Amazeballs!

Baltimore homicides are at a 25-year-low (...but how many unclassified deaths do we have, Steve Janis?)

County police ID victims and a suspect in a shooting yesterday in White Marsh

and county police are ISO a suspect in a North Point shooting

Cockeysville tenants robbed of $2,500 in rent money

Some enchanted evening...

222 = man shot to death in the 5500 block of Richard Ave. in front of the Visions Banquet Hall, a block away from Clementine.

A retired officer shot a would-be robber at Judy's Island Grill & Bake Shop on Park Heights, and the suspect is not expected to be irie.

Enchantment of the Seas indeed! Cruise ship crew busted with cocaine and heroin

Shirley Watts appointed to the Court of Special Appeals

Owners of Club Reality complain of police harassment (reality.. who wants to go to a club for that?!)

Secure your weapons!

A 13-year-old Charles Diesmesor died after he and his friend were playing with a gun

More details on the story of Ellison McCall, the New Haven lounge bartender allegedly killed by some rowdy patrons he'd ejected

Four years for Tomeka V. Harris, a former mortgage broker turned credit-card-fraudster and prison-contraband-smuggler. More details from the DOJ

Harford county settles case of pro-life protestors who were strip-searched. Related: the Post reports that "Tests of 'Roe' more frequent since justices upheld late-term abortion ban in '07"

History corner: 10 years ago in the City Paper Lee Gardner wrote about Baltimore's first killing of the new millennium. "If the current rate holds out through the end of 2000, the number of homicides in Baltimore will drop below 300 for the first time in 11 years ... a major victory for Mayor Martin O'Malley, who was swept into office in 1999 on the strength of his vow to stem the bloodshed, and for police Commissioner Edward Norris."

Can a new mayoral candidate pull a Bernstein?

Maybe...

Small world

The man killed on Boyd St was ID'd as Raymond Woodland, who was apparently accused of shooting a 19-year-old in the face at a party at the Sheraton on Fayette Street last year.

Scary-looking Michael Carotenuto, 39, accused of robbing elderly women with a claw hammer on Christmas day

Speaking of violence... does data on domestic violence underrepresent the numbers of male victims?

Book note: added a couple of titles to the librury-- Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibitionand The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration-- both good reads.

News of the weird: Pat "Haitians swore a pact with the devil" Robertson spoke out for the decriminalization of marijuana

220, 221

Keith Lee Robinson, 23, 4100 block of Ridgewood Ave.

WMAR has interviews and vigorous preaching with family members of 14-year-old victim Isaac Joyner. No suspects, no motive, family members say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A shooting this morning at Pulaski & Boyd in the SW, a man stabbed in the chest on Christmas morning.
UPDATE: the man shot at Pulaski & Boyd has died

Issac in heaven

Relatives mourn 14-year-old fatally shot Thursday

‎Police tweet, "2:40 am, Officers are on the scene of a shooting in the 4400 blk of Granada Ave. Adult male shot at location. Homicide Det's called to scene"

B*tch better have my goat meat

City lawyers and now the mayor insist it was the non-molesting Shapiro who insisted on secrecy in that $200k mistaken-identity case, but Shapiro's lawyer and the Daily Record have letters and e-mails that certainly "suggest otherwise"

The Milton Tillmans plead guilty, with the elder Tillman poignantly prepared to serve time so his son can go free.

Mustafa Malik, 43, was shot to death in the 2900 block of Mathews St.

Police are ISO "a pair of black males between the ages of 25 and 30" in connection with robberies and two murders last week near Patterson Park

Three teens shot on the West side, including a 14-year-old shot in the head

An arrest for the shooting of Coppin State track start Dale Dunn

A rather unusual 14 years for a drug dealer who sold heroin that led to overdose

Baltimore Charlie Brown's cubed goat meat is gone or perhaps never was, and the CP asks, what happened to all of Baltimore's "stimulus money"?

Seasonal: "Culprits Adorn Man's Yard With Stolen Decorations"

...that Peter Hermann,
orange shirt and a snifter of bourbon
tossed back the booze
and said "have yer year's crime news
in long, awkward sets of couplets."

Ho ho ho!

"A man dressed in a Santa suit told police that a suspect in her 50s had approached him and said, 'I always wanted to hug Santa.' She held him very close, rubbing herself against him, and picked his pocket."

Our bad...

Eyebrow-raising story from TDR's Danny Jacobs reveals the details behind a mysterious $200,000 settlement from the city: police picked up the wrong guy on child molestation charges, in spite of the fact he'd never lived or worked in Baltimore and didn't live in the country until five years after the alleged abuse took place. Adding insult to injury, city lawyers also apparently flat-out lied that it was the victim who wanted to keep the story quiet. But as Rikki Spector surely taught at Talmudical Academy, time wounds all heels.

Man shot to death in the 3700 block of Mt. Pleasant Ave.

