Most Baltimore cops are clean. The vast vast majority. But of course there are dirty cops. We know so because they get caught. Too bad the record of prosecuting dirty cops in Baltimore isn’t too good. Peter Hermann reports.
Tag: Baltimore
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Drug Violence? Gang Violence? Idiot Violence?
This isn’t new. But it happened in the Eastern and only know did I discover (thanks to a colleague of mine) the Timearticle.
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I Heart Crab
I love Maryland crabs. Even more than I love Maryland venison. And I do love eating the deer. But I think steamed blue crab may be the most delicious food in the world.Last night my friend cooked a true Maryland-inspired crab feast for twenty people. She’s gone down to Baltimore twice now for my sergeant’s church crab feast. She ordered and paid for two bushels of #1 males (jimmies)…
…and then received #3 females.
The worst part is the fish guy she bought them from wasn’t trying to rip her off. He was just ripped off himself. Such is life buying crabs here in New York City. People just don’t know crabs. But then I think she paid only $80 a bushel, which is way too cheap for jimmies, right?
Steaming the crabs is always great fun (for us, not the crabs), as the crabs are feisty and one or two always gets loose.
At least most of the guests, not knowing backfin from lump, didn’t know they were eating very small crabs. And despite their size, they did taste great.
Afterward, with Old Bay in the air and three of us sitting around a table drinking and picking, we probably ended up with less than 2 lbs of crab meat from a while damn bushel of crabs (many in this bushel were dead). Pretty pathetic. But crab meat is crab meat. So we had crab cakes tonight!
My wife went first. Fine by me! I had a beer. But then I came to face-to-face with this pan-fried hockey-puck shaped thing and my heart sank (though they tasted OK).
Is there something about New York that makes people want to mash delicious crabmeat into patties? Is there something in our water?So I took the rest of the meat and let me tell you, I showed her. Round, as loosely packed as possible, and broiled.
The sad truth is they looked better than they tasted (I used too much egg). But not bad for a New York boy winging it with a point to prove.
We were both loosely following Ms. Amelia’s crab cake recipe. Though next time I might try this recipe because I love Faidley’s and I like the idea of little worcestershire sauce addition.[And just for the purpose of science, we even made a crabcake from canned crab (“wild caught” from Vietnam). It tasted like crap and we didn’t eat it.]
Speaking of food. If you see the movie “Julie and Julia” (decent, though very very chick-flick), it’s all filmed in my Astoria neighborhood (which subbed for nearby Long Island City). I stopped by my corner fish store and congratulated them (not where the crabs were from, by the way) and K & T Butchers is only a few blocks away. Once I ran into Julie at a liquor store near her house. Alas, to my great dismay when I lived in Cambridge, I never did run into Julia Child (even though all my friends did).
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Fed-up business people respond to robbery spree
[He] was in the middle of a string of 17 robberies of city business in 22 days, police say.
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[In 2005] Lomax was sentenced to 21 years in prison, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. When the case came back to court on June 22, Baltimore Circuit Judge John Addison Howard gave Lomax 15 years, suspending all but five. The judge made the sentence retroactive to 2005, and Lomax was set free.Police say the latest crime spree began shortly thereafter
The story by Justin Fenton in the Baltimore Sun.
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Two officers shot
Two officers down in Baltimore. Supposedly in stable condition. Supposedly returned fire, which is a good sign.
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The Idea of “Juvenile”
The state has an archaic system in which we operate under the misimpression that everyone under 18 can be rehabilitated for repeatedly committing violent crimes. We must find a way to provide rehabilitation, but also accountability and punishment.
That’s kind of hardcore coming from, of all places, the office of Baltimore State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy. Her office, as I write about in my book, is often at odds with police officers.
I’m not against the conceptof “juvenile justice.” I do think that kids who commit crimes should be treated differently than adults. But 17-year-olds? Especially when they’re fathers, murderers, and drug dealers? They’re no longer kids. I can’t tell you how many times I had to treat an arrested 16 or 17-year-old as a “juvenile” only to find no adults who could or were willing to deal with this violent man anymore.
These so-called kids certainly don’t see themselves as kids. They don’t look like kids. They certainly don’t play like kids. Why treat them like kids? How many times does somebody have to locked up for violent crimes before they’re kept off the street and away from other?
Maybe lowering the adult age to 16 would be good start. Given the environments some kids grow up in, childhood is an unfortunately idealistic concept as best. But at some point, for some kids, we simply gotta put them away. If you disagree, and it’s touching if you do, I recommend you go to the juvie home and work on adopting an unloved teenager. But whatever problems have developed need to be headed off long before the teen years.
The issue here is Lamont Davis. He’s been arrested 15 times since he was ten. Lamont is a very bad boy. In the past year and a half since Davis has been in custody of juvenile services, he’s been arrested and charged in fiveincidents. God only knows how many times he hurt people and didn’t get caught.
Recently Davis yoked (robbed and beat) a woman. He was arrested and plead guilty on July 1st.
On July 2nd, soon after Davis cut off his home monitoring bracelet, a five-year-old girl apparently got in the path of one of his bullets. She may not make it. Two other guys were hit as well.
Justin Fenton has the story in the Sun.
Willie Bosket comes to mind. I’m not a fan of prison. But some people need to be put away for a long time. I nominate Davis. And then let’s come up with some ideas and be willing to spend some money to prevent such cases from happening again. -
Help Wanted
There’s a Craigslist help wanted ad for chief of the BPD’s Criminal Investigations Division. Normally you would expect this position to be in internal promotion. Justin Fenton writes about this in the Sun.
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Baltimore Crime Stats
Peter Hermann writes about playing with the numbers and the problem of accurate reporting.
“I would suspect this goes on in most police departments,” Busnuk told me. “Others don’t have the crime problem that we do and don’t have the political pressure. But this kind of reporting is built into the DNA of the police system.”
Kind of like how Detroit accidentally forgot to tell the FBI about 117 murders last year. Oh… those 117 murders!
Those 117 Detroit killings are significant in that they push Balto from the not-so-coveted big-city homicide winner’s circle. Once again, Baltimore is number two and, in the words of some police, “shooting for number ones.”
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Crime Down in Baltimore
Justin Fenton writes in the Sun.
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Get tough on black-on-black crime
Bealefeld, Baltimore’s police commish, says:
Those guys got fairly nominal sentences for some heinous stuff that they did to these kids, and if it happened in a white neighborhood in any other community in this state, we’d still be talking about it, and people would be talking about life sentences…. And these people get out essentially with a slap on the wrist. People need to be speaking out about this.