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Tag: Baltimore

  • "It's Torching" — A Traincrash of Speech

    There’s a a video on youtube of a guy and his friend (and baby, in babyseat in the back seat) driving toward a fire and then explosion of a train blowing up just outside Baltimore (don’t worry… according to authorities it’s just “toxic” but nothing to worry about).

    So I’m watching this video thinking, “These guys are likely candidates for The Darwin Award.”

    Regardless (and these guys seemed to survive just fine), I also couldn’t help but notice how these two were speaking to each other. They were speaking, well, the way these two African-American guys speak to each other while stupidly driving towards a cool fire (and subsequent explosion). I’m not here to judge. They’re probably very nice guys.

    The Baltimore Sun has about 12 videos of recordings and people describing what they saw. Many of them are worth watching just for the great Baltimore accents. I love Baltimore accents.

    But my point isn’t to make of accents or the way people speak. I couldn’t care less. I like when people talk like where they’re from. I think people should talk like where they’re from. (I wish I had more of a Chicago accent; but I’m from Evanston and my parents were too middle class, I suppose.) One time I asked a white guy in the police academy (who had a thick Bawl’mer accent) why he was making fun of how black people in our class talked. I thought it was ironic because to my ears his accent was more strange sounding than ghettoese (more politely known as African-American Vernacular English). 

    My point is this: there are about a dozen videos on the Baltimore Sun website. And this is the only one where the audio has been silenced. It’s the same one. These guys weren’t hamming it up for the camera. It wasn’t just that the “bad” words were bleeped (and by my count there 20 in two minutes, not including “damn”). The entire audio is just silenced. To rough for tender ears, I suppose.

    Or is it just too black?

    What does it say about our culture (or the media) that the way some Americans speak in casual private conversation–Americans whose ancestors have been in this country and speaking English longer than my family–still can’t be broadcast for public consumption?

  • Why You Never Chase

    Three years ago I wrote this piecefor a local New York City paper. If you replace New Yorker Karen Schmeer with Baltimorean Matthew Hersl, nothing has changed. Karen Schmeer was the friend of a friend. Matthew Hersl was the brother of a guy I worked with and knew from the police academy. I bought my car from his nephew, I think.

    From the Sun:

    A Maryland state trooper first encountered the driver on southbound Interstate 83 about 2 p.m.

    …

    “The black Acura was about a block in front of them. He hesitated at the corner of Saratoga and Holliday. And he takes off as fast as he can at about at least 60 or 70 mph. He tries to negotiate the turn. He didn’t make it. He slammed on the brakes and lost control of the car…. The guy had his back turned. He didn’t see him coming,” [the witness] continued, referring to Hersl. “He hit the guy, knocked him up in the air, hit the tree and turned over.”

    Here’s the part that gets me:

    “Police emphasized that the trooper had not been chasing the suspect in the black 2000 Acura TL.

    The agency has a number of safety factors it considers before initiating a pursuit. “Let me assure you, there wasn’t a pursuit at that point in time,” Black said.

    Let me assure you that’s a lie. [Though the “at that point in time” gives him a bit of wiggle room. I suspect the “chase,” if it ever happened, ended right about the time the car accelerated and smashed into and killed Hersl.]

    So you’re a cop and a car speeds by… what do you do? Departmental rules don’t allow you to chase a suspect, but you can “follow” one (obeying all speed limits and traffic regulations, of course). You’re not supposed to get involved in car chases, but you do. Why? Because they’re fun. (And besides, you don’t want the bastard to get away.)

    Luckily the time I chased a car nobody got hurt. And it wasn’t called off by my sergeant because my suspect drove from the Eastern to the Southeast and I switched to the S.E. District’s radio channel. I thought I was very clever.

    But what if the car I was “following” killed somebody, perhaps while driving the wrong way down a one-way street? How would I sleep at night?

    The reason police are not allowed to chase suspects in the city is because almost inevitably, chases end in a crash. The only real question is what is going to be crashed into. Too often it’s somebody like Karen Schmeer or Matthew Hersl, a good person just going about their day.

    My sincere condolences to Dan and the entire Hersl family.

  • Speaking of Tragedies…

    I don’t think I ever posted about the tragic shooting of a police recruit while in training. Sometimes if you have nothing nice to say, it’s best to say nothing at all.

    But it was just brought to my attention that the BPD is now on their seventh head of E&T [academy director] in the last 19 months. You think that might be a clue?

  • Earl Weaver, RIP

    “In five years, who’s going to be in the Hall in Fame?!”

    You, Earl, you gonna be in the Hall of Fame.

