Wednesday, September 19, 2012

City homicides to be solved by honor system

The woman found near Oldtown Mall was ID'd as Rasheedah Muhammed.

Whoa. If Cham's research is accurate, the police haven't charged anyone with a homicide in nearly a month--- and the last guy charged, Dominic Gantt, turned himself in. If the chart is accurate and I'm reading it right, all of 2012's 151 homicides, only 40 have resulted in anyone being charged. Could that possibly be? A 25.9% clearance rate? Really??

Another whoa, Rod Rosestein's former right-hand man, Jason Weinstein, has resigned from the Justice Dept. following the Fast & Furious report (aka the "ATF Gunwalking Scandal"); the DOJ says he should have known what was happening and stopped it, Weinstein told the papers that's a load of crap (in classier language).

Former Baltimore Police officer Daniel Redd got 20 years in the federal pen for selling heroin.*

A fire in the NE was reportedly set by a molotov cocktail.

Oh, and by the way, if you have more than two pets, according to the city council you're running a private kennel and owe the city $100.

5 comments:

Cham said...

I think it might have been Fenton who mentioned a 42% clearance rate overall for Baltimore City recently, but that closure rated is calculated over a number of years. The current year closure rate will be lower than the closure rate overall.

You can see my calculation on this post at the end of 2011(which probably needs to be re-added because a bunch more 2011 homicides were closed in 2012). At the end of 2011 Baltimore had a 32.65% homicide closure rate. The closure rate is definitely slowing down for 2012.

Maurice Bradbury said...

I totally get that the rate will go up over time, and it's not fair to gripe about police not closing a case from yesterday. But. Still. January's homicides- 3 of 11. February- 5 of 11.

buzoncrime said...

David Simon's latest post on his blog might give us some insight into why the clearance rate is so low.

I think the City Paper links to this also.

Anonymous said...

I am intrigued by the Jason Wienstien story. When will the Sun make this connection? Wasn't Rod one of the two DOJ folks investigating Fast and Furious? And now his former right-hand man is excoriated by that report? Wow.. To be fair, Jason seemed like a stickler for the law, etc. Have a hard time believing this report...

Maurice Bradbury said...

Fenton posted a story on this Wednesday (don't know if it was in the print edition) including a link to his letter that "identifies the most egregious inaccuracies." .. it's all very odd. By which I mean "fucked sounding." Weinstein didn't join Holder's office until May of 2009, the 'gunwalking' started in 2006 under Bush. Why would he have reason to know details of what the ATF had been up to in Arizona for the past three years? And if one believes he coulda should known, then why is it ok that AG Holder ostensibly didn't know a single thing?