Tuesday, January 30, 2007

January 30

The body of Morgan State alum Sintia Mesa [26] was found in her car's trunk in Northwest Baltimore. Police have determined that she was murdered and her body showed signs of trauma.

They took Kevin Fowlin's [25] paycheck and they shot him anyway.

The boy killed in Owings Mills over the weekend was identified as Kevin Evans Jr., the son of a Baltimore City police officer.

The man killed last week on E. Baltimore St. has been identified as Milan Walker [19]. The same article identifies Jermall K. Ford [24] as the man who was killed on Madison Ave. last Wednesday.

Isaiah Simmons' family is seeking criminal charges against the staff of Bowling Brook.

The car that Terrance Washington stole was found in Alabama, and Washington is suspected of stealing a pickup truck that "had several weapons on board."

Frederick resident James Drew will get 5 years for propositioning what he thought was a 13-year-old girl. Meanwhile, Anne Arundel perv William Villeda admitted to possessing child porn after offering images to an undercover agent online.

"Was the public benefited at all by the resources spent on her arrest and prosecution?"

26 comments:

burgersub said...

kevin evans jr was the son of a baltimore city cop.

taotechuck said...

Thanks for catching the mistake.

Anonymous said...

Here is my take on the whole HoCo Ho thing: She was the victim of crappy economic times and domestic violence. her story isn't any different then a desperatly poor women trying to make rent and going to turning tricks to do it while trying to escape her previous abuser. The problem is lack of assistance when people find themselves in crappy ecomonic situations. or, perhaps, more financial education that keeps people from buying 600,000 McMansions they won't be able to afford should a financial windfall occur.

ppatin said...

I don't think a lack of financial education was the problem. The woman was a college professor, not a high school dropout.

The Brandy Britton story is a great example of how silly laws against prostitution are. Why is it any of society's business if two consenting adults want to exchange money for sex?

Anonymous said...

Man, I've seen people with PHD's and MD's who can't balance a checkbook, let alone live below their means and save a few bucks for a rainy day. yes, this is a story in two parts: Why bother meddling if two consenting adults want to engage in sex? Part two is: Uhm...why did she buy a home she couldn't afford? She won't have been driven to prostituition if she could afford to keep her home. Affordable housing, decent jobs paying decent wages might solve a lot of problems similar to hers. Legalizing and taxing the hell out of prostition is one easy fix. What about the one that actually killed her? Severe money problems, forclosure, no job. Chances are an educated person will NOT seek assistance when faced with such problems and the way the housing market is going with forclosures up in many areas, you're going to see alot more desperate yet educated people hanging themselves....

Anonymous said...

I disagree that prostitution is a victimless crime when so often pros get the shit end of the stick with regards to the business they're in. Also, it would make more sense if enforcement of anti-prostitution laws focused less on the the supply end of things (pros) and more on the demand (johns).

Also, with regards to BB, she was clearly mentally unstable. Her suicide is evidence of this, as is the creative ways she chose to solve her economic problems.

John Galt said...

Ok, you had to go there.

How do you think Affordable Housing is created ?

In the past, we created Housing Projects for that purpose. Then we decided that people had a RIGHT to housing, so that they could not be removed for misconduct, so misconduct flourished. So Affordable Housing became the seat of gang violence and drug abuse. So we demo's the Projects and sent people out into market-rate housing.

And the market is up because everyone wants more house these days. Blue collar housing used to be a 13 foot wide 1,250 square foot house with two BR, one bath. Now, people want twice that, which costs.

People, Baltimore has TONS and TONS of surplus housing. It's just in territory conceded by the City to the criminals. It's about crime.

Solve the crime, Save the world.

And that won't happen as long as fugitive assailants are so plentiful in town that the Mayor cannot go for a drive without hitting one. (Sounds like a Letterman joke, doesn't it? I'm not laughing.) And we have so many warrants that the police can't even keep track of them.

Crime first, all else follows.

Unknown said...

I woke up today and now that I'm reading this today I am feeling rather pissed at Baltimore, like that's unusual.

