limited means, Hopkins discouraged students from shopping or living here, in much the same way that it erected fences to keep employees of JHH and JHMI from exposing themselves to Monument Street. Hopkins even started shuttling students to safer, whiter stores in Hampden and Towson.
Greenmount turned to another, less mainstream customer base, which was moving into the area from East Baltimore. It was lower income, black, and behaviorally problematic. Nowadays, the products and services are reflective of that survival adaptation
Hopkins has absolutely no business expressing interest in the area. It has abdicated that role and is no longer welcome here. I used to teach at Hopkins. It is a parasite. The largest, most voracious (private) one in the State of Maryland, in fact. My analysis of nonprofit institutions has appeared elsewhere on this blog of late, so I'll spare you the rehash.
If Hopkins were serious about supporting this area, it would raise its undergrad tuition by $1,000 and issue $1,200 in gift certificates to all undergrads redeemable only at retailers on Greenmount Avenue. That's only $25 a week per student. Until it puts its considerable and undertaxed money where its mouth is, I don't wanna hear squat from Hopkins.
What JHU did, instead, was to cook up a weasel deal with Bill Struever to build a competing retail center where zoning was absent on the periphery of the campus. That's how much Hopkins has ever done for Waverly.
And they advocate for the continuation of that incompetent supplemental security Charles Village Benefits District, in spite of the fact that unlike the residents and businesses, they themselves don't even pay the frickin' supplemental tax, because they're tax-exempt.
{O.K. Breath in. Take your pill....}
Fixed the link. So you know, the Messenger serves the 40 or so neighborhoods roughly in the Northern administrative district.
If readers have other neighborhood resources which compile a crime log, crime blotter, or whatever, let me know.
thnx
So, I'm not totally out of my mind?
Thank you.
I'd encourage you to write a letter to the Baltimore Examiner to that effect.
Policymakers here keep thinking that they can revitalize the tax base by asking people from other cities to live here, instead.
What they don't get is that people from a real city won't stay longer than about 6 months, because this place is uncivilized. Its people are very undesirable.
Don't bother writing to the Sun paper, they don't publish anything that isn't pro-administration.
Updated info. regarding the comparative analysis of Harwood versus Better Waverly, which contributor De Selby suggested was perhaps in a different category from visually depressing Harwood.
Surprises abound.
Harwood
Tract 1203
pct. not attaining 9th grade 9%
pct. not attaining HS diploma 21%
per capita income $15,000
median household income $26,000
pct. over 16 yrs. not in workforce 38%
Better Waverly
Tract 904
pct. not attaining 9th grade 15%
pct. not attianing HS diploma 40%
per capita income $8,000
median household income $14,000
pct. over 16 yrs. not in workforce 55%
The lesson is not to judge a book by its cover. Architecture and open space do not necessarily correlate with life outcomes. Better Waverly is a very, very troubled community.
(Analytical note: I do however suspect that the presence of functional outliers on the very western edge of Harwood may have pulled its numbers up a tad.)
those are some sad stats.
from what year are those stats?
2000 census
The last data available.
things in Baltimore have changed a lot in 6 years
"real soon you'll be able to walk around charles village after the sun sets without fear of cracky sticking a knife in your ribs."
Gawd, when will the hysteria end? In 6 yrs I've never been afraid of cracky sticking a knife in my ribs. Maybe that makes me a complete idiot.
"What they don't get is that people from a real city won't stay longer than about 6 months, because this place is uncivilized. Its people are very undesirable."
Does this include you Galt? Or are your 6 mos almost up? How f-ing condescending of a thing is that to say, I mean really? You, however, are set apart. You stay past your six month real city obligation because. . .you're bringing civility to the masses? puh-lease.
rodya, i agree with your first point, jaimetab sounds like a total pussy. i also lived in charles village for six years and never had anything bad happen to me. for two of those years i lived next door to the frat house where the hopkins kid got killed (granted it was after that happened, but i knew about it when i found the apartment and moved right in with no qualms).
as for your second point, i've gotten used to galt's wild hyperbole and tacky catchphrases and now just ignore them and focus on the more interesting and insightful parts of his posts, of which there are many.