    “Little did I know 15 years ago, how deeply attached I’d become to this city. I came here in 1968 when urban areas were being demolished by riots and fires … but, after the turmoil subsided, it didn’t take me long to find out I was in a baseball town.”

    Here’s the obitin the Sun.

  • Bang Bang, He Shot Me Down

    Eleven people were shot in Chicagoearly New Year’s Day.

    Nine were shot New Year’s morning in New York City.

    Happy New Year.

    Meanwhile, best I can tell, nobody was shot in Baltimore! The Baltimore Sun gives a crude but useful breakdown of basic homicide demographics for the 217 killings in Charm City in 2012. Of note:

    A low Baltimore clearance rate of 47%. Yes, this does mean that more than half of murderers get away with murder (at least for a while). The real clearance rate for the year — if you remove the cases from prior years closed this year — is even lower, 35 percent. The actually odds of getting convicted for homicide in Baltimore? I don’t know. But it’s low.

    As for the victims and killers, the numbers are typical. More than 4 in 5 killed with a handgun. 90% are men. 94% are black and 5% white (Baltimore is about 65% African American). A promising sign is that Baltimore is now about 5% hispanic, and yet only 1 homicide victim was hispanic.

    One-third of victims (more than I would have suspected) were over 35 years old.

    83% of victims had criminal records. 24% were on parole or probation at time of death (this is why some people actually do live longer in prison). 38% of victims had been previously arrested for a gun crime. Of known suspects, 45% had gun-related priors for gun crimes.

  • In Memory of Crystal Sheffield

    Who died in the line of duty, ten years ago.

  • Good Ideas from the Baltimore FOP

    Maybe I’ve become a bit cynical after my time in New York, but I don’t normally think of the police union as a good source for rational and cost-effective advice on better policing (though protecting workers’ rights is an important part of the union).

    But I’ve got to hand it to Robert Cherry, president of my old Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police for their Blueprint for Improving Policing. (But Bob, I’m still a bit peeved that my name is misspelled as “Moslos” on my FOP, Lodge #3 card! You can send a replacement to my school address.) [The FOP is one of the major police unions. The other, which represents the NYPD, is the PBA. In my mind the FOP is somewhat better about caring for the police and the public. The PBA has a bad history of stoking public fear, which isn’t really in anybody’s best long-term interests.)

    From the FOP report:

    Our police officers are appalled by those individuals who betrayed their oath and have now pled guilty in the Majestic Towing scandal, along with others which have come to light in recent years. Many now feel embarrassed to tell others they work for the BPD. The rank and file officers attribute this scandal directly to the lax hiring practices of the BPD. 

    Specifically, maybe it wasn’t a very bright idea to go poach officers from what an incredibly corrupt Puerto Rican police department.

    The FOP report continues:

    The approximate average number of officers suspended in the BPD is 80-100 at a time, which is more than half of the officers needed to staff an entire district.

    …

    Many officers took pride in being a police officer in one of the most challenging policing environments in America. This is simply not the reality anymore. Essentially, Baltimore city taxpayers are being duped. Their tax money is funding the training of Baltimore City police officers who, in turn, leave to work for other jurisdictions, including Baltimore County. The cost is more than just fiscal—taxpayers are losing protection and it’s a waste of resources in general. In addition to losing qualified police officers, according to in-service training surveys, not one Baltimore City police officer said he/she would recommend joining the BPD to potential applicants. At this moment, the Baltimore County Police Department has initiated a 50 member lateral class focusing on recruitment of Baltimore City officers with fewer that five years of experience.

    …

    A recent study shows that an increasing number of BPD officers live in Baltimore City. The BPD should make certain that the trend continues by offering incentives for police officers to live within the city limits. The greater the number of officers residing in the city, the more personally invested the police force as a whole will be in the welfare of the city.

    The report also calls for getting rid of the “white shirts” (to be clear: just the shirts, not the people in them), a shockingly overdue redrawing of district and post boundaries, more patrol and more visible patrol, more focus on community focused policing and quality of life issues, a more productive (and less stat-and-blame) Comstat, and two years of college or military as a hiring requirement. It all makes a lot of sense. Kudos to the FOP.

  • While I’m out…

    Check out this lengthy piece (and well worth reading the whole thing) by David Simon about murders, stats, the BPD, the state’s attorney’s office, and the need for main-stream media. (And thanks to an anonymous comment for cluing me in.)

    The Stat:

    In 2011, the Baltimore Police Department charged 70 defendants with murder or manslaughter.

    Yet in 2010, the department charged 130 defendants with such crimes.

    …

    What is happening?