Chuck, do you have my comcast email? I wanted to send you an email to talk about some things, but I'm not sure if I have the correct email for you. get back to me .

Anonymous said...

Crime is the obvious result of depressed ecomonic situations, right? So, how does one eliminate the desire to commit a crime? Eliminate the desperation. Legalize Drugs and regulate them like we do tobacco and booze. The legal trade will undercut the illiegal trade and a large fraction of crime will simply fade away. We KNOW this works because it worked when prohibition was repealed.
Invest in infrastucture, including policing, (This also means beefing up the docks, where a lot of the drugs are finding their way in) Education, transportation, viable retail options and YES--affordable housing--For those who earn it. Not this Bubble pricing mess that we are currently living in. It's creating a larger gap between the haves and the have nots and I believe that these social ills are the direct result of poor decisions in economic policy on all levels--federal, state and local.

Maurice Bradbury said...

How ironic that Britton taught womens' studies and called herself a "feminist," but said she married her second husband because "I needed income to pay my mortgage payment, so I got into this relationship."

And, if she'd just sold the house, which had surely appreicated quite a bit, and moved into an apartment somewhere in a higher-traffic area, she would have been able to keep her business going.

ppatin said...

"Man, I've seen people with PHD's and MD's who can't balance a checkbook, let alone live below their means and save a few bucks for a rainy day."

In that case her financial situation was mostly her fault. We live in a free society, if people choose to be irresponsible then there's not that can be done about it.

John Galt said...

So, include among the many hazards to city cops 1)being shot, 2) being robbed, 3) being taken hostage, and 4) having your children murdered.

All good reasons why the city's compensation package is woefully inadequate to the task of attracting a sufficient number of uncorrupt, ethical, diligent, and intelligent sworn officers to the BCPD.

Stop with the excuses and do whatever it takes to staff that goddamn police force.

Until the City does so, understand that it is allowing the crime. It is a choice the City has made, and one which Sheila Dixon appears perfectly comfortable with.

Trashy mayor of a criminal paradise.

taotechuck said...

JG, you forgot "being robbed while your children are held at gunpoint." That's gotta be a big selling point for drawing cops to our force.

John Galt said...

Not to mention "robbed at gunpoint en route to the funeral of a fellow officer murdered in the line of duty".

John Galt said...

"Seriously,... you couldn't make this stuff up."

- Sheckie Green

burgersub said...

teenagers of all socioeconomic backgrounds experiment with drugs. not all of them experiment with violent felonies.

John Galt said...

I just saw Fatman's link on so-called and ill-named 'Broken Windows' theory, as critiqued by social psychologist Sampson.

Understand the paper by Kelling & Wilson is not about windows or housing or how much people are perceived to like their neighborhood.

It's about criminal justice. The idea is that high-level offenses and the motivations behind them get lost in a sea of low-level offenses. So, you clear the deck of low-level offenses, which leaves the field wide open to broadcast the (true) deterrent to the offense, unfettered by noise.

Consider a school setting. If you walk into a high school where mobs of screaming kids run past signs reading "Quiet - library area", you know that enforcement is overstated.

If you can yell, you can probably smoke. If you can smoke, you can probably grafitti. If you can get away with grafittiing, you can probably get away with assault.

So, how would you do 'Broken Windows'? Throw all the low-level offenders into Detention. This leaves you with well-behaved classrooms full of studious children. If the lowest-level offenders wish to reenter the classroom, they clearly have to behave accordingly. The slightest deviation and you throw them back. Zero tolerance.

As for those who are dedicated offenders, keep them isolated. Permanently. Under supervision.

In either setting, no assault will be masked by chaos. The 'signals' about behavior and corresponding punishment are not noisy, they're crystal clear and truthful. That is, expectations of sanction relative to conduct are fulfilled

So, if I say that Assault 1 is punishable by up to 20 yrs. in prison and the reality experienced is that almost everyone is caught and punishment ranges from 16-20 in practice, that's a far clearer message than that only 10% of offenders are tried and most get 3 yrs., while a handful get 18.

