200th homicide, 48 indictments

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. 

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.

Hardworking defectives

Sounds like Michael Johnson's goose is cooked, stuffed and served up with a nice Chianti, but you never can tell what a jury might do. Today prosecutors read text messages from Johnson to his baby's mom, Tabitha Fickling, in which he said he was thinking about fleeing to where he couldn't be prosecuted.

WBAL just lost a poop-ton of credibility with a fawning report on the glories of Catholic schools. "more Baltimore-area Catholic school students are finishing high school and going onto college." But, laments the school Superintendent, "The challenge is always being enrollment." Gee, why might that be? "These economic times are challenging," she concluded. Oh, that must be the only possible reason why.

A 15-year-old was shot in the foot; but rest assured, WMAR reports that "defectives are working to figure out who shot him."

A Spanish-speaking man was stabbed in Owings Mills

'a problem with the elastic in her underwear'

Aw geeze, in my absence we got up to 202* murders, which Cham has helpfully documented on her page. We've now surpassed 2011's total of 197, 2010 was 223 homicides; 2008 was 234; 2007 was 291; 2006 was 274; 2005 was 269.

Justin Fenton

Homicide clearance rate as of today: 32% for cases this year, 46% FBI UCR rate (this yr cases plus prior cases that were closed this yr)

Cherrie Gammon

A federal conviction for murder and racketeering for Tyrone "Roland" Johniken, aka Hassan Muhammad, involved in a heroin ring based out of "The Block" and involved in the murder of (alleged informant, mom dancer and addict) Cherrie Gammon. The DOJ's PR also reveals that the third conspirator in Gammon's murder, "Miami," was one Gary Cromartie, the Sun's story reveals that Gammon was also involved in a relationship with an unnamed city officer.* ("According to documents in the case, the officer Gammon had a relationship with was later involved in a raid on a building that was used by the crew and Johniken's residence. But whether Gammon was cooperating with police remains unclear.")

Down at police HQ, an officer accidentally shot himself during roll call

Friends School on Charles St. enjoyed its third bomb threat of the school year.

Robberies/assaults in Fell's Point include a woman choked unconscious, a guy stabbed in the stomach and robbed after leaving a nightclub (El Oasis?), and a victim assaulted by a group of people after calling out a shoplifter at the Family Dollar. Anecdotally it seems like there are not just more robberies lately and they're becoming more brazen and violent, probably best to not leave the house until sometime after Christmas.

A dad is in caliente agua, charged with kidnapping after stuffing a kid who was bullying his son into his car.* So many Baltimoreans, so few conflict-resolution skills...

Merzbacher

Still waiting on a decision in the Merzbacher case from Richmond; the former Catholic-school teacher/gun-toting child rapist is appealing his conviction claiming he was not informed of a plea deal by his counsel. Judge Prevas, rest his soul, threw out a prior appeal after finding that Merzbacher's now-dead convicted-felon lawyer was not a credible witness. In the meantime Tricia Bishop's got more horrid Merzbacher/Catholic School tales to tell,* including a recounting of court documents that prove that the church knew of the claims at least as early as 1974, plainly contradicting Archbishop Lori's ridiculous assertion last month that church officials didn't know a thing about the allegations until 1988. Liar, liar, vestments on fire. (Baltimoreorless has a collection of non-paywall "Merz" stories if you want to read more.)(... and people wonder why I refuse to give to Catholic Charities, gahh!)

Retired police chief FHBIII will be teaching at Stevenson University's* newish Criminal Justice program

A man was shot to death in Towson

In Annapolis at Thanksgiving a woman stabbed her half-brother in the neck with a serving fork, and in AAC a woman stabbed her boyfriend while he was trying to leave her crazy ass.

Media blabber: whilst driving down south I was fascinated to learn that central Virginia has not one but two weekly newspapers, $1 each, that publish almost nothing but mug shots-- Gotcha! and Crime Times. A convenience-store clerk told me Gotcha! sells more, possibly because the back of the paper also includes a list of all of the restaurants that have health code violations. It's a bit unsettling that it's comprised of pictures of people who have been arrested but not indicted or convicted of anything, mistakes do happen and some of the arrests are as petty as "allowing dog to run at will." But wonder if Baltimore could support such a newspaper? @40,000 arrests a year, that's a lotta trees. (Baltimore does have a page of health-code-violation closures, but it appears to be out of date.)

