Funny, Schmoke presided over all kinds of steaming hot messes as mayor: privatizing public schools with shiteous results and 90 city schools taken over by the state due to excessive crapulence, all while simultaneously emblazoning the "City that Reads" slogan on bus benches, misusing and losing federal housing funds, crony hires with plush salaries ... but all of his epic missteps have been long forgotten in favor of mocking his one brave, bold, good idea. But it was an idea before its time, and the vituperative knee-jerk backlash from conservatives has obvz spooked mayors for decades to come, including ours, and probably set the NORML cause back 20+ years. History will vindicate Kurt Schmoke on the pot issue, but in the present the spanking continues.
And vindication for Jason Weinstein, former assistant U.S. Attorney in Baltimore responsible for high-profile busts like Itchy Man, Ed Norris and the guy who burned the Dawson family to death. In 2012 he "resigned" from the DOJ to take the fall for Operation Fast and Furious* after Republicans blamed him for the Bush-era program. Now it's come to light that the DEA had been working with the Sinaloa drug cartel since the late 1990s, a decade before Weinstein came on the scene. But a "happy" ending, since the WaPo story was published, Weinstein landed a job with Steptoe & Johnson LLP, sacrificing his populist morals for big $$ white-collar criminal defen$$$e.
In other potlitical news, Van Smith interviewed rising gubernatorial candidate Heather Mizeur.
Corrections officer Taryn "Mrs. Loney" Kirkland got 3 1/2 years for her part in jailhouse drug-smuggling,* her inmate lover Steven Loney got 9 years.
Gregg Bernstein has raised $340k for the State's Attorney's race,* 20 times more than his closest competitor. His contributors include the Orioles and Harbor Point's Michael Beatty.
Six middle-schoolers-- three boys and three girls between the ages of 13 and 14-- were arrested for assaulting a woman on the light rail near the Westport stop.
A man was beaten with a brick, robbed and carjacked in Canton.
Overnight Shooting: 1300 Blk of E. Fayette St. Adult male shot in the left leg. District Detectives Investigating. Dispatched time 12:07 AM
— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) January 15, 2014
Shooting: 500 block Loneys Lane. Man reported to be shot. Southeast District detectives investigating.
— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) January 15, 2014
Chad Kinney, head of the CitiStat program, was fired after a mere 17 months on the job for reasons undisclosed. And the city has agreed to pay a New York company $286,000 to redesign the city's web site,* because there are no web companies in Baltimore.
"What if I smack the shit out of you?" "What if I pull this pistol out?," a dog owner lured onto the baseball fields and robbed in Patterson Park and a rape thwarted per the victim's request in the Baltimore Guide east side crime blotter.
A man threatening to shoot his mother, a guy robbed for his coat and lots of American cars stolen in the North Baltimore blotter.*
12 years for crack dealer Donte Cox
A 13-year-old boy was awarded a $50k settlement* in a wrongful-arrest case.
.@mayorsrb says her confidence in Police Commissioner Anthony Batts has not wavered, despite dramatic spike in homicides
— Luke Broadwater (@lukebroadwater) January 15, 2014
Statistics corner: there were 761 drug overdose deaths in Maryland in 2012, of those 378 were from hairron. H ODs in 2011 = 245.
