No romp, no stomp.

Two shootings last night in the Franklin Square and Cherry Hill neighborhoods, respectively.

Batts is planning to clean up Lexington Market so the normals and non-jaywalkers can enjoy it; also will no longer allow one to "romp and stomp" on the 4th of July. Instead, use that spare time on your hands to fill out the BPD's customer satisfaction survey.

Via Instagram

Whut. According to Tweeter @Elkephant, a joy-riding kid in a stolen BMW hit a truck full of paint, then rammed the car into the side of the Grand Central bar on Charles and Eager Streets. The driver of the truck was taken to the hospital, no word if there were any other injuries.

Brew: citizens skeptical of alleged changes* at the Liquor Board and the governor's "secret working group" to reform it. Even the Mayor griped that "the liquor board’s principal positions are patronage positions controlled by the state senators.*"

And speaking of mayorial gripes, SRB wrote an op-ed re. the Grand Prix, lamented "it is bittersweet to see this event come to an end,*" calls race skeptics a bunch of pessimists. Because you should be thanking her for mismanaging the event millions of dollars into debt! Quit being such a Debbie Downer! Gah!

Good news, gun nuts: the state has cleared the employees of other agencies to help clear the background-check backlog,* in spite of some paranoiacs' privacy concerns.* Actually watching you: the NRA, which has a database of all gun owners and people who have taken gun-safety classes in the U.S.

Question: What is the number of sworn police officers per capita in Baltimore, New York City, Detroit, Boston, San Francisco and Oakland?
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) September 17, 2013

Answer: 4,73.  4.16.  3.63.  3.37. 2.65. 1.56.
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) September 17, 2013

Roasting, cleaving, voluntarying

Where are all the city's illegal guns coming from? With only five officers on the gun task force and all them federal pro-gun laws it's all anybody's guess. Check out this 4-time gun convict's hand cannon, recovered at a house also operating a daycare.

A city detective, Shane Volk, was killed when he crashed his Jeep in Glen Arm.

Michael "Blizz" Singer

 The tattoo-faced murder accessory who looks 65, left, is a 35-year-old local rapper who goes by "Blizz.* His wife Shelbie is accused of stabbing to death one John Bowman, 22, in Arbutus.

Police think one 16-year-old is responsible for 25 burglaries in Canton.

Tragic: Sharon Mulcahy, the woman whose dogs roasted in a motel parking lot for 20 hours, died soon after she was released from Central Booking. The family alleges the jail failed to give her proper medical attention.

City Paper: Baltimore is "famous for crime, and yet, when it comes to arson, this is the best we can do?" Uhm, I think the city actually does pretty okay on that front.

Hey, that abortion-sign bill is still breathing,* and the Sun actually has me convinced it's a good idea. If Wisconsin can make doctors rape women with a probe and Texas and North Carolina can get thisclose to shutting down every family planning clinic in the state, the phony baloney clinics can suck up posting a piece of paper with facts on it.

Speaking of intrusions, a federal judge has allowed EFF's case against the NSA to go ahead (thanks Scan Baltimore). And good piece in the Economist about our newly revealed secret Supreme Court.

Media Blabber: the Tribune is cleaving off its newspaper biz from its TV-station biz, and is apparently not yet scrapping the idea of selling the publishing piece to a rogues' gallery of shoppers that include Charles and David Koch, a group of libertarian 'voluntaryists' and an alleged Chinese spy's ex-husband.

No tasks, no force

Legitimate rape on N. Calvert St. in Mt. Vernon, bootleg-looking camera photos released*

A dog walker robbed and stabbed and a whole lot of punching in the Southeast

Morgan State U lawyers are trying to get dropped the lawsuit* from Alexander Kinyua's victim, Joshua Caesar, guy who was beaten and blinded when the skitzy cannibal attacked him with a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat. In other news of responsibility-denying universities, records released by the University of Maryland show their decades-long efforts to cover up/avoid doing anything about the pervy molestations of swim coach Rick Curl.*

Irresponsible Pop-Tart owner Josh Welch got a lifetime membership in the NRA.

Down in MoCo, LeRoy Carhart's Germantown abortion clinic was found not responsible for the death of Jennifer Morbelli and determined that her death was from natural causes. Oh great, disseminated intravascular coagulation, another new, rare, horrible affliction for pregnant women to freak out about. Anyway, the medical examiner's finding naturally makes not one whit of difference to anti-family-planning activist groups.

One Larry Michael Parrish admitted to running a Ponzi scheme in which $9.2 million of investors' money was squirreled away in the Bahamas and Nevis.

How I love a Page Croyder rant-- today's deserving topic is O'Malley's 'Task Force.' 

And who can resist Honkytimes Heimbach squaring off with Shorty Davis? Not Vice magazine!

Santini's Restauarant in Joppa lost its liquor license after a 14-year-old held a booze-soaked fete* on the premises.

More speed cameras in the county-- and are the city's back on or still off? ...  consider downloading the app called Waze-- it's a free talking navigation system that also alerts you to the presence of cameras (though its routes can be a little wacky).