Arson killing may have followed an "altercation" at the New Haven Lounge where the victim was a bartender

Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke is soliciting donations to help with Karen Ferrell's funeral. The victim was a mom of three, found dead and entombed in plastic in her own basement.

The CP has details on last week's five murders (two of them in CHuM, the city's most murderiffic neighborhood). Also the death of 10-month-old Micha Crane has been added to the toll.

Shooty weekend continues

Four Five murders this weekend so far:

• unid'd 42-year-old man, 3700 block of Ravenwood Avenue;
• unid'd woman, 38, 4:30 a.m. in the 3100 block of East Monument Street;
• unid'd person, first block of N. Lakewood Ave. at 6:16 a.m.;
• and an un-id'd 23-year-old killed in the 600 block of Evesham Avenue
.

Also three more six more shootings, and then there's the mighty "suspicious" 42-year-old woman's body found wrapped in plastic in the 1800 block of E. 29th St. UPDATE: Fox reports that this death has been ruled a homicide, and the victim was Karen Ferrell, 42

.. and in York, PA, Baltimorean and twice-convicted murderer Kevin Mattison was sentenced to death for the December 2008 murder of Christian Agosto. Mattison just got out of jail in June after serving less than two years for 1st-degree rape, assault, sex and weapons offenses, and is due in back in a Baltimore court in February on burglary charges.

Violent night

Three killed, two injured last night in spate of violence, and a suspicious death: "a 42-year-old woman's body found wrapped in plastic in the 1800 block of E. 29th St." Shootings mapped by SpotCrime

Drug arrest thrown out due to issues with an officer's "past transgressions"

Media blabber: Not-so-shocking U of MD study finds Fox News viewers have a "higher level of misinformation" (though MSNBC, PBS & network news viewers got stuff wrong too)

Robo call raid

The home of Julius Henson, the admitted perpetrator of the election night robo calls, was raided by detectives working for state prosecutors.

Tragedy, stupidity abounds

Friends gather to remember slain Cherrie Gammon, likely killed over a drug debt

"Man suffers graze wound after shooting," which kind of makes it sound like he'd been chewed on by some sheep

A computer glitch lets scores of parking tickets get dismissed. The moral of the story: so long as your time is worth less than the price of the ticket, it's worthwhile request a hearing.

Lead-paint landlord jailed over violations

Holabird high student encounters pervert lurking in the boys' room, who stuffed a sock in his mouth and kicked him in the nads

A Hagtown inmate who mailed white powder to a judge "to bring attention to a motion to modify his 50-year sentence for first-degree murder" got five more years tacked onto his time

Lawyer warns that toning shoes won't shape your buns and may break your legs

4 Aces

.. beats the government's royal flush. Milton Tillman Jr. and Milton Tillman III, charged with multiple counts of tax, insurance and wire fraud, are reportedly making a deal with the government that will let Milton Tillman the Jr., serve no time. Tillman the IIIrd, aka "the Emperor," and "citizen of the year" is a prolific political contributor who owns a oodles of real estate in the metro area and allegedly has "close proximity" to the drug world.

'Tis the season

.. for home invasions. Police are investigating two unrelated armed invasions.

Tomorrow is ladies' day at the BPD: "BPD Recruiting Event: Women's Hiring Event 12/17/10 @ 12 PM, BPD HQ (601 E Fayette Street) Info Session & Written Test"

Bodymore is Burning

In yet another incident of a severe fire in Baltimore a homeless man was found burning behind a Canton Safeway.

Fire officials officially believe that the fire on the Block was set by "human hands." how they know that I will not pretend to know.

We are officially pansies; A christmas ornament causes the shutdown of the Pentagon train station.

24 Years in federal prison for a man who shot at city cops.

Ending on a happier note, The Sun gives us an uplifting/slightly depressing story about a child shooting victim.

The unbearable whiteness of being

The CP's Van Smith interviews the new white guy, details his fondness for Elvis Costello & 'Mad Men' & asks, "What kind of challenges does you being a white guy present?"

A dispute between tenants led to a barricade situation in West Baltimore, which ended peacefully with the arrest of a suspect.

Source tells WBAL that fire on The Block was arson

"A tearful Benjamin L. “Bennie” King Jr. apologized to his family and former employer Legal Aid before being sentenced to 30 months in prison Tuesday for embezzling more than $1 million from the organization over a decade."

Last week's four murders in the Ink: Dante Sweeney, David Carter, Travis Baltimore (reported as Travis Alexander by WBAL) and "an unidentified Caucasian woman." ... (srsly, the CP just way too obsessed with race ... ok, it's an important detail, but is it so important that must be reported in the first sentence in every single case?)

Creditors to Tribune Co. executives: bitch better have my money

Deputy speaks out

Shot in the line of duty, they're now saying he lied.

Six dead in city fire

Heavy winds made the fire worse, according to the fire dept.