January 6

Dept: of Scary Stats:
Says the D.C.-based nonprofit The Sentencing Project, "more than half of young black males living in Washington, DC and Baltimore are caught up in the criminal justice system on an average day— either in prison, jail, on probation or parole, out on bond, or being sought on a warrant."

Some New York mapmakers used info gleaned from prison entry forms to plot the city's "million-dollar blocks"-- those where the city spends that much (in a year, presumably) to incarcerate its residents. Suprisingly, the borough with the most million-dollar blocks is Manhattan.

There was a triple shooting up in the NE at 1130 Belvedere Avenue, none of the injuries are fatal.

Mayhem in Woodlawn! Students at Milford Mill Academy were pepper-sprayed by police after a post-basketbal-game brawl broke out, and a man barricaded himself in a home... tasering ensued.

Mood-> :(
In Kent County, a 12-year-old girl was given marijuana and cocaine by Dad and New Mommy on a holiday visit. The criminally trashy couple was busted after the girl posted about her fun times on a myspace forum.

"You are a horror to every sane adult in this community," said federal Judge Andre M. Davis to Danny Fleck, a 60-year-old former postal worker who spent "years trolling online for underage girls."
And, 21-year-old George Alexander Riegel of Reisterstown received a four-year prison sentence for e-mailing an undercover agent files of two videos of an adult male having sex with a young child.

Judge Davis also called AAC cop-shooter Calvin Ignatius Savoy "cold-blooded" and "depraved" and sent him to jail for life.

A catfight downtown and plenty of burglary in the Blotter.

Maryland State Police Superintendent Colonel Tim Hutchins stopped a PGC drunk driver by his very own self after a motorist dialed #77.

Thought we all agreed to stop blaming music lyrics for violent human behavior back in the heavy metal days, on account of the whole supposition being unproveable, and any effective remedies being unconstitutional and unAmerican (not to mention some listeners are able to grasp allegory). Ergo, this column is stupid.

January 5

FredCo police are looking for Robert Lee Burgess Jr., left, a murder suspect whose last known address was in HoCo.

[Case name redacted by request-- this person was found not guilty] Another Update: An available courtroom was found and Judge Paul Alpert was open. The defendant chose a bench trial* instead of a jury trial, so Judge Alpert will hear and decide the case. Pretrial motions will be heard at 2:00 p.m. today and the openings will begin 9:30 a.m. Monday, January 8. Judge Alpert is a retired Judge so we don't know yet where he will be sitting Monday.
Ghosts of the Internets: [defendant] last logged in to myspace a week ago. And someone logged on on behalf of his alleged victim, Anu Ramasamy, a few days ago.
Update: Judge Welch has a trial starting Monday, so court administrators have to find a new judge and courtroom. Why no one thought of that before today, dunno...

*Why might a defendant want a bench trial? Notes this legal article,

In the local slang of some courthouses, a bench trial is known as a "slow plea," meaning that the local culture understands that the purpose of a bench trial is to find the defendant guilty, and present details of the case to the judge for purposes of sentencing. In such a jurisdiction, a defendant who believes in her innocence would be ill-advised to waive a jury.

A sentencing hearing for Donta Allen, admitted killer of Hopkins coed Linda Trinh, is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Monday, January 8, 2007 before Judge Roger W. Brown.
Also scheduled Monday: the trial of Charles Carroll, indicted for second-degree rape, four counts of sexual abuse of a minor under the age of 18 and two counts of third-degree sexual offense, and the trial of Acurtiss Grimes, indicted Grimes July 15, 2004 for first-degree murder and child abuse in connection with the death of his 2-month-old daughter Kaitlyn.

A County man spent 14 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit, but he can't be pardoned because he's pled guilty to sodomy.

The future is now: gait-recognition software can detect suspicious pedestrians.

Andrea Siegel: "A Glen Burnie father shouted 'It's not fair!' and kicked his chair away yesterday after an Anne Arundel County judge sentenced him to 18 months in jail for a drunken-driving crash that killed two youngsters, one of them his."

Two homicide victims named: Larry Parks, 37, was shot in April and died in November (275 of 2006), and Eddie Golf, 26 (2), was the man found near Leakin Park.

Tug-of-Love maman Myriam Bédard is back in Québec, according to spokesmountie Sylvain L'Heureux (whose name means "The Happy Woods"). Thus ends MD's role in the tale of international scandal and intrigue.

