Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Leave the vacuum, take the chicken box

It's officially Fred Bealefeld's last day (!) I think we can all agree he's the best commissioner we've had in the last 40+ years, no? No domestic-violence scandals or taxpayer-funded mistress panties, and ps crime went wayway down under his tenure. Well, murders did, anyway. Acting commissioner Anthony Barksdale is the replacement for now (and is his last name just a coincidence? Cursory Googling would have it seem so.)

Police shot and killed a man yesterday evening at 1402 Weldon Place in Medfield. Police say that the man attacked an officer with a knife, the officer called for backup, backup arrived.

Fourteen federal years for 24-year-old RoFo robber Gregory Graham, who threatened an Essex store clerk with a vacuum cleaner tube. And the Evergreen RoFo was robbed (again), for cash and cigarillos.

Ever get carjacked and wonner where your car done got at? Maybe Africa!

Patch: drug dealer strikes man with brick.

Three residents were robbed at gunpoint in Remington.

3 comments:

Cham said...

I won't agree that Bealefeld was the best police commissioner in the last 40 years. The police department is bloated, we've seen a lot of corrupt cops in the last 5 years, the cops are killing citizens willy nilly this year and the prison population is on the increase where it is on the decrease everywhere else. Homicides are down, but they are down everywhere. I'm not convinced that violent crime is on the decrease but I am convinced that the police reporting of violent crime is on the decrease. Homicide closures for 2012 is running slightly less than 25%. 82%of the police department lives outside Baltimore and with the recent graduates of police recruits only two out of 40 live inside the city. Police moral is low.

Bealefeld certainly wasn't the worst police commissioner. What we do know is that the whole 'more is better' when it comes to prisons and cop populations doesn't work. Bealefeld is credited for dismantling zero tolerance. What is working is the Safe Streets program in McElderry Park and Cherry Hill, but I don't see any outcry by the local government to expand that program. Safe Streets has to beg for money, and they never know when the program will be shut down due to lack of funds.

Bealefeld is leaving probably because he's taken things as far as he is capable of taking them. He's a beat cop that did as much as he could, but now it is time to take local policing to the next level and that requires more of a politician and critical think, which Bealefeld is not and never was.

Maurice Bradbury said...

So who would you give the "best commissioner in the past 40 years" title to then, Cham?

.. and there's no doubt that homicides are down-- can't hide a body ("the panicking and dragging. The digging and burying!") Unclassified deaths are also down. Don't know about suicides, but given that Fowler works for the state, seems rather of farfetched that his office would be motivated to help the police in some kind of conspiracy to mis-classify suicides.

Cham said...

Unclassified deaths are down, but there are still 150 of them. The records of all the police commissioners would have to be reviewed, the homicides started to spike during the 80s, but I might not blame that on the commissioners. I'd blame that on the crack epidemic, too many guns and the loss of the manufacturers.