That's cool, anon. Totally agree. Watch, though, I'll get my ass stabbed right in the ribs tonight walking around coming back from wherever. Seriously, I can't think of one moment when I was afraid.
The first week I moved to Baltimore I was over off of Homewood looking for that damn post office and this lady got in my car when I stopped to ask her for directions, I guess I hadn't locked the door. And she wouldn't get out and she wanted to get me to the post office AND get me off for $5 and I told her forget it but she wouldn't get out of my car. When i got to the post office I got out and went about my business and came back and she was still sitting in my car! She'd taken all the change out of the middle console, and then asked me to drive her to get a donut with it. I did. She offered to buy me one with my own change! I politely declined and dropped her off and found my way home.
Part of my lack of fear may come from just plain stupidity or naivete, but I'll tell you that I've learned that there is a rational healthy fear and an irrational unhealthy fear. The rational healthy fear is the one that keeps you keeping your wits about you, while the irrational fear from what I can tell, keeps one wanting to move before their CV lease runs out.
As for Galt, I think he knows he tends to wear me down after a while of reading the particularly bilgey parts. Every once in a while his over the top stuff triggers something in me that gives me the feeling of wanting to respond.
Things in some parts of Baltimore have changed. Waverly is not one of them.
I for one am very sympathetic to Jaimetab. Relatively few (izzat better) of my associates in New York would roll with this sleazoid Baltimore crap for long before hopping back on a train, plane, or automobile. I don't know where you folks have lived, but it really is different from this. Living on the unit block of 30th Street next to Johns Hopkins facilities is not the same as living in Charles Village. Hopkins security guards cover that area and the President of Hopkins makes sure that the BCPD is there in copious supply.
There's a somewhat different experience along, say, the 2900 block of Guilford Avenue. Definitely Charles Village; definitely bordering on the 'hood.
Go two blocks further East and you gets bullets whistling by on a Saturday afternoon in broad daylight. No hyperbole.
So, it's kinda a question about which Charles Village?
As for 'Cracky', he already has stuck a knife in my ribs a coupla years ago, thank you. No hyperbole.
What don't you agree with about undesirables? One in three young afro-american males in Baltimore is either in prison, in jail, or on parole/probation. We are a black city. Our young afro-american males are our young males. Do you think the young male population in New York, Chicago, Boston, or LA have that proportion? No. Our peers are Detroit, New Orleans, and Camden NJ, which are disaster cities. Utterly disreputable populations, statistically. (Yes, there could be exceptional exceptions, but painting with a broad brush, it's just true.)
Is it condescending? Maybe. Izzit true? Decidedly.
Lotsa people in Baltimore just plain ol' suck. Bea Gaddy used to hate it when I said things like that. She admonished that retaining belief in others when they do not deserve it brings grace upon the faithful. I responded that faith was God's domain, I just tell the best truth I know.
If you don't think the place is uncivilized and a big chunk o' the people undesirable, are you willing to live on Greenmount in the middle of Harwood or Barclay? I don't mean hypothetically. I mean for real.
My mother, who also lives in an inner-city neighborhood of a much better inner-city in New England with about one twelfth our number of annual murders, has been having kittens as I've got murders going on all around me. Not one member of my family can see any compelling reason why an industrious, educated, and reasonably well-to-do person such as myself would ever deign to live in a shit hole city like Baltimore.
I'm running out of good excuses. I used to say that I was trying to be part of the solution, but Baltimore has no intention of changing. Not in Baltimore B. I used to say that the cost of living was low, but now it isn't. I used to think I really liked some of my neighbors, until I started counting just how many I don't like a bit.
