Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Seven Shootings and an Oopsie

Another mistaken release?! Police are now ISO horse-trader Nathan Parker, 28, let out by accident. That's three oopsies in a week! Butterfingers!

A shooting at 6 a.m. today at an apartment complex in Parkville.

An arrest in the Mt. Royal road-rage shootings last February!

WTF? A man was shot in the foot but ran 4 1/2 miles to the hospital!
... and three other shootings that Chuck may have already blogged.

At a hearing today Aaron Davis, 33, of the 800 block of Lynhurst Street, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder. Judge Gale E. Rasin sentenced Davis to five years in prison, the maximum penalty allowable under law. Details:
On October 18, 2007 at approximately 2:20PM in the 1800 block of Walbrook Ave. Baltimore Police were in the area on patrol when they saw the victim running from an unknown male, later identified as Lorenzo Speight. Officers saw Speight firing a handgun at Darren Mebane, 21. Speight fatally shot Mebane and police saw him get into a waiting vehicle driven by Aaron Davis. Officers pursued the car and eventually police apprehended Speight, who had jumped from the vehicle, in an alley near Dukeland and Baker Streets. A .357 revolver was located on the roof of a nearby address, 1501 Dukeland St., and ballistics later showed it was the murder weapon. The vehicle was registered to Davis.

Lorenzo Speight, 33, of the 700 block of Mt. Holley St. pleaded guilty in February to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence and was sentenced to life suspend all but 30 years in prison. Assistant State’s Attorney David M. Grzechowiak of the Homicide Division prosecuted this case.

19 comments:

burgersub said...

dude ran from thomas ave all the way to sinai with a bullet in his foot? no way.

ppatin said...

The Chief Judge of the MD Court of Appeals is calling for more lawyers to help gum up the foreclosure process. This is absurd, deadbeats who can't pay their mortgages should be foreclosed on!

taotechuck said...

That's a big ol' oversimplification, P. Take a look at Cleveland to see a nice example of your approach to foreclosures. Unfortunately, the neighbors of the foreclosed house are, in many ways, screwed far more royally than the people who walk away from their mortgage.

burgersub said...

one of the guys they just arrested for a murder in columbia a few months ago was convicted of manslaughter in a fatal arson in baltimore city in 2006, for which he got basically his entire sentence suspended.

ppatin said...

Sure it's a bit of an oversimplification, but ultimately only people who don't pay their mortgages end up getting foreclosed on. Now if banks want to renegotiate mortgages that's certainly a good thing, but clogging up the court system with legalese nonsense in order to stall foreclosures is not. Helping deadbeats stay in homes that they can't afford is a great way to keep home prices higher than they should be. It also discourages banks from making new loans.

John Galt said...

These problems don't happen while lenders employ prudent lending practices: bad borrowers are turned away at the door.

We used to ensure this by regulating banks' access to capital: their ability to take deposits was regulated relative to their asset quality. When asset quality fell, money dried up because the regulator refused to insure deposits.

Much of the current loan activity consists of ill-conceived loans to borrowers who have inadequate financial capacity. The solution is to prosecute mortgage lenders for making false representations to their funders about asset quality and then let the lenders fail.

That will teach would-be mortgage buyers the meaning of caveat emptor and discourage bubbles based upon the ability to 'flip' defective mortgages from one holder to another without penalty.

One of the ways to do this is to require that derivative products and swaps remain on the balance sheet as a matter of accounting.

Much of the liability floating around out there consists of CDO's, whereby a mortgage lender packages mortgage paper with its corresponding debt, sells it to a nonbank buyer, and then pretends like it doesn't exist, even though the debt can come back to haunt him later.

Back in the 80's, we called this debt-defeasance and it was abused in the same way by sharp dudes claiming that as long as the market is up, the debt doesn't matter.

Yeah, As long as the market is up. But when has that ever lasted forever??

Oh, when will they ever learn.
Oh, when will they ever learn.

John Galt said...

As an exercise, take a look at the combined financial statements of Bear Stearns Cos.:

As of November 30, 2007 Bear Stearns had notional contract amounts of approximately $13.40 trillion in derivative financial instruments, of which $1.85 trillion were listed futures and option contracts. In addition Bear Stearns was carrying more than $28 billion in 'level 3' assets on its books at the end of fiscal 2007 versus a net equity position of only $11.7 billion.

What does it mean? It means Bear was allowed to claim that assets were unimpaired. The friday before the Fed's weekend takeover, the CEO was still claiming that liquidity was adequate.

It's about lying, plain and simple. You can make all the artsy-fartsy arguments you want that it might have been okay under some wild scenario. A prudent man would not think so. Ace Greenberg would not think so.

I used to work for him when he ran that shop as a private partnership about 25 years ago. It was a respectable business then. These people are just plain ol' lying now.

Maurice Bradbury said...

you used to work at Bear Stearns? fascinating!

John Galt said...

Used to be in the trading unit for government securities, commercial paper and CD's , and securitized instruments, such as stripped securities and early CDO's.

John Galt said...

Oopsie corrected.

Unknown said...

I can tell you from working at Central Booking, the process there is so insanely slow, it's no wonder that something like that happened.

And as for ppatin's comment, some people shouldn't be allowed to own a keyboard.

John Galt said...

Actually, I agree with him.

As to those people who more or less speculatively purchased homes which they knew darn well they couldn't pay for, it really serves no one's interest for them to remain in title any longer than is minimally necessary.


Time to foreclose and move on. At lower prices.

John Galt said...

Anyone recognize this stolen stuff ??

John Galt said...

Or maybe this wayward kid ??

John Galt said...

In the Northern District last week, incompetent robberies at gunpoint in Charles Village, a sequence of events after a Falls Road burglary, heisting the handicapped in Govans, and yet another robbery incident at the Waverly Giant on East 33rd Street.

Maurice Bradbury said...

I have to say I agree with Pp too.
People lose jobs and stuff happens and I have sympathy for that kind if situation, but people who got locked into ARMs? Did they not read what they were signing? Did they sincerely think freakishly low mortgage rates were going to stay that way forever? But the world being what it is, of course everyone ends up having to pay for a few people's bad decisions.

ppatin said...

If me make it impossible for banks to foreclose on delinquent mortgage holders then it'll be impossible for most people to get a mortgage because those loans will become so much riskier for banks. Either that, or they'll charge credit card-like interest rates on them. Sure, unfortunate things happen to some mortgage holders, however the current mortgage crisis is being cause by people who irresponsibly took out loans that they could not afford. Shielding them from the consequences of their actions would be disastrous.

BTW, I admire what Robert Bell did in the 1960s during the civil rights fight, however as a judge I believe he's become a far lefty who's a tad bit out of touch with reality. Then again, that describes a big chunk of the judges on the Court of Appeals.

Mr. Mephistopheles said...

Keith Mills just had his burglary conviction modified. What a bunch of BS.

Anonymous said...

i saw him. as he ran pass me i yelled "get the lead out" - just kidding