Monday, September 18, 2006

September 18

Baltimore County Police identified two bodies found on Friday: Elvis Furman Garcia, 35, of Hanover was found shot by the side of Sulphur Spring Road. And Roxanne Stitz Amick, 40, of Nottingham was found in her van in the Perry Hall Crossing Shopping Center.

The FBI has released official stats for 2005. They're no surprise since they're straight from the police department, but if you want them, here they are.

The murder trial of Brian Christopher Cooper, 21, of McHenry Street, is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. tomorrow before Judge Albert J. Matricciani, Jr. A Baltimore City jury convicted Cooper of first-degree murder April 28, 2003 and he was sentenced to life in prison June 26, 2003. The Court of Special Appeals vacated that murder conviction July 6, 2005 ruling Cooper's Miranda rights were violated. Says the state,
Court documents allege that on April 16, 2002 Cooper and Elliott Scott, 21, argued in front of an unlicensed taxi stand in the 2600 block of West Fairmount Avenue. After the argument, which occurred shortly before midnight, Mr. Scott walked toward his home with a female neighbor. Cooper got a "hack" to drive him home where he got a knife and returned to the neighborhood looking for Mr. Scott. Cooper allegedly found Mr. Scott on North Catherine Street, chased him into the alley behind his home in the 2500 block of West Fayette Street, and stabbed Mr. Scott three times. Mr. Scott underwent emergency surgery at the Shock Trauma Unit and described his assailant before succumbing to his injuries.
Guy Gordon Marsh, 60, spent 14 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit.

Four Harford County homicides last summer may have been the victims of Charles Eugene Burns of Kingsville.

Three inmates were indicted for attempted murder for an attack on two prison guards on March 29 in Jessup.

Examiner editor employs royal "we," quotes C.S. Lewis, opines police video of man being punched in jaw could incite riots* a la CA 1992.

Arguments over whether executing Vernon L. Evans Jr. could constitute cruel and unusual punishment are expected to start this week in federal court in Baltimore.

Purse-snatching, robbery, a stolen NASCAR jacket and some almost-stolen gutters in the Blotter.

Bones found Friday in Harford County turned out to belong to some kind of animal.

In PGC, while answering a domestic call, a police officer shot and killed a man. PGC officers have been incolved in two fatal shootings so far this month.

hillary-clinton-naked-2 The Maryland Dems are inviting folks to an evening with Hillary R. Clinton on Monday September 25 at the UMD Conference Center in Adelphi. If you'd like to go, RSVP to one Melissa Campbell at (301) 858-8818 or mcampbell@mddems.org.
Ps., general admission is $250, students are $75, and a (clothed) photo op is $2,500.

Did you know? Yesterday was "Constitution Day."

Quote of the day, from David Simon: "The problems that we're depicting in [The Wire] have been going on and have been unattended to in any comprehensive way for 40 or 50 years ... The notion that any single politician or any single administration should have blame affixed for what we're trying to discuss here is simplistic and ridiculous. ... You'd have to blame every administration going back to McKeldin and Mandel."

* History Corner: The 1992 Rodney King riots were not just in L.A. but throughout the state, with the burning and looting far north as Oakland and Berkeley. Other major anti-police riots include Watts, 1965; Stonewall, NYC, 1969; the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot, 1988 NYC; the Brixon Riots, UK, 1981, 1985 and 1995; the Cape Town "Purple Rain" riots; and Paris, 2005.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

okaay... that's the last time I visit Baltimorecrime blog.

Its not that I'm a even mildly a fan of Hillary Clinton, but that someone would go through the trouble to do something like that to a photo of her belies a very nasty and creepy mentality.

Sorry, it was fun while it lasted, but this blog now feels like I've gone to a party only to find out all the guests are creeps.

Knock yourselves out, losers!

-H.

Maurice Bradbury said...

While Google has thousands of Hillarys to chose from, I feel that one makes a potent statement about the nature of political fundraising, as well as creating visual allusion to Delacroix, an allegory that elevates the image to universality (Liberty/Hillary as not a woman, rather, an abstract force of the power of democracy and femininity) as well as creating a historical parallel and visual contrast between 1848 and the Republican convention protests.

Sorry you don’t like it—don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

Maurice Bradbury said...

Plus, I just wrote 1,200 words about breastfeeding positions, so I guess nipples just don't shock me (wait, why am I talking to H.? s/he's never ever coming back, right?). I think it's weird how American culture sexualizes breasts in situations that (as far my imagination goes, anyway) are not actually sexual.