    Are Baltimore’s killers showing more cunning, are murders becoming
    harder to solve?  No indication of that from any quarter.  Did the
    homicide unit lose a ton of veteran talent?  Nope.  Not between 2010 and
    2011 at any rate.  No, the dramatic collapse of the department’s
    investigative response to murder is the result of a quiet, backroom
    policy change that has created a bureaucratic disincentive to charge
    people in homicides.

    Also, and unrelated, McCarthy in Chicago says police don’t have to answer stupid 911 calls for service anymore. It might seem minor, but this could have a huge impact on policing (as Chapter Six of Cop in the Hood — “911 is a Joke” — describes in breath-taking page-turning detail). McCarthy is talking about “beat integrity” and says he’s willing to face the political flack for fewer police responses. He also wants to give powers of where police go to police bosses (instead of giving all the power to the dispatcher). This is all good. (Maybe in Baltimore they’ll actually bring a box back to put call in!) From the Sun-Times:

    McCarthy replied that the change was
    already under way, with the goal of creating, what he called “beat
    integrity.” That means leaving police officers to patrol their assigned
    beats, instead of chasing their tails by running from one 911 call to
    another at the behest of dispatchers. …

    “Previously, the dispatcher would direct
    the resources, while the sergeants in the field would basically just be
    receiving them. [Now], sergeants in the field are in charge of
    dispatching resources if they don’t like the way [dispatch] is doing it. …

    [Dispatch] has also abandoned what McCarthy called the “clean screen concept” at the 911 center.

    “They would dispatch a car from one end
    of the district to the other end of a district to simply get the job off
    the screen. That’s the clean screen concept,” he said.

    “What we’re now doing is maintaining
    beat integrity. … If a job comes in in a neighboring beat and it’s not
    an emergency call for service, that job will actually get stacked until
    that beat is available to handle it. That’s what beat integrity is all
    about. Same officers in the same beat every single day. Those officers
    are not only accountable for what’s happening on the beat, they also
    know who the good kids are from the bad kids. They’re not stopping
    everybody. They’re stopping the right people because they know who they
    are.”

    McCarthy said a more dramatic change is
    coming soon, when the Chicago Police Department determines “which jobs
    we’re not gonna respond to” anymore.

    “That’s a call that I’m going to make — and there’s going to be some wrankling about that,” he said.

    “We don’t need to respond to calls for
    service because, ‘My children are fighting over the remote control.’ We
    don’t need to respond to calls for service because, ‘My son won’t eat
    his dinner.’ Unfortunately, believe it or not, those are calls we
    actually respond to today.”

     And the political flack will come when one of the my children are fighting over the remote calls turns into a homicide. But you can’t dedicate half the police department to every idiot who can pick up a phone.

  • Eliot, by Michael A. Wood Jr.

    Eliot, by Michael A. Wood Jr.

    Need some good summer reading? Why not Eliot? It’s fiction set very firmly in Baltimore’s Eastern District. I know those streets well (even if the cameras are new to me). (and I love that he gives a shout out to Larry, the world’s best dispatcher.)

    I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say I enjoyed taking the turns around my old stomping grounds. And Michael swears there’s no connection, but I could swear I went to the academy with the homicide detective. Here’s the cover and you can read the back of the book:

    You can get more info and buy a copy on Michael Wood’s website. [Update: you can’t, and don’t] While you’re there, if you’re a cop, check out his promotion guide. I can’t personally vouch for the promotion guide (I’m not up for Sergeant or Lieutenant) but I do have a copy and think it gives you the straight dope on what you need to know.

    I can vouch for Eliot: good crime fiction.

    Next on my list is Cop Stories: The Few, The Proud, The Ugly by Dick Ellwood. Ellwood’s career goes back to 1965, so I look forward to what is now a bit of history.

    And previously I wrote about Badges, Bullets, & Bars by Danny Shanahan.

    Who would have though so many books would come out the ranks of the BPD?

    And let’s not forget Michael East’s Beyond Hope. East isn’t a Baltimore Cop, but he did write a very good book.

    Update: Turns out Michael Wood Jr. is an narcissistic SOB who confessed to crimes but tried to play it off as being a “whistle blower.” And then he he stole money from veterans. http://www.copinthehood.com/2018/09/15/michael-wood-jr-took-money-from-veterans-2/ The other books I stand by, though. And writing this years later, I particularly remember Michael East’s book. Outstanding.

  • “Peter Moskos doesn’t bullshit”

    Check this out by Michael Corbin in Baltimore’s City Paper: Better of Two Evils. Makes me sound like such a intellectual bad-ass. And potty mouth. Fuckin’-A!

    Seriously though, it is very powerfully written. Makes me want to re-read my own books.