You are really doing a good job of convincing me that, like Jaimetab, I should leave this poor excuse for a City and, like the biblical Lot, never look back.
When that happens in Baltimore, and I've been here through it several times over in the last 25 years, the denizens of the darkness converge upon the 'transitional' neighborhoods like Charles Village and they start turning into places like Waverly and then Harwood. What this means is that your sheltered lifestyle will become less so, and your neighbors will begin sounding a lot more like me.
It's not hysteria. It's very real. Who on this blog lived in East or South Charles Village in the early nineties? The 'hood was literally next door. Your neighbor.
When I went to high school in New York, I lived in a rent-stabilized building in a strongly hispanic part of the Upper West Side. My next-door neighbor in an SRO was a black, platinum-haired hooker. I'd sometimes have to share the elevator with her pimp, who had nothing but contempt for anyone else in the building. The super was shot around Christmas one year in the bottom stairwell. People who had paid their fare would clear off the subway platform and leave the station when certain youth gangs came onto the platform. It was urban.
But I was never afraid to be out among people, unless I was all alone on a pitch-black street or similarly in the Park.
In Baltimore, I'm increasingly concerned that the people around me, given whatever shortcomings go along with poverty and ignorance and hard living, will bring about my end, or at least my lasting sorrow, for I'm not one to live as a cripple. I increasingly feel that there is so much behavioral illness among them that i can no longer count reliably on picking the good from the bad, as I had in many other cities. I increasingly feel that these substandard police are another imminent threat, not to my life, but more to my freedom and that they are second in hazard only to the criminals. I've been falsely arrested before. Most of my neighbors, and I mean my reputable neighbors, have as well. What I mostly want now, for my inner peace, is to enclose myself inside a place where no one from Baltimore will or can impose upon me. I want a door strong enough to exclude all the hoodlums of Baltimore, whether they be users, dealers, murderers, or cops. The City government, meanwhile, is quite insistent on imposing them on me.
I suppose what I'm saying, is the undeniable truth, that Baltimore will be the death of me if I stay much longer. And so, having invested a quarter century of my life here, what have I to show for my trouble? Scars, mostly. And not the kind that accompany a lesson well-learned. Just the kind that remain with you into the grave. Baltimore doesn't give, it just takes. It has taken years.
"Charles Village; definitely bordering on the 'hood."
Agreed.
"Lotsa people in Baltimore just plain ol' suck."
Agreed.
"As for 'Cracky', he already has stuck a knife in my ribs a coupla years ago, thank you. No hyperbole."
Agreed.
"I used to say that the cost of living was low, but now it isn't."
DEFINITELY agreed, way out of proportion!
"What don't you agree with about undesirables? One in three young afro-american males in Baltimore is either in prison, in jail, or on parole/probation. We are a black city. Our young afro-american males are our young males. Do you think the young male population in New York, Chicago, Boston, or LA have that proportion? No. Our peers are Detroit, New Orleans, and Camden NJ, which are disaster cities. Utterly disreputable populations, statistically. (Yes, there could be exceptional exceptions, but painting with a broad brush, it's just true.)"
Ummm...I think the order in which you arranged your sentences distracts, maybe, from what you are saying. You're not actually saying that NY, Chicago, Boston, etc. are not 'black cities' and therefore are better cities are you? You must mean that 1 in 3 is locked up or on P&P. If you mean that 1 in 3 is locked up or on P&P, then I agree that is a real problem, not that Baltimore is a black city and therefore undesirable. But then the 1 in 3 is the much more complex problem which we've discussed before.
"I suppose what I'm saying, is the undeniable truth, that Baltimore will be the death of me if I stay much longer. And so, having invested a quarter century of my life here, what have I to show for my trouble? Scars, mostly. And not the kind that accompany a lesson well-learned. Just the kind that remain with you into the grave. Baltimore doesn't give, it just takes. It has taken years."
