Two men in a black SUV tried to abduct a Hopkins student in the 100 block of W. 29th St. yesterday morning, but fled when she screamed and witnesses ran to help her.
More on the drive-by yesterday morning in a downtown parking garage.
Bryant Mitchell Johnson is wanted for a whole bunch of bank robberies.
Vandals targeted 15 cars and a house in Hamilton.
A push for $2M to recruit city cops is falling on deaf ears. Sheila D. says we're meeting our recruiting goals (despite having at least 140 unfilled positions), and we shouldn't use the city's "rainy day fund" for this. Meanwhile, there are a paltry 21,000 open city warrants (that's the conservative number) and 79 officers to work on them. (Baltimore Crime loves us some math: if each officer closes a measly 53 warrants per day, and no new crimes are committed, we'd have a clean slate in a week!)
Two more dismissals of BCFD fire commanders for negligence and incompetence.
Darryl E. Green got two consecutive life sentences plus 40 years for killing Vanessa and Bianca Price in 1992.
The Examiner has a homicide Q&A for HoCo State's Attorney Tim McCrone.
12 comments:
Spending more money on recruiting for the police department is pointless. You're not going to get more good people if you have lousier pay than all the surrounding jurisdictions, worn out equipment, incompetent commanders and a city population that's (to put it mildly) a pain in the a$$ to deal with. Until officer pay is raised they're not going to be able to recruit enough good people to staff the police department.
Honestly, the two highest paid positions in the City here should be Teacher and Officer. Somehow, our leadership fails to comprehend this, then finds itself wondering why in the world recruitment is such an issue here.
If they want to spend that money well, get the Police Departments (in particular, the southern and southwestern) up to date, and hire real leadership that'll motivate the Officers to do their jobs better. Perhaps even call in the Federal Government to root out the criminals.
As bad as this sounds, I really don't feel bad for the people here - they're the idiots that continue to vote these stooges into office.
Has the Sun discontinued printing the crime blotter ? Strange, since it's like the national sport around here.
29th and 28th streets in Remington/Charles Village sure have been busy places for criminals, but I have yet to see an increased police presence. Even with all the news stories.
Also, I want to give a public shout-out to 7th District City Council Member Belinda Conaway for referring me to my community association when I asked her for more police in the area. Um...I'm sure a council member can get better results than a community association!
It's like I'm taking crazy pills!
I'm guessing that Richard Irwin is on vacation, but I don't know. It seems like every so often, the Blotter disappears for a week or so, and a few people who got killed during that time never make it into the Sun.
I bet tougher prison sentences for the criminals they arrest and an occasional execution would also raise police morale.
I think we should consider arming female students at Hopkins.
Or we could do it texas style and arm everyone. After all, its better to be judged by 12 than carried by six... certainly in Baltimore.
Ever notice that whenever some really very disturbing crimes take place in Charles Viillage, everyone feels the need to overcompensate, swearing "... but it's really a very safe neighborhood the rest of the time.. "
Methinks thou dost protest too much. Charles Village has a lot of darn crime.
Johnny Galt's Remedial Arithmetic 101 (aka Math for Dummies or Elected Officials)
According to the Examiner article on unserved warrants, which number 53,000, if we wanted to actually serve those warrants sometime this decade the warrant squad would need to be increased from 79 officers to around 300.
Last time I checked, that was a difference of 221.
In discussing Stephanie Blake's resolution to appropriate money to hire more cops, the administration indicates it is only short around 158 officers. Total. Across every district and division in the entire department citywide. Including the warrant squad.
Doesn't the math kinda strongly suggest that City Hall is understaffing the police department in such a way as to guarantee the perpetuation of extensive crime here, just as a mathematical fact ? I mean, this doesn't even account for the vast reductions in patrol staffing over the last 10 years.
Oh, and by the way, that warrant figure is almost exactly what it was about ten years ago, so when I assert that the City government has made no progress in anything other than effective suppression of crime statistics, it does have the ring of truth to it.
Oh, and if Dept. of Corrections, Parole & Probation Div. has around 33,000 active, supervised cases within city limits and there are around 21,000 active criminal warrants outstanding, then doesn't it stand to reason that the streets could be made a whole lot safer just by doing the job as specified by the issuing judges ?
And if the administration chooses not do so, does it not logically follow that it is negligently abusing its exclusive authority to police within this jurisdiction? And subjecting the residents and businesses to absolutely unnecessary exposure to crime ?
What part of this is subject to debate? The court has issued a warrant. That's its job. The executive branch has ensured that it will not serve that warrant. It is in breach of the duties exclusively held by that branch of government.
Hate to burst the Mayor's bubble about abating the violence by opening more City Recreation Centers, but we currently have about 46 of them citywide.
The population of interest, males aged 14-18 numbers under 25,000. This group is presumably the primary user of facilities between 6 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.. Users of rec centers citywide number about 6,000, which is 125 distinct persons a year (some of whom may use the facilities on multiple occasions) per center.
Even if they were each there daily, that would only entail about ten persons per facility per hour (not including paid City supervisory staff).
Doesn't this kind of suggest more rec centers won't effectively decrease violent crime, because they're already underutilized ?
I have personal knowledge of streetcorner hoodlums claiming the excuse that they work the corner because they don't have a rec center. They were then asked what was wrong with the rec center three blocks away. They replied unconvincingly "but that's all the way down the hill."
And these facilities cost a lot of dough, because they have to be hyper-safe, hyper-compliant. Just the gymnasium of the most recently-constructed one cost over $1MM. Over 20 years, that would be annual depreciation of $50,000, or $400 per user per year before operating costs.
I might be willing to shouder that if attendance were obligatory, but otherwise why not just pay them to go see a movie ?
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