Bernstein, Batts and the mayor held a press conference with some large news: 48 indictments against members of the familia de guerrilleros negros. The Major Investigations Unit has been majorly investigating this bunch since 2005, and has tied that various alleged members to drugs, murder, guns, witness intimidation and various and sundry other gangly activities.
For those of you keeping track, murder victims of the gang are alleged to have included Neil Davis, Donatello Fenner, Carlos Williams, Justin Kendricks, Moses Malone, Trevon White, Lamarr Tucker, Dante Jordan, Rakim Muhammad, Adrian Holiday, Anthony Taylor, Gregory Rochester, Keenan McCargo, Byron Dickey, Kevin Hodges, and Lamontae Smith.
There are a lot of redacted names-- the snitches, I presume?
Besides the number of indictments and corpses, it's also noteworthy that they were prosecuted under the Gang Prosecution statute of 2007, chapter 496, which makes having an "ongoing association" with a gang engaged in criminal activity a crime itself. While most of the defendants are also facing additional charges, some-- Warren Commodore, Tayvon Jefferson, Kashif Kittrell, Tavon Thompson, Jesse Tate, Marquise McCants and three defendants whose names were redacted-- are charged only with being in a gang. This would seem to be a clear violation of the Constitutional right to free association, and it'll be interesting to see what a judge will think about that.
There are a lot of redacted names-- the snitches, I presume?
Besides the number of indictments and corpses, it's also noteworthy that they were prosecuted under the Gang Prosecution statute of 2007, chapter 496, which makes having an "ongoing association" with a gang engaged in criminal activity a crime itself. While most of the defendants are also facing additional charges, some-- Warren Commodore, Tayvon Jefferson, Kashif Kittrell, Tavon Thompson, Jesse Tate, Marquise McCants and three defendants whose names were redacted-- are charged only with being in a gang. This would seem to be a clear violation of the Constitutional right to free association, and it'll be interesting to see what a judge will think about that.
A woman was shot to death early this morning in the 1500 block of W. Baltimore Street, she was the city's 200th murder of 2013.
A priest who worked at Archbishop Curley High in the 70s, Michael Kolodziej, is being investigated for ... do I even need to finish this sentence? At this point can we just call it "the usual"?
WTF? Our state has the 4th-highest marijuana arrest rate, paying $106 million in just a single year to enforce pot laws that the majority of citizens don't agree with. And while the arrest rate for white people has stayed about the same over the past decade. the arrest rate for black people has more than doubled, I guess thanks to O'Malley's devotion to the much-debunked "arrest everybody" theory* of crime reduction.
2 comments:
I hate to bust anyone's bubble about the 48 defendants and 10 murder case closures,but the only new homicide closure in that long list is for Moses Malone 05/01/2013. They other cases in that State's Attorney report are all old cases, long since processed. Bernstein and the ATF are blowing smoke.
I'm not saying they are new closures, just finally we, the chattering classes, have some understanding of the matrix surrounding their deaths, which were not random and meaningless as they may have seemed.
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