Police arrested Wisconsin fugitive Isaias DeLeon, wanted for assaulting a 14-year-old girl in 2000.
Update: skeezy pedophile John Henri Palmont turned himself in to the Prince George's County Jail at about 2 p.m. today, says WBAL.
From a reader:
Just wanted to pass along that the Baltimore City Council introduced (by Jim Kraft) and passed a resolution with immediate adoption (# 07-0319R) at the meeting tonight on 8/13 related to the attempted murder of Zach Sowers. The resolution was:
In Support of the Family of Zachary Sowers in Their Search for Justice
FOR the purpose of respectfully requesting the Baltimore City State's Attorney's
Office to seek maximum sentences for the attempted murder of Zachary Sowers,
and extending an expression of support to Mr. Sowers' family.
Sponsors: James B. Kraft, President Rawlings-Blake, Nicholas C. D'Adamo, Bernard
C. 'Jack' Young, Vernon E. Crider, Mary Pat Clarke, Rochelle 'Rikki'
Spector, Sharon Green Middleton and Edward L. Reisinger
30 comments:
The fact of the matter is that by the time someone commits murder or puts an innocent person into a coma, it is too late! No punishment will ever be satisfactory, no punishment will ever make things right.
If we want to make a real difference, we should focus on appropriate punishment for lesser crimes BEFORE the miscreants have a chance to develop their criminal careers.
At least one of the thugs involved in the Sowers tragedy was busted earlier this year for carjacking, CARJACKING! God knows what else these monsters were into as juvies, but I bet it was not a short list.
For christ's sake, I'm sick of hearing about finally "getting tough" on violent offenders. That strategy won't do a damn thing if for every "violent offender" there are scores of "violent-offenders-in-training" waiting to advance their careers.
Sheila Dixon's campaign ad says "Together, we can get the guns and violent criminals off of our streets."
I don't get it. Is this the city that 'allows' stabbings and burglaries ?
What's wrong with 'Together, and through my hiring many more police officers to do the heavy lifting, we can get the criminals, all of them, off of our streets so we can get back to the business of building a better place to live and raise a decent next generation.'
Double-shooting on the 3700 block, Manchester Ave. in NW.
"If we want to make a real difference, we should focus on appropriate punishment for lesser crimes BEFORE the miscreants have a chance to develop their criminal careers."
Yes! We need to be handing out serious prison time (as in a decade or more, no parole) for first time violent felons and felons with gun violations. Check out the criminal record of Byron Dickey (B'more's most recent murder "victim") on MD Judiciary Case Search. The fact that that thing (he doesn't count as a person in my book) was on the street shows that our justice system is broken.
Oh, how about giving concealed carry permits to law-abiding citizens? Since the police and the justice system can't protect us how about you let us defend ourselves?
Wow, a white guy from Canton gets beaten down and the politicians come out of the woodworks with crime outings and resolutions. Meanwhile 200 black guys are killed, some of them innocent victims, and .... nothing but silence. Who says racism is dead?
Being in a unrecovable coma is a tad more serious than a simple "beat down", in fact, I think I would rather be dead.
But to take you comment at face value, you seem to believe that since 190+ murders have taken place (some of those white, btw) than no one should get action started to stop the violence just because some college student will never awake from a coma.
My outage took off this year when Christopher Clark, 18 year old good intelligent young man (murder victim 58), was shot just leaving his home to go to his car. That's when I started to get the word out and contacted that failure of a mayor with my concerns. If it takes more outage coming from that crime committed against the other young man to get that piece of crap mayor and city council to do their job, so be it. Remember, the mayor is black and almost all of the city council is black, yet they don't seem to concerned over the deaths of "their people". You seem to be upset that Canton politicians actually care about their consituents, envy maybe?
You seem to want more senseless murders until an equal number of whites, hispanics and asians are murdered before any action is taken, real smart (and a tad bit racist in itself).
"Meanwhile 200 black guys are killed, some of them innocent victims, and .... nothing but silence. Who says racism is dead?"
The murders of Christopher Clark and Troy Chesley gained their fair share of attention (as they should have). I think part of the reason that Zach Sowers has gotten so much press is the fact that he didn't die, but was instead beaten half to death, then spent weeks clinging to life, and is now probably permanently brain damaged.
The Zach Sowers story is continually in the news, because he has a large social circle of friends that care deeply for him. His friends and family are expressing the kind of Outrage that everyone should have when something this terrible happens. No matter what their race.
