Monday, November 12, 2012

Elmo's Got Male?

Three shootings this weekend,* which by Baltimore standards is not bad (unless you happened to be one of the three who was shot, of course)

Luke Broadwater: Baltimore's ethics board hasn't met in six years.* (un-Sun link)

The parents of Annie McCann have increased the award for information leading to her death

Easy-on-the-eyes document thief Jason Savedoff will spend a year and a day in prison for his part in a scheme to ferret away 60+ rare documents in secret pockets in his clothes. His considerably schlubbier "mentor" Barry Landau is currently serving seven years in the federal hoosegow.

What?! Master of puppets Kevin Clash has been accused of having inappropriate relations with a 16-year-old-boy(!). Clash denies the allegations, and they frankly sound a little bit sketchy, but who knows. Clash is, of course, the creator/voice/puppeteer of Sesame Street's beloved Elmo; he grew up here in Baltimore in Turner's Station and got his start at WMAR. He was also once married (to a woman) and has a daughter, he's 52 and his accuser is now 23. Clash acknowledges the relationship but says it only got physical after the guy reached the age of consent.


Accused flea-market brawler Shane Quinet
A guy was hit in the head with a rubber mallet during a motorcycle-gang fight at a flea market in Dundalk; the gangs have been named as the Demon Souls and the Titan Motorcycle Club. Scott Huffines illustrates this on his blog with a dancing MC hammer (oh wait, I get it!). According to a random Web page, the Demon's Souls were founded in Philadelphia and in 2010 merged with the 1%ers.

The toddler found wandering alone on Belair Road has been reunited with his shitty parent

Really? In spite of the fact that the majority of Americans favor decriminalization or legalization of marijuana, Rodericks reports that pot arrests accounted for 43 percent of all drug arrests* in 2011. And lest you think that here in Baltimore police have bigger fish to fry, in 2010 the city averaged 18 marijuana possession arrests a day; marijuana arrests accounted for 1/4 of all of the arrests in the state. Wonder if it'll make a difference to have Anthony "Oaksterdam" Batts is in charge?

Speaking of all of those bigger fish, a friend of mine got her purse stolen from Frazier's on 36th street at about 1 a.m. Saturday before last. She doesn't drink, for what it's worth. The purse was next to her chair and someone picked it up and walked out with it. The perp(s)  then went on to rack up $1200 worth of purchases in the following hour, at the Royal Farms and the Falls Road Carroll Fuel and Exxon stations -- rather an impressive feat in itself. How much gas and pork rinds can a person buy? But here's the puzzler: Frazier's, the RoFo and the gas stations all have cameras, and of course the credit card companies know the exact moment when the purchases were made. The perps also went back to the stores repeatedly, returning to the Keswick Ave RoFo five times. Accessing their images shouldn't be at all hard to do. But my friend was told by the Northern district that because her purse was a larceny and not a robbery, the police will not look at the tapes. You'd think credit card companies would have something to say about that, I wonder why they don't? Anyone else have a similar experience?

5 comments:

Cham said...

The city cops don't have time to waste on larcenies. Read your own previous paragraph, they are busy with 18 pot arrests a day. Arresting somebody for having a stinky bag of pot is easy, requisitioning camera images from gas stations requires actual work.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Sigh. I'd assumed they were just arresting people for pot if they were like, smoking it while parked illegally next to Druid Hill Park with the windows down, Snowden-style. To average out at 18 a day, though, sounds like it's more than that.

Cham said...

Bealefeld made a comment near the end of his term that is very hard to convince police officers to switch the emphasis from making drug arrests to making illegal gun arrests. That's why he developed a program that recognized and rewarded police officers for seizing illegal guns, it was the only way to get them to do what he wanted them to do.

In order to arrest somebody for illegal drugs all you have to do is find somebody and get them to empty their pockets. If there are drugs the cop gets to arrest them, then the get credit for an arrest. The cops want credit for lots of arrests because that is how they qualify for promotions. That's why there is so much interest in pot, it counts as an arrest.

In the case of the stolen handbag, that would take way too much work for too little pay-off.

Cham said...

Because I check the criminal histories of all the homicide victims I've learned much about drug arrests. It is not unusual for a homicide victim to have 20-30 arrests for possession of controlled substances. Very few of those arrests result in any sort of prison sentences. The vast majority of possession charges are not pursued by the judicial system. Those charges that are pursued often result in stet, or probation. If one is held after a possession charge, they are released the next day.

The war on drugs exists to keep the judicial system in place and functioning, it doesn't really do anything except create a criminal history to prevent people from being gainfully employed. Baltimore City Police officers like it when people have drugs in their pockets, the judges couldn't care less.

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