It's not about glass, or wood, or how nich things look. It's about clearly signalling the expected consequences of personal misconduct and ensuring that they come to pass.

Rant over. {Breathe, Galt, breathe...}

Anonymous said...

HoCoJoe:

I don't think you quite understand that statement. Severe poverty forces crime as an alternative decision. Who is going to choose a life behind a fryer in a KFC vs. Thug life with wads of cash and control? Many in poverty stricken areas simply don't have a choice at an honest lifestyle above the poverty line, so "Personal responsibilty" isn't a viable argument. Once you present people with lucrative economic choices THEN you can present the personal responsibilty argument.
Teens from HoCo don't have that terrible choice to make. They might be experimenting with drugs, but most aren't dealing them. The Teen experimenters represent the demand side, while the supply side is warring with eachother for control of the trade.
MY point of the HoCo statement is that MANY residents of HoCo simply don't acknowlege a drug problem in their community. Might not be a trade zone like east Baltimore, but it's certainly a place where many like to experiment and use drugs--Err..yes..I believe that is BUYING drugs. They are part of the problem as much as the people who refuse to see their precious little angels are shooting up heroin. It is the RESPONSIBILTY of the HoCo Community to actually admit this. They refuse. I can attest to a huge problem being there. I was raised in HoCo for 15 years. And before you say it--yes, we were well off. I saw many kids go down a bad path--including my own sister. Where did they go to score? Edmonson, East Baltimore and Brooklyn Park, Cherry Hill.
So, do me a favor, tell your neighbors to start getting some personal reponsibilty and admitting their kids might have drug problems.

Anonymous said...

BTW---the only way this will ever end is to LEGALIZE DRUGS.

Maurice Bradbury said...

"Crime is the obvious result of depressed ecomonic situations."

So how poor does someone have to be to make it okay with you that they burgle your house? $10k?

Puhlease!! If that was true, the highest violent crime rates would be in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississipi, most bank robbers would be single moms, and white-collar crime wouldn't exist. There's no income cutoff for integrity (or taste or manners).

And another puh-lease that Brandy Britton was a victim. She certainly was good at playing one, but she lost her job because she falsified data and couldn't get along with anyone, married a man because she "needed income" (do you think she told him that before they were married?), was living above her means, and instead of just moving to a cheaper neighborhood like a normal person would in that situation, defaulted on her mortagage and didn't pay her bills. And then she kills herself, the ultimate abdication of personal responsibility.

Anonymous said...

You're not taking into account those areas are not as populated as Balitmore. If you look at the FBI's national crime data, you'll see that out of all violent crime Robbery was the one crime that saw a 3.9% increase, the largest one of all crime catagories across the US. I think that says a lot. With this country experiencing a class division much like that of the guilded age, we can only surmise that povery drives desperate people to commit crimes.
Give a reason for intergrity and human decency to return and I think you'll see crime decrease.

Maurice Bradbury said...

You need a reason to be decent and have integrity?! Remind me to hide the silverware if you ever come over!

How about because without your integrity or decency you are worth nothing as a human being, no matter how much money you have?

John Galt said...

Silverware? You still have silverware? They stole my silver, stole my furniture, even stole the cinderblocks in my back yard. They stole the wrought iron security grille on my basement windows. They stole my VCR.

Who the hell wants a vcr ??

Maurice Bradbury said...

Galt, they're poor victims of our class system who had no other choice! How else are they to watch the films of the 80s and 90s?
Where's your pity? Geez!

John Galt said...

Y'know, the thing that pisses me off the most about white liberal apologistics is the fact that some of the most down-to-earth law & order-oriented people I know came from no money. Momma may not have had money for new shoes, but she could cut a hickory switch for nothin' in the back yard if you stole you some new shoes out the store.

Maurice Bradbury said...

... and child abuse also knows no class division.

As for the recent increase in crime, the consensus is that the massive budget cuts to local police deprtments since 9/11 have a lot, if not everything, to do with it. "cities ... that suffer from the worst cop shortages are also experiencing the most dramatic spikes in crime."