I'm sorry that's all you feel you have. That seems really very sad.
To clarify: the data I have are that citywide, 1/3 of all young afro-american males are in prison, jail, or parole/probation.
I wish I had the breakdowns and the comparable data for many other urban centers and demographic groups. I don't.
My point was that the data describing the YAAM population serves to describe the general male population here, because Baltimore is over 60% black and the criminal element is disproportionately so.
That inference would not be sustainable in the cases of New York, Chicago, Boston, and LA, as their black populations are, respectively, only 26%, 36%, 25%, and 11%. In those places, the Hispanic population is more material to behavioral aggregates than it is here.
But my main point was that a whole bunch of our primary population group's males are way, way outside the mainstream in terms of behavior. We do not have 'typically urban crime' a la New York. We have mega-crime.
If the primary source of it was octagenarian vietnamese women, then I'm sure I'd be citing their statistics.
What is disreputable is the conduct. It's the 1/3 of 61% of our male population, of whatever complexion or creed. That's too many certified hoodlums, because probably another 20% are antisocial, even if not incarcerable.
New York City, Boston, LA, and Chicago have much more diverse populations, not just in terms of race, but in terms of educational attainment, income, entrepreneurship, creativity, etc. We, however, are no cosmopolitan mecca. We are a two-part town, one of which, Baltimore B, is a nasty ol' Ghetto. It's not a lower-income alternative metropolis. It has no... life to it.
The people are ignorant. It's not just that they speak ebonic (or Spanish, or Yiddish, for that matter). They aren't even able to communicate properly in that dialect. They cannot perform basic arithmetic functions. Cannot use a map. And they don't understand why it might jeopardize their employment if they show up two hours late. They assume they were fired because the deck is stacked against them, not because they didn't show up.
We are not a peer of New York. The average characteristics there are far better than here. Instead, we are a peer of New Orleans, which is evacuated, or Detroit, which should be.
The many, many problem people of Baltimore B and their government are a disaster and folks need to stop with the excuses. You rob a liquor store, you're a bad person. I don't care why. I don't care how unloved you were as a child. I don't want to offer you counseling or GED programs. People who rob liquor stores need to be in jail. Period. There seems to be some... inclination to clemency for drug people. So, look, figure out what constitutes breaking the law. If you want drugs legalized, do so. (no, I don't personally advocate that)
But when you're done and we're left with a set of crimes as defined, the people who do them must go to jail. Regardless of the cost. Regardless of the seeming waste of human potential. Regardless of what might otherwise have been if. Figure out what's wrong. Then, wrong is wrong and must be punished. In Baltimore B you are simply surrounded by behavioral disreputables.
Walking the streets of Baltimore B is like being in the exercise yard at a penitentiary. It not right for decent people to be subject to that. We haven't done anything wrong to be sentenced to imprisonment within our own neighborhoods. Government is responsible for basic law & order. Deciding to allow crime to flourish in an area just because 'the residents could always move' is an abdication of the raison d'etre for government and is a reprehensible proposition. That is not within the powers and authorities of a municipal government, for it constitutes a geographic veto of state law.
Why do I express so much anger at Baltimore A? Because Baltimore A is complicit in the misconduct of its government. You would not allow unanswered crime in your block, why would you endorse it on mine? There's nothing more fundamentally uncivil.
If you would vote them out for excessive crime on your block, how could you justify not voting them out when the crime in Baltimore B neighborhoods occupied by your neighbors and fellow citizens is profoundly and indisputably excessive?
They're just bad public servants.
I sit with the BWIA Board here in Waverly. Just came from a meeting talking about their upcoming general meeting and the board heads asked "What is the hot button issue of our neighborhood?"... then a long pause..."Well, I guess there isn't one". Two days later our Blockbuster friend is shot dead. I just about threw up when I heard. I've lived here a year and it just struck me viscerally. I've been pained and sullen thinking about what to do all day Saturday. Can't sleep. Which brings me to Sunday A.M.
