Very odd story: details on the indictment of Miquel Johnson, aka Michael Jackson, accused of killing a minister with the 10,000-member Empowerment Temple, Michael Herrington Griffin, in Northwest Baltimore.
The trial of Baltimore police officer William Darrell Welch, 40, of Timonium, Maryland, is scheduled for 9:30 this morning before Judge Allen L. Schwait. The Baltimore City Grand Jury indicted Welch August 23 with one count of second-degree rape and three counts of misconduct in office. If convicted of the count of rape, Welch could be sentenced to imprisonment not exceeding 20 years. Misconduct in office is a common law offense that carries a period of incarceration in whatever amount a court deems is fair and reasonable. The indictment alleges that on July 16 of this year in the Southeastern District Station Welch had sexual intercourse with a 16-year-old girl after she had been taken into custody by another officer. Welch has been out on $50k bail. Assistant State's Attorney Temmi Rollock of the Sex Offense Division will prosecute this case.
Update: Judge Allen L Schwait issued a bench warrant this morning for William Darrell Welch for failing to appear.
Correction from Mrs. J's office: The rape trial of William Welch, originally scheduled for today, has been postponed at the request of the defense until March 13, 2007. The bench warrant issued for Welch's arrest earlier today was recalled by Judge Schwait.
Ponytail and Broadwater: "Crime goes down, and so does the number of people behind bars. That's what is occurring in New York City — but not Baltimore City."
Tough trooper Eric Workman is still alive after two surgeries.
Ink: A murder previously unmentioned by the papers-- Jarmal Dailey, 19, in the 3700 block of Flowerton Road in Edmondson Village-- and the June killing of Demone Jackson was ruled as self-defense, making the YTD homicide total 253
(and the BCrime number right for being wrong).
The Baltimore City Grand Jury has indicted Jermaine Sanders, 15, of the 2100 block of E. Biddle Street for first-degree murder in connection with the December 1, 2006 fatal stabbing of his 17 year-old brother, Jason Sanders. Jermaine followed Jason Sanders from their home and stabbed the elder brother following a verbal dispute then fled the area on foot. Jason died later at Johns Hopkins Hospital. An arraignment has been scheduled January 7, 2007, Judge Gale Rasin.
"Neither side is happy" with the Dameon Woods/Smoot 2nd-degree murder verdict. Says the E of Smoot's death: it "highlighted overcrowded conditions at Central Booking, which was built to process up to 45,000 people annually, but has been used to process more than double that number."Unfortunately, "being an asshole" is not techincally a crime.
Bob Kaufman needs kidney, stays upbeat, wants to start youth movement.
(In one version of the story he was hit with a brick by a tenant named Stephen, here it's a random idler. Wonder which is correct?)
Not your sexy kind of story, but sill important:
MD. state Ethics Commission staff auditors have "reviewed just 2,600 of the 11,800 financial disclosure statements they received for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2004."
The Gov's father-in-law Joe Curran is still at it a month before retirement, helping bust 22 work-at-home scams in Project Fal$se Hope$.
Nat'l:
Tough times for a woman at a Lavonia, GA motel who mistook a pistol for a lighter. (My, my, those crackers sure can get ugly down that way!
14 comments:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/bal-te.bz.groundrent13dec13,0,3979658.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
The state legislature is (supposedly) considering several bills to reform the ground rent system. I'm already looking forward to hearing the moaning and bitching from piece of shit scumbags like R. Marc Goldberg and Jack Stollof. It's also nice to see that the Sun is still capable of good journalism every now and then.
that flowerton road murder was reported by papers. it was just buried in this other story.
The Sun has some more detail on December crime totals in Baltimore. They say total violent crime is down by 5%, yet robberies are up 9% and shootings 18%.
Now if homicide is about the same, that means the drop would be in rape or in other aggravated assaults, which is mostly to say stabbings. Since the latter outnumber the former 42:1, that suggests other agg. assault is way down.
It's also the category most susceptible to abuse of reclassification into Part II. I'd like to know what happened to common assault in Part II. If it spiked, then the numbers have been fudged.
Oops. Forgot to link The Sun for those stats.
In international news, while Mexican Federal Police are still bogged down in the rebelious state of Oaxaca, (where residents are fighting for the resignation of the repudiated governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, new president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (himself suffering from challenges to his presidency and its legitimacy) has sent thousands of federal troops to the Pacific state of Michoacan to fight violent drug trafficking gangs. It was in Michoacan that a gang called "la familia" entered a crowded bar and threw five severed heads on the dance floor along with a poorly written letter that stated that "the family does not kill women nor innocents. The family only kill those that need to be killed." La Familia is also said to be responsible for a recent prison uprising.
After the operation in Michoacan, Calderon's home state, officials are saying the army will be sent to Guerrero (where Acapulco is located), Nuevo Leon (Monterrey), Tamaulipas, and Sinaloa.
To underscore Ponytail & Broadwater, consider this chart of cumulative murder probabilities.
Notice that Baltimore bucked the trend of other, more successful cities. Baltimore is fundamentally unbalanced and has been for some time. Policing here has been less remedial than immiserating. It needs to be rebooted, this time with quality officers and lots of them.
Please read what Officer Johnson has to say about the causative effect of ample police patrol staffing on violent crime in his city. From the Hartford Courant
BurgerSub, have you a tally for total shootings this year?
Update on Welch: He actually ended up showing up, and the warrant was retracted.
I like your new icon, Cynic!
See, Simon, this is why I have this blog: there is only so much horrid, distant news I can think about in a day, which is why I keep it to Baltimore.
(unless someone sends me something I can't resist)
John Galt said...
BurgerSub, have you a tally for total shootings this year?
i'm not even up-to-date on the latest ones on the police's crime map yet. and i sort of forgot to record the ones that appear in the blotter several months ago and never started again. it's just too much damn work, which i guess in itself gives an indication of how many there are.
i still am not entirely sure that all of the things listed on the police crime map as "agg. assault - gun" are actual shootings. one example, the guy who killed his neighbor in belair-edison and then barracaded himself in his house a few months back. on the crime map, that incident had both an agg. assault marker AND a murder marker. from the articles i read about it though, it seemed that he only ever shot one person, so where does the assault come from? i know the answer isn't that it's standard procedure to put both of them (because technically the guy that got killed did also get assaulted) since i've never seen that happen in any of the other shooting deaths on the map.
Burg, prosecutors charge criminals with all the lesser related crimes, too, so they have some stuff to plea bargain with or convicted for if other bigger crimes don't stick.
I'm sure some lawyer can explain it better than I can. Paging Marshall Henslee...
i know the answer isn't that it's standard procedure to put both of them (because technically the guy that got killed did also get assaulted) since i've never seen that happen in any of the other shooting deaths on the map.
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