The minivan-thief shot by police in PGC was ID'd as Mark Antonio Washington, 43.

The election may be over, but MD's voting-machine woes go on ...

You want flies with that? Says Health Commissioner Sharfstein, 16 percent of Baltimore City McDonald's restaurants have been closed on account of filth.

January 4 Insomniac Edition

Articles to think about while you lie awake:
More people are in jail in America than ever-- but death sentences are at a 30-year-low. What's up with that?

What should happen to officers like Lt. Ehren Watada who "fail to deploy for an illegal war"?

January 4 afternoon

Corey Reuben Cooper pled guilty to robbing jewelry stores. His accomplice, Brian O'Neal, was caught when Baltimore policeman David A. Williamson admitted taking some of the nearly $1 million in jewelry from Cooper during a traffic stop. Williamson resigned after his wife was caught trying to pawn the loot.

A Howard County Circuit Court judge denied the request to move Monti Mantrice Fleming,15 and accused of fatally shooting a Columbia teenager last year, to a juvenile facility.

The Baltimore City Grand Jury indicted Kevin Parker, 24, of the 1300 block of Poplar Grove for first-degree murder. Court documents allege on September 28 Parker and another person, armed with handguns entered a dwelling in the 1200 block of N. Dukeland Street. Parker believed an individual in the dwelling was responsible for a robbery that occurred on Winchester Street earlier the same day. A struggle over a handgun ensued between Parker and Sultan Mathews-Bey. Sultan Mathews-Bey was fatally shot in the head (204 of 2006). An arraignment is scheduled for January 31, 2007.

PGC police shot a minivan-theft suspect, closing down BW Parkway near Hyattsville.

Murdered Chidibere Ochulo had taken out two restraining orders against her husband before he killed her. She "told court officials that they were trying to work out their problems."

Germantown perv Brian Champange got 16 years for his stash of 7,600 child porn images, and sending nudie pix to a minor.
And, former NIH researcher Dr. McClellan Walther pled guilty to ordering videos from a child porn catalog sent by federal agents.

January 4

Oscar Adams shot pregnant passerby Ashley Harris to death on Charles Street in front of Club Choices, but he's out on bail.

Odd, was another teenager shot near Belnord Avenue, or it this the same story?
And police are still seeking Antoine Martin, 16, for stabbing Paul Jones at Southwestern. A picture might help.

Rest In Peace t-shirts are hot sellers at Mondawmin mall, and across the country in our West-Coast sister city of Oaktown. Headlines the SF Chronicle, "R.I.P. shirts become an urban tradition, Mementos honoring the dead now a religious ritual, complete with their own rules of observance."

The E blasts MOM for Mrs. J's $83k pay raise: "why didn’t O'Malley spend the money on a counselor for himself and Jessamy to improve their relationship?"

Getting Low in HoCo:
Like the cartoon villan she sounds like, Penny Banks is eeevil.. stealing $82k of dead-man checks!
Also on Rod's blog: Sapo of MS-13 pled guilty to racketeering, and a 25-year-old could be in jail until he's 55 for an accounting-fraud scheme. And a former District officer pled guilty to transporting a shotgun that he and his teenaged daughter sawed to an illegal length.

Myriam Bédard flies back to Québec today, after, says the Canuck National Post, "languish[ing] in an American jail as punishment for her testimony into the federal sponsorship scandal."
Languishing!

And MD taxpayers will be housing some Mexicans and a couple tarheels after they were busted for the coca.
Fun fact: the teenaged Cybrarian was once charged with felony reckless endangerment in Reidsville, Rockingham County NC!

Life may be too short, but Rodricks can make it feel a lot longer!

Dear middle-aged paunchy white guy of Baltimore: Let me start with this: Newspaper space is precious. Full of sad news sometimes, but newspaper space is precious. There are designers and editors in your department- and people everywhere in the newspaper business, for that matter- who work hard at laying out pages, appeasing advertisers and making pages interesting to look at. Readers spend seconds every day looking at the paper because they have faith newspaper space is precious. Most of us want to be informed. There are countless people with no newspapers, people who can't even read ...

... to use precious resources, space and ink repeating the word precious six times ... Just writing a few sentences in that pedantic, hand-wringing style is exhausting!
(Said Journalism professor Christopher Henson of Rodricks: "a white columnist’s imitation of black argot might be read by some as condescending." TG brothaman cut that shit out at least, right?!)

