Friday, October 19, 2012

Pedophiles, peepers and prisoners

Another new drug for my files: BZP-- as in, a Bronx drug dealer was stopped going 38 MPH Southbound on I-95 and was found to have heroin, MDMA and BZP, and was sentenced to 8 years in the Federal slammer.

Three businesses robbed in the Southeast; two on Eastern and one on Pulaski.

After 143 years, Baltimore's Prisoners Aid has imploded under mysterious circumstances

Good boys go to heaven, bad boys go to Howard County or join the Boy ScoutsSo I assume the Baltimore hospital offers 'pedophilia treatment' on the Boy Scout link is Hopkins? Oh my, looks like it is/was, under no one less than John Money, the doctor who tried to turn a boy into a girl. Wonder if they still offer/design/research treatments for pedophiles?

So, a shooting victim walks into a hospital, and the doctor says...

The Office of the State's Attorney for Baltimore City has charged Baltimore City police officers Sgt. Marinos N. Gialamas and Officer Anthony Williams Thursday with second-degree assault for allegedly assailing a man in police custody on Oct. 27, 2011, the SAO also charged Gialamas, 40, with three counts of misconduct and Williams, 37, with a single count of obstructing and hindering an investigation. ... Officials said Gialamas and Williams allegedly assaulted the man in an East Baltimore home after he attempted to flee from officers who observed him engaged in suspected drug activity. 

24 hours of Fenton Twitterations


Justin FentonTerrell Allen, the other half of the Blackwell-Allen feud that police say sparked wave of retaliatory shootings, is in court for VOR today

The family of Pikesville murder victim Ernest Bo Gales, 21, who was killed a yr ago today, is offering $10k for tips in the case

From yesterday: Officers charged with assaulting drug suspect who ran into home of off-duty officer's girlfriend *

Got an email frm victim of armed robbery near O'Donnell Square. She's pretty shaken but wants it to be a lesson for others to be alert

Second-degree assault charges come nearly a full year after incident occurred in East Baltimore. Announced just before courts closed. ... According to records, the incident started with a drug arrest initiated in the same block that Anthony Anderson died during a drug arrest

and hey, look who's aTweeting now:

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Confirmation Confirmed

Dropped by the Batts confirmation at City Hall last night.* Came in late because every fckn parking machine around the city hall square was broken. Ended up arriving at the ochre-n-buttercream sanctum of room 4 w/parking unpaid and a 1/2 hour late, just missing Robert Cherry's testimony- - Cherry's a (former? current?) homicide detective and head of the police union, with a curiously strong Boston accent. Asked, "so how'd it go, are you for him or against him?"
     "Eh, for him, we're going to give him a chance."
     "And then what?" I asked, which got an ambiguous chortle.
Then from behind the dias asked, "so here's the question on everyone's minds..." ooh, I thought, they're going to ask him if he ever hit his wife in the face with a mug, or about that veteran who got nailed with a canister at Occupy Oakland, or about the OPD receivership! Here we go!
    "... where are you going to live?"

Batts declines to say where he is living; "Im a resident of the city of Baltimore." "What district?" "One of the districts"

   Took a seat inside downstairs and rest of the hour I could stand continued in the mein of a hot buttered lovefest, with an endorsement from some slender white man from some neighborhood association giving an endorsement, then copious praise from councilpeople for respective officers and district commanders. Some male councilmember wryly noted that though Batts could now cash a paycheck he still has to make it through the hearing to assume the title, and one of our fine feisty sexagenarian black ladies from behind me was like, "oh, he gone cash that check all right, pffsshht!" (Muttery older black ladies are always the highlight of any civic event, IMO, and if you go to one you should sit near as many as possible.)
    I couldn't place his voice at first but when I closed my eyes he sounded just like Rod Rosenstein-- must be the Harvard in em.
    Young endorsed plainclothes officers reporting to districts (they don't now, I guess?) and Batts was all like, "people tell me I look like you, Jack!" and gave some kind of general noncommittal answer.
   Anyway after about an hour I was worried about a $32 ticket (didn't get one, even a block from the BPD HQ and with three cop cars parked by city hall) and had domestic duties, but Fenton reports that heat was taken:
"But there were tense moments as well: Four residents asked about or referred to reports from a publication in Long Beach alleging that Batts had been involved in domestic-violence incidents there years earlier. He has not been charged with a crime. Among those who raised the issue was Jean Allen, the president of the Edgewood Community Association, who said she had seen the accusations online. "Whether it's true or not, it's there," she said of the allegations being in the public realm. "We all want to know more about him."
Batts took questions only from council members, who did not raise the issue.
The Baltimore Sun has attempted to verify the report, reaching several people named in the article or by its author. None said they had direct knowledge or evidence. Though Batts declined to discuss the article in detail, he has called it 'humiliating' and said he had been cleared through multiple background checks."
So there you have it-- dissent quashed-- and darn me for not signing up to testify and asking him about Occupy, receivership, lobstergate and domestic-violence accusations my danged self. Sure he would have been confirmed anyway but if I had spoken up maybe he would have felt like he had to at least answer Jean Allen. I'm so over police/officials here feeling like they are answerable to no one, and they are, all because wusses like me don't seize the opportunity to demand answers, dammit. I have let you all down. But hey, Batts says he might make Comsat meetings public. Good idea-- more transparency and they could meld that with community meetings:


Justin Fenton @justin_fenton
Left on cutting room floor: Batts said he's flirted with idea of making Comstat meetings public, taking it on the road ... Comstat meetings are the weekly stat-sharing among commanders; reputation as a beat-down session. It'd go 180 degrees if taken public. ...community meetings are commanders talking to residents. Comstat is commanders talking to commanders abt intel, strategy.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Self-help books, cigars and shrimp

?? A jury acquitted and dropped all charges against a man accused of beating a 73-year-old Hampden cab driver to death*-- in spite of the fact that the cab driver knew the man as his roommate's brother and identified him by name before he died. WTF, jury?

Ink details last week's seven murders

Batts reportedly requested a VINN diagram of Black Guerilla Family,* told Fenton in addition to their usual gangful activities the gang is also forcibly expanding and demanding that subsets pay tributes, leading to friction. The BGF is, of course the biggest crime franchise in town, running the city's best open-air drug markets, smuggling champagne, shrimp and cigars into prison, extorting prisoners for protection, laundering money, committing numerous horrific murders and publishing self-help-books.

Speaking of Batts, his City Council confirmation is tonight at 5; CD Witherspoon and Occupy is planning a protest to start at city hall at 4.

Crime is up nationally, says the FBI's UCR. But it's down in Baltimore city, right?

A month after it began, that Daniel McIntosh pot/money laundering/Nicka conspiracy trial is still going on in Greenbelt, sounds like.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Shadowy figures

Police released a photo of suspects fleeing the scene of the shooting death of Dr. Peter Marvit* on Chesterfield Ave in Belair-Edison. Police theorize that Marvit was robbed because thieves mistook him for a food-delivery person.


Boy, 15, shot in leg near Johns Hopkins Hospital: *

Life w/o parole for William Ward III and Frank Williams,* convicted of murdering Rodney Pridget outside the Nordstrom Rack.

The funeral of 16 y/o vicim Ahjee Harrod is today at the Southern Baptist church at 1701 N. Chester 


Pimp Marco Sanchez got five years for importing 100 hos

In the Northern district someone was robbed of something called a "Wussi scooter"*

Ah Baltimore, where the comptroller is suing the mayor

This just in (again): the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 2.2 million people currently @the belly of the beast. Prof. to Bloomberg: "The model is, if you built it, they will come."

Fenton profiles The Rev. CD Witherspoon,* local community activist/onetime city council candidate. Good for him, speaking up for change. But please, Rev, do not sully your rep by hanging out with J. Wyndal Gordon, the "Warrior Lawyer." You may recall Gordon was Frank Conaway's attorney who had some choice Jew-hating sentiments during the Adam Meister assalt/unlicensed concealed weapon kerfuffle*: "'When you have a situation where you have a Jewish victim and an African-American male, you have things happen differently than if it happened to be a regular case,' [Gordon] said. He suggested that 'perhaps because of their commonality in their religion ... ' " Cortly should find himself some nice liberal social-activist Jews to hang out with next, dontchathink?

Monday, October 15, 2012

Disparate youth


Crime Beat blog weekend recap: 8 shot in Baltimore over the weekend, incl 18-yr-old girl and 2 outside Club Mirage *


Police have released security footage of two ppl running from the area of Belair-Edison where Peter Marvit was killed 
Police believe the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Tashawna Jones in Harwood was a domestic incident *

Also Fenton revisits Oliver a decade after the Dawson family * was burned up in their home for "snitching" on neighborhood drug dealers. .. speaking of Moltov cocktails, I wonder what became of Edna McAbier, who went into witness protection after thugs threw some down her chimney in Harwood?

A police car responding to a shooting on Jack St. struck and killed a pedestrian,* Leondionas Dias Perez, on E. Patapsco Ave


"For shooting at three Baltimore City police officers and striking one, Gerry Gough, 24, pled guilty on Friday to attempted first-degree murder, two counts of attempted second-degree murder, and a handgun violation. The plea agreement calls for a sentence of life in prison with all but 40 years suspended, followed by three years of probation."

Counties:


Civics: 
The Brew with the Ivy bookshop reviews three Baltimore-related social-history and urban planning tomes.

Did you know the Perkins and Latrobe projects used to be "white" public housing? Interesting presentation from the ACLU on the history of Baltimore's segregated public housing and the issues facing Cherry Hill and Westport.