The bodies of Leakin Park

Cham maps all of the bodies found in Leakin Park since 1946-- 57 of them.

And another homicide-- a 34-year-old man was shot to death at about 2 a.m. Saturday in the 1900 block of W. Baltimore St.

and some good news! The high-school dropout rate and juvie-crime rate are down

A vigil tonight for murdered tow truck driver Andy Joyce

armed robbery at Loyola parking lot

A stabbing at the Arundel Mills Mall food court

The Feds were not amused by Nick's Amusements' money laundering, company to pay $50,000 fine

News of the weird: Catholic church holds exorcism conference in town. "Not everyone who thinks they need an exorcism actually does need one."

A Pause for Perverts

For whatever reason, Baltimore is home to a TON of child molesters.
Not as many as Florida, we hear, but at least once a day, if not three or four times a day, a new dirty old man is arrested. What is up with that? The whole Catholic-church thing gets a lot of ink, with TV anchor Thomas Roberts coming out with tales of Father Jeff Toohey of Calvert Hall, and the pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Ellicott City. The Catholic church has countered with the scary stat that "only" some 1 percent of priests have been accused of sex abuse, as compared to 5 percent of U.S. public school teachers. Yikes.

As of a year ago, the law allows people who are now 25 or younger and were molested to be able to sue the molestor until they're 42 (what's with the weird ages?), an apparent compromise to save the Catholic church.
So while civil suits are thus restrained, there is no time limit for criminal charges, a good thing since every pedophile on the East Coast seems to wind up living here!

February 18

A man is under arrest for murder after a double shooting early this morning in front of the Ritz Cabaret (a strip club famous for being the office of fictional kingpin Avon Barksdale in season one of The Wire)

Police are waiting for the results of lab tests before making an arrest in the Linda Trinh murder case.

A circuit court hearing is attempting to determine if a man who stabbed an elderly couple in Rosedale for heroin money in 1998 should have his death sentence overturned on the basis of incompetent counsel.

Elsewhere,
PG county police Corporal Brian Addis (aka Cuffy McNutkick) was aquitted of assaulting a suspect. The jury decided that the officer's actions were "clearly within his rights."

I just discovered the Towson University crime log.

A Chevy Chase woman who killed her landlord has been declared incompetent to stand trial. However, the guy who helped her hide the body in a barn faces five years.

Pregnant private and penal über-sadist Lynndie England's charges have been reduced for unknown reasons.

And back to the city...
Shooting, burglary, robbery etc. in the blotter.
(this makes about the 4th time this month someone's gotten assaulted on East Fayette street).

News of the in the Blackwell guilty verdict has been reported as far away as India. Says the director of a support group for abuse survivors, "Dontee could have tried to run from this, bury this, deny this and let Blackwell abuse again. He courageously chose to face this. That's why we consider him heroic." (Sun photo by Doug Kapustin, left.)

WBAL can't congratulate themselves enough for using their SkyTeam™ helicopter to help police catch a guy who was driving his minivan "like a maniac."

Good news, Chillagers... off-duty cops are now walking the beat around JHU's Homewood campus.

Elsewhere,
Another deadly domestic in Baltimore County. Twenty-four-year-old Deneen Smith is dead and her 23-year-old "boyfriend" is being held without bail. (How dare they call her his 'girlfriend'? Friends don't shoot friends with shotguns!)

Police have arrested a murder suspect in Riverdale (no, not Jughead). Lawrence Irving Green, 22, of Lanham, is suspected of being the psycho jughead who on Monday robbed three people, stole their SUV, wrecked the SUV into another car and then shot the driver of the other car, 41-year-old Robert Gail.

In Ellicott City, a man has to pay local Republicans $328.04 after hacking up pro-Bush signs.