Thanks to galt for the link to the Messenger's Northern crime log, in which one can read about a York Road carjacking ("a motorist was flagged down"?) many stolen laptops, and in Hampden, arson and a stickup at the Dunkin Donuts.

January 3 evening

It's the County's second murder or the city's fifth, or some young guy had a heart attack strolling Chinquapin Parkway. In any case, just over somebody's line, "remains were found."

And a seventh-grader was stabbed in the right forearm at a West Baltimore middle school.
Like you never stabbed anyone in middle school?

Chet Dembeck, the "Last Reporter": "Watching local TV reporters ever so softly interview Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley on New Year's Eve reminded me of a scripted, surrealistic propaganda video you might be forced to watch 1,000 times in a re-education camp in Siberia."

January 3

The County's first murder was the fatal stabbing of 48-year old Arthur G. Brown Jr. in Landsdowne.

Got a babydaddy in jail and want to show off his mug shot? There's a place on the "Prison Talk" forum.

And ANOTHER shooting: a juvenile shot in the head on Belnord Avenue near Patterson Park in the southeastern has died (homicde number four).
1. Leon Nelson, 17, China Garden
2. Man, early 20's at Windsor Forest apt. complex, 4900 Challedon Road
3. Woman in 2000 W. North Avenue Rowhouse (see link above)
4. Another 17-year-old on Belnord, SE

A man shot in April who died in November became 2006's homicide #275 (and police still haven't called his family).
Two-seventy-five for the City, 350 for the Metro Area in '06-- such tidy numbers!

Dick Irwin reports on the juvenile shot in the head and also an unID'd man in the Eastern shot in the chest. And a carjacking in the Central, and lots of theft.

The 20-year-old man found shot dead in the Edgewood flowerbed was ID'd as Walter Antonio Overton.

Hamm: let's spend state $ treating cracky.

Your tax $ at work: An ongoing ACLU lawsuit against the city and the federal government on behalf of black public-housing residents has cost the city $6.6 million so far.

Harold Singfield Jr., 22, got a new trial when a judge ruled another judge should have asked potential jurors if they could be fair. Why this warrants a whole story is beyond me. I guess procedural slip-ups like that are usually frosted over, but this time an appeals judge put his foot down?
Update: Wrote someone from Luke Broadwater's mailbox,

There's a growing amount of case law that says judges must ask jurors direct questions about certain types of cases to determine whether the very nature of those cases elicit strong feelings, thereby resulting in bias.

Maybe it's only an interesting story to me -- I don't know. But, at least to some degree, I think it illustrates the difficulty prosecutors face in successfully convicting accused murderers.

Gregory Kane reveals that his cousin, Uncle George Floyd's boy Louis, was a bit of a black sheep; advocates "good" prisoners beating down the "dangerous" ones.
Er, wouldn't that make the good prisoners into dangerous ones by definition?

Hate those hit-and-run drivers! Eg. Jason Dehn, 24, who drunkenly killed two dialysis patients.

Phony $20s are showing up in Somerset County (sub req.).

"Meet the New Boss"-- CP has a Q & A with Ms. Dixon.
On Crime:

"I'm not making any bold promises as relates to a number [of murders] and reducing crime. What I want to see is that the State's Attorney's office and the police department have a better working relationship."

About as modest a goal as it gets, as it's all uphill from here!

A hypothetical question to Mrs. J and the BPD:

"Are we all in the business for reducing crime? ... what is it going to take from your department and what is it going to take from the police department? We need to have a frank, honest conversation, because there are weaknesses on both sides."

On fingers:

"Instead of pointing the fingers, recognizing that and really asking--like at the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council I asked that question, as City Council president. I ask that every time I go to the meeting, to the judges and parole and probation office, the governor's office, etc. I ask: Are we really in this to reduce crime or are we just here because of your titles and it's a job? Because that's kind of the sense I have from some of the individuals who serve."

But she's not pointing any fingers!
Meet the New Old Status Quo!
(Wonder whappened to that Urban Blight project of hers?)

Dan Rodricks' column reminds me of a lady I saw wailing on her kid at the mall, screaming, "you know better than to hit your brother!"
Like it would help anything to try to have a parenting discussion with a bitch crazy enough to take toddlers to the mall!
(How should a concerned citizen handle the public-child-abuse spectacle? WWJM*D?
(*Judith Martin)

January 2 Afternoon

A body was found behind an apartment complex near Leakin Park (2).