The friends and family of Zach aren't going to spray paint his name on a wall and duct tape stuffed animals to a street light poll. They're going to do what every family should do when they lose a loved one. Keep hammering the police, the politicians, the judges and the lawyers for results. It looks like THEIR "outrage" is getting noticed, not the fact that the victim was white.
xepvaThe Gun-Offender Registry made NPR this morning. Quotes from the mayor and all...
some of the comments here assume that those of us who say "why should what happened to zach sowers be considered any worse than what happens to many many other people around here?" think that by this we mean that we should care as little about mr. sowers as we do about everyone else, but that's the exact opposite of what i think. i think people should care about all the victims as much as they care about zach sowers.
good for mr. sowers that he has a lot of friends and family, but so do many other victims, and the fact that mr. sowers's family and friends know how to work the system to get their message out, and the fact that people are listening, whereas this isn't the case for many of the other victims' family and friends, seems to me that it could have just as much to do with institutionalized racism (or at least classism), no matter how subtle, as it does with whatever you all think it does.
also, careful with that "zach sowers's family doesn't just tape stuffed animals to light poles" stuff because that is veering dangerously close to a racist (or classist) comment as well.
I don't believe that race has anything to do with it. Class maybe, but if a young, upper-middle class black man with a a pretty wife was beaten into a coma I think he'd be all over the news as well.
Speaking of race, maybe if the NAACP made as big a deal over the city's murder rate as they did about a stupid Hopkins frat party...
Burger you may recall 'Lil Sis also set up a website and posted info about what happened to her brother to get justice.
Neither race or social class has anything to do with the effort of Zach's family and friends have made to try and help prevent his plight from being forgotten. However, raising funds to assist with medical and rehab expenses not fully covered by insurance is certainly one goal, and another is related to the fact that without publicity, the chances of Zach's attackers receiving justice decline precipitously. That should not be the case, but unfortunately it is. These efforts require an incredible amount of time, coordination and determination, NOT money, NOR a specific skin color. Anyone who infers otherwise is not living in reality.
burg we're going to have to call you an ambalance!
Stuffed animals & lightpoles = cultural phenomenon.
I think it's ridiculous that violent crime victims are responsible for medical bills that aren't covered by insurance. The subhuman scum that put Zach Sowers in the hospital should be the ones who have to pay. Since they probably have no money I'd suggest making each of them sell a kidney.
Because a civil action for compensatory damages after a criminal trial in all likelihood returns an uncollectable judgement on a guy like this, a good argument can be made that justice cannot really obtain in a society characterized by a sufficiently high population of economic nonviables.
The only thing many of these guys are any good for is criminality. Drugdealing requires minimal capital and no insurance. It may be that you need antivagrancy laws just to ensure that the nonviability of these bums doesn't derail the apparatus of the justice system.
Class maybe, but if a young, upper-middle class black man with a a pretty wife was beaten into a coma I think he'd be all over the news as well.
too bad we'll never know since this has never happened, right?
Burger you may recall 'Lil Sis also set up a website and posted info about what happened to her brother to get justice.
starting a blog as an outlet for one's feelings after a traumatic experience is different than expecting a bunch of strangers to donate money to help pay the medical bills of a young, white, well-educated, upwardly mobile man and raise awareness of crime in his rapidly-gentrifying community while ignoring the medical bills and crime that beleaguer communities populated primarily by poor, black, uneducated, unskilled people with not many prospects for the future (some of whom might not even have criminal records, as unbelievable as that might be).
i'm quickly remembering why i stopped reading this blog a couple of months ago. perhaps it's time i do so again.
On point, Burger.
I'd feel better if the advocacy and fundraising were for 'the class of persons in Baltimore who have been the victims of assault', rather than expressly for the benefit of an individual victim, whose friends are good at making their particular concern rise above all others'.
"starting a blog as an outlet for one's feelings after a traumatic experience is different than expecting a bunch of strangers to donate money to help pay the medical bills of a young, white, well-educated, upwardly mobile man and raise awareness of crime in his rapidly-gentrifying community"
I don't think they were expecting anyone to do anything. They asked local businesses to help them out, and they were fortunate enough to get a positive response. Can you blame people for caring more about their immediate friends & relatives than about random strangers? That's human nature.
You're right that it's unfortunate that not all innocent crime victims receive this kind of attention, but you almost sound like you hold some sort of grudge against Zach's friends and family.
"Because a civil action for compensatory damages after a criminal trial in all likelihood returns an uncollectable judgement on a guy like this, a good argument can be made that justice cannot really obtain in a society characterized by a sufficiently high population of economic nonviables."