Anonymous said...

the wording on your post about the harford county body case suggests that no human remains at all were found, only animals.

Anonymous said...

also, fox today is the only media outlet i've found reporting that a 17 year old kid was shot to death last night in baltimore highlands.

link

Maurice Bradbury said...

Hmm, let's explore these feelings, Joe.
What do you think the motivation was for the artist? What do you think they're trying to say? (And there's no way to know for sure-- Google found it in the cache of http://www.cars-suck.org, but the page isn't up there any more).

I think it's just funny, it's obviously satirical, no reasonable person would actually think it's her. If it was like, hardcore porn that someone made to use for certain personal reasons, I would find that creepy/get the willies. But I just don't read that here.

Do you think Hillary would be creeped out, or would she laugh?

Mr. Mephistopheles said...

3700 block? Yikes! That's not too far from Patterson Park (or from where I live for that matter). Granted this isn't a "safe" area, but this is kind of scary.

Maybe our neighborhood will have another "emergency meeting", but it's probably unlikely now that the delegates from the Highlandtown political machine have been reelected, and therefore don't have to fear voter backlash until 2010.

Anonymous said...

I can see this site using that particular Hillary photo since they are all of a republican/libertarian bent. They were probably liberal democrats until they got robbed or mugged.

John Galt said...

I'm not sure I'd call Cybes a Republican. Not to her face, anyway.

Anonymous said...

i wouldn't call hillary clinton a liberal democrat to anyone's face.

also, who is generally more offended by women's bare nipples? conservatives or liberals? hmmmm.

Anonymous said...

Ah, well, now that I got my temper back, I might as well take a closer look at the Hillary picture. I had a viscerally negative reaction to it, but had to think about why for a little while.

First, its always important to think about the source of an image, in this case it is some some wack-job libertarian website. One thing about hard-core libertarians is that virtually all of them have deep personality defects. They operate on extremely inflexible and simplistic assumptions about the way the world works and thus come off as crass when they try to get involved in any kind of dialog outside of their hermetically sealed domain of thinking-- especially if matters of aesthetics or imagery is involved. I tend to believe that one can judge the character of someone by their face and their manner of speech (here's the guy who runs the website)-- draw your own conclusions. The rest of his site is a non-sequitor collection of many crazies links.

So, now looking at your justifications...

"... visual allusion to Delacroix, an allegory that elevates the image to universality (Liberty/Hillary as not a woman, rather, an abstract force of the power of democracy and femininity) ..."

Having actually seen paintings from Delacoix and others from that period, its pretty clear that such an image fails to evoke any non-sarcastic allusion to Delacroix. In fact, I would even say that any attempt to do so today, would come off as laughably simple-minded. But, more importantly, it also fails work as some kind of perversion of Delacroix.

"... as well as creating a historical parallel and visual contrast between 1848 and the Republican convention protests..."

Yeah, so, naked protestors is one thing. Nudes in paintings are another.

Is the mash-up drawing a connection between what the naked protestors represented and what Hillary represents? As someone who is on the side of the naked protestors, I would say no. But I concede that the hard right would _like_ to think of Hillary as an easy "naked?" target when the next election comes-- although sadly for them, she is likely not running.

In that last sense, I suppose, the image is an interesting backfire on its creator-- but I'm sure he doesn't see it that way. He sees it as "oh, look at hillary, she like a whore soliciting for votes."

-H.

Anonymous said...

Roxanne Stitz Amick was not found in her van in the Perry Hall Crossing Shopping Center. She was found wrapped in a blanket in some woods further up Belair Road. Her van was found in the Perry Hall Crossing Shopping Center.

John Galt said...

Using the finalized FBI data I compared the city of Baltimore with both the total of the other 72 municipalities in Maryland and the 4 largest(most urban in type).

I found that the levels of property crime were fairly consistent between both comparatives and the property crimes which were reported in Baltimore City. (note: we understand that the actual property crime rate in Baltimore is much, much higher than what is reported.)

Baltimore had about twice the violence relative to the 72 munis, and maybe 35% more than the 4-city total.

We had around 8 times the normalized murders of both the broad municipalities and the 4 city total.

If we were interested in violent crime, our police staffing seems to be about 35% short of the broad normalized figure. If, however, we are interested in addressing our tendency to murder, we'd need about six times our present number of cops to be manpower-commensurate to the other municipalities.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Thanks for the correction, 'non.

H., I don't have time to look at the video clips now, can you tell me how they relate? The picture was on a pro-bicycling site, are you saying you traced the picture and it was made by the guy giving the speech?