Two-thousand-seven rang in with the shooting death of 17-year-old Leon Nelson, who died about three hours after he was shot at the China Garden.

Op Ed du jour: "Where's the outrage over black-on-black killings?"
DeWayne Wickham, USA Today
"The number of blacks killed in 2005 [by a single black assailant] alone approaches the total of all the blacks lynched in this country from 1882 to 1968, according to records maintained by Tuskegee University."

Bédard's lawyer to Mounties: come get my client out of MD!

Can this relationship be saved? Stephen Mujerm, 40, of Lanham proposed to his woman, Victorine Taboh of Laurel. An hour later, he knocked her out with a steering-wheel lock and found himself in a PA jail.

What's old is new again dept: Is policing by private security firms the wave of the future?

January 2 - The Party's Over

A man's body was found squashing daisies on Meadowood Drive in Edgewood, HafCo.

An 18-year-old was shot, a 20-year-old was stabbed, a 15-year-old had bleach thrown in his face and an 18-year-old raped at a party in the Blotter.

Three people were shot at the China Garden restaurant between Dru Hill and Leakin Parks.

The Amber-Alert kids and their murder-suspect dad were found unhurt by an eagle-eyed motorist in Olney.

A Baltimore church has a service annually for the city's youngest homicide victims.

Care to define "metro area," Luke Broadwater? Is AAC in it? Harford County?

The Post Office is closed for Gerald Ford's funeral.

The Holidays are officially over ... good news to the 7 readers who contemplated suicide, the 13 who drank too much, and the two with no shoes on their feet (at the airport).
And no one had terducken for Xmas-- though five readers enjoyed the charms of Chinese.
Ps. The Chinese Delight on 41st and Falls has the best dumplings in town, plus they take Amex -- and that corner attracts the most interesting of Hampden's Falls Rd. ho's.

Chief Judge John Prevas will preside over a brief ceremony this morning at 8:30 a.m. as State's Attorney Patricia C Jessamy begins her third elected term and receives the Oath of Office. Following the Installation Ceremony, many of the 200 Assistant State's Attorneys who serve in the District and Circuit Courts, at Central Booking and in the Juvenile Courts Division will also receive the Oath of Office. Dockets will be called at 10 a.m. following the ceremony, juice and cookies.

Year in Review continued

April
The year's most lurid political scandal broke: that would be Charles Boutin, chief sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act, using his state-issued computer to find a hooker specializing in domination ... then issuing a press release blaming "ED" for his behavior.

Pat Jessamy was livid at what she called a "rouge database" of inaccurate data.
She was also featured on the CBS national news, calling Baltimore the "epicenter of witness intimidation."

Hobbit-like Judge John Glynn was in a peppery mood, calling Jessamy a "liar" (regarding Amanda Johnson's plea) in the Daily Record and opining to the Sun that city police have a "sloppy and unprofessional" approch to search warrants.

Jayne Miller uncovered a story in which a man's death was re-classified by the ME at the behest of the police from 'homicide' to death by 'natural causes'-- even though a homicide trial was pending.

Oprah came to town to pay a visit to her old colleague Richard Sher and raise funds for Beth Tfiloh, and told WBAL, "I think the state of education in Baltimore is an atrocity, an atrocity. What is going on is a crime to the children of the city. It's a crime that people can't figure it out."

Our first link to the Examiner: a story about police helping convicts find jobs.

...to be continued...

January 1

Gus Sentementes puts 2006's homicide total at 274-- actually one fewer than the city's 2005 number as per the Medical Examiner's office.
Meanwhile, murder is down 15 percent in the District.

AMBER ALERT!
Police are looking for black dad Kelechi Charles Emeruwa and his three kids.
Their mother Chidiebere Omenihu Ochulo was found murdered in Burtonsville, MoCo, and Emeruwa and the children, (left to right) Antinnoe, 6, (a girl), Elijah, 4, and Jachi, an 8-year-old boy, are missing, as is their blue Honda Civic, plate MKZ-237.

Is the burning body found in a house near Greenmount Cemetery* number 27-something? We'll never know for sure...

What the?!-- someone removed a dead woman's gravestone and put it on her father's Glen Burnie lawn.