At about 5:30 I head a shot, then about 6 more. I thought i was just being over sensitive but I stumbled out of a half-paranoid daze of sleep/not sleep and called 911 for "shots fired" in the 3000 block of Frisby. About 10 minute later, sirens. At 5:44 ambulance, fire truck, 3 cruisers, and as I write this at 6:02 I'm hearing distant sirens.
So I'm not paranoid, maybe I saved someone's life. But that still doesn't solve the problem that the police aren't here until AFTER it's happening. Charles Village Benefits District has CONSTANT police presence - and not just the K-tel Kops of Hopkins, REAL police. What will it take for the police to snuff out the dealer in the 1100 blocks of Montpelier, Gorsuch and all along Independence - what's so hard about arresting the obvious "baddies"
Andy,
There is fairly important info you need on the matters you've raised here. I've left the info for you in a glass half empty.
Thanks John - BTW, the shots I heard were 'real' - the shooting was at 3033 Frisby - a "double" apparently.
Oh, BTW, so readers know, the 600 block of Homestead, where Antonio was murdered, is the same as the 3100 block of Frisby, where a traffic stop around the first week in June turned into an officer shooting when the driver crashed and came out bearing a shotgun. Just a few footseps south is where Andy heard the double shooting Sunday a.m..
So, hello, Better Waverly. It's pretty busy, pretty real kinda place.
Most muggers don't shoot their victims, it's (relatively) rare that that happens. Though it does happen. Please don't get galt started on "Broken Windows." If you search that term in the box on the front page there you can probably find all of his myriad rants on it, catalouged by date.
Definitely not a happy camper.
Me either.
My house got broken into on Sunday. I had been planning to spend the day at my neighborhood's annual street fair. Instead my next door neighbor elsewhere in town called and told me someone disreputable-looking had ducked into the back yard and siddled up to the house.
I went over there with a hammer, some nails, screws, and a plywood board, called to police, and waited while I verified the point of entry. They showed up in remarkably short time (this is in the white neighborhood) and I opened the door as they fanned out. I directed them to where I thought he'd entered and we found him on my third floor.
The dude was a junkie, all abcessed and nasty. The cops took me aside and told me that while the collar was fine, because he is AIDS-infected and hazardous, central booking won't take him. I said, "OK, send him wherever those people go." He replied that the guy would go to a hospital and be let loose afterward. I asked when he would be jailed, tried, etc.
He replied that no one wants custody of these walking walking disease vectors, so they just don't really charge them.
Is this nuts??? The messier they are, the less I want them on the streets with real people.
Rant? Moi??
And yeah, especially on the subject of how much people misunderstand the Broken Windows concept.
'The dude was a junkie, all abcessed and nasty. The cops took me aside and told me that while the collar was fine, because he is AIDS-infected and hazardous, central booking won't take him. I said, "OK, send him wherever those people go." He replied that the guy would go to a hospital and be let loose afterward. I asked when he would be jailed, tried, etc.
He replied that no one wants custody of these walking walking disease vectors, so they just don't really charge them.'
Does that not sound particularly suspicious?
I bet the guy was born a stand up character but decided somewhere along the way to shed his privileged upbringing and understood that being referred to as a "walking walking disease vector" was much more preferable. You know, living hard, and how revered that is.
Did you get a chance to talk to him? Ask him what he was doing breaking into your home? I mean was he getting high, stealing stuff, looking for a place to rest? Or had the AIDS gotten to his brain and he didn't even know, himself, what he was doing? I bet he knew. You ever felt like breaking into your neighbor's house? I haven't. It would take some pretty dire circumstances for me to bust into some stranger's house.
Shouldn't he be charged just like everyone else?
Vigil for Antonio Gilmore
Friday, September 22nd will be a vigil for Antonio
Gilmore at 8:30 PM located at the Waverly Blockbuster.
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