Maybe we should bring back slavery as a way to punish criminals. Force them into involuntary servitude until they've earned enough money to repay their victim's medical bills. Of course I'm not sure who exactly would pay for labor from your typical violent scumbag, but if we worked them 12 hours a day, 7 days a week we could probably extract some sort of economic value from them. I still like my kidney idea though. There are a huge number of people awaiting kidney donations in the US, so it's not like the market is lacking. Donating one kidney isn't even that big of a health risk, so I don't think it's "cruel & unusual" to force thugs & scumbags to sell one.
I can barely stand to read it myself sometimes...
i only ended up sounding like i'm mad at zach sowers's family because somebody baited me with liz's blog as an example. i responded too hastily before i realized it was a strawman argument.
the issue is not the actions of the family and friends of the victim. good for them that they were able to generate so much publicity and charity. who i do take issue with are all the people that were susceptible to their tactics yet still don't really give a shit about any of the other people that similar bad things happen to.
The issue is about raising awareness thus bringing politicians out of the wood-work to ask the SA to fully prosecute the alleged perpetrators. The comment about Lil Sis’ blog was not bait…it was an example of how to let others know what is really going on either in the life of a victim or the victim’s family, regardless of race or class. And maybe that will lead to outrage; the outrage that’s needed to stop this lunacy. So eventually any murder or attempted murder will be front page news, like the 2nd murder of the year in Harford County which the news media went berserk over last night.
A black life has never been of much value in America
Once upon a time...it was white ppl terrorizing and killing mass numbers of black ppl.
Today its black ppl killing black ppl most often.
NO ONE CARES!
The "Stop Snitching" has always been the reason the police offer as to why no one ever goes to prison for killing black men.
I agree with A ASmash 100% Half of you regular posters make comments that make you sound like bigots.
Remember what you reap you sow.
is it really going to raise awareness though? so far the only thing it has really done is make the city council pass a symbolic resolution in support of this particular victim and nobody else. and it's made a bunch of other similar yuppies suddenly a little more aware that, despite the improvements being made in places like pigtown, patterson park, et al, they do still live in a big city where there are big city problems in the relatively nice neighborhoods (and practically third world problems in the bad ones).
a councilman sends a letter to the SA telling her to do a better job in the particular district this crime occurred in, a community organization holds some events in the particular neighborhood it occurred in, and everybody continues to ignore park heights or sandtown or whatever.
how can you expect any murder or attempted murder to be front page news here anytime soon when just yesterday on this blog i asked what made zach sower a more worthwhile human being than any other victim and like 5 people immediately told me it was because most other victims have lengthy criminal records?
Burgersub, thanks for the warning about what speech may be classified as racist or classist. dear me, we wouldn't want that, would we.
Burgersub, your comments about zach sowers are repugnant. How the hell do you know that people that donate to zach wouldn't help Christopher Clark's family IF ASKED?? I don't recall hearing about you starting a drive to help find Clark's killers. You just fume that because Baltimore sucks, well, everyone that gets their head bashed in should just shut up and remain powerless until the poor and downtrodden rise up in protest. So why not look at it that ANY family can ask for help with their medical bills, zach sowers, christopher clark, etc. Heck,Burgersub, with your divisive race baiting and through the looking glass attitude, you very well could be our next mayor!
didn't i tell you yesterday not to talk to me until you've improved your reading comprehension skills?
This comment is in response to the comment left by ppatin left on Aug 13th.
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ppatin said...
Yes! We need to be handing out serious prison time (as in a decade or more, no parole) for first time violent felons and felons with gun violations. Check out the criminal record of Byron Dickey (B'more's most recent murder "victim") on MD Judiciary Case Search. The fact that that thing (he doesn't count as a person in my book) was on the street shows that our justice system is broken.
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How dare you sit there and try to judge someone because of their past. How dare you sit there a call a person a thing. What if it was someone in your family who was killed and someone left the bs that you left. What if that was your son, father, or brother that was killed because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I know him personally and I can say that he did his time for the crimes that he commited. Do you not have a life? Do you sit there and look up criminal records of everyone who gets killed in Baltimore? You act like you are so perfect and that you never messed up in your entire life. I can sit here and go on and on but a person like you is not worth my time.
I will say that only God can judge a person. I hope that you don't rot in hell. And I hope that nothing happens to you or no one close to you. If something does, I hope that no one leaves comments saying that you or them are a thing and not considered a person.
Get a life you moron. Have a blessed day.
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