*This weekend took the husband on a Creepy Drive through the Northern and Eastern on the way to Canton-- from Greenmount and 33rd, South on Greenmount (check the nauseating flashy blue lights!), left (East) on E. North Avenue, view the Big Weird building (shown left), go South on Patterson Park Ave. to get out... or keep going East to see all the streets you read about in the blotter!
Hey Burg, I'll bet you have some good suggestions for Scenic drives through town...!

Year in Review

January
The first posts of '06 were made by Chuck.
Said a non, "damn my boi ronny aka butch was killed new years day butch we love u and we here holdin it down r.i.p"

Soon after the ball dropped, police had begun to look for Graham Buckmaster's GMC after he killed his live-in partner Lisa Moore.

The Northwest was outraged at the murder of Warren Fleming by 21-year-old career criminal Brian Keith Rose.

O'Malley's Catholic father died, causing the future governor to miss a Planned Parenthood event.

By Jan 21 there had been 18 murders. The "Flex Squad" scandal blew up, and Warren Brown called Jemini Jones' accuser a "big fat liar."
A redacted report suggested fixes to Central Booking.. and was promptly sent to the "round" file by the MD Dept of Public Safety and Correctional Services -- the very agency that commissioned it.
And you can't forget that Keith Mills story!

February
The Feds began to hand out hefty sentences in the McAbier firebombing case.

The strange murder of Natasha Bacchus Magee was recollected for a jury in HoCo.

"Big thick" John C. Gaumer admitted to killing Hampden's Josie Brown in Arbutus (and a reader was outraged that I wrote "poor thing" about Brown: "she was a person, not a thing!").

Vernon Evans Jr. was scheduled to die on the 5th, but didn't.

WBAL noted that the ME's office had 275 homicides down for '06, even with the justifieds and whatnot taken out. The police reported 269.
Commented a reader Feb. 23,

"the police xagerate details, ricky wilkins a.k.a Noodles is not a cold blooded killer...and hopefully at his trial in june that will show! we just went 2 south beach right b4 the murder.....look up the murdered guys backround Terrance j. williams, he is no saint! shout out to noodles hold it down in city jail and if u get off we gone back 2 florida! holla murdaland records all day every day!"

Before the white couple was arrested for asking directions in Cherry Hill, David Ervin, 57, was arrested after reporting being carjacked.

March
After we got our paws on the city homicide book, we tried to do math. Remarkable: 47 of '05's homicides were John Does.

Stories of police-on-police activity ....Dan Ostrovsky of the Daily Record described a lawsuit in which Baltimore Detective Cassidy Kampfhammer and her partner, an officer Donato, falsely claimed to have bought drugs at an address, not realizing the house belonged to two police officers. When she realized her mistake she called her husband, Lt. Sean Kampfhammer, and the couple cooked up a scheme...

And another [auxiliary] officer, Winnie Gibson Watts, claimed police barged into her home and arrested her and her children, claiming to be looking for a suspect.

Lax coach Greg Raymond (left) didn't get charged with vehicular manslaughter after his choice to drink (a ton) and drive ended with his friend's skull impaled on a pole.

Anonymous said...
As someone who knew Matt why don't you all consider this: Raymond was Matt's best friend. He isn't being charged with anything because Matt's parents did not want to prosecute him. Did you know he was driving because Matt asked him too? Do you think accidently taking the life of your best friend in accident isn't punishment? So, why don't all rid yourself of your holier than thou attitude. Ever heard of the saying, "But for the grace of God there go I..." People make mistakes and this was a mistake with horrible consequnces. But before you say the prosecution has "no balls" know the facts. What's more important: someone being prosecuted so you can feel like justice is being done or the wishes of a family who just lost their youngest son being honored?

Police officer Dante Hemingway was shot multiple times. Jobrea Lodge was arrested and went on to throw pee on an officer in Central Booking in the heat of August.

Hamm gave a two-part interview to WYPR.

"Let me tell you about Leonard Hamm. Leonard Hamm don't need to be police commissioner. Leonard Hamm was doing very well as a retired citizen of Baltimore. And could very easily go back and do that again, if, in fact, I had that kind of interference that everybody was talking about. Secondly, the mayor and I have a relationship where he is my boss. He's in charge of the city. And what the mayor wants is a safe city; he don't tell me how to go about doing it and making it safe. He just wants results. All he wants to know is, 'What happened with this thing? How're we doing with this? What's coming along with that?' So that, when reporters, such as yourself, come and stick a microphone in his face, he'll be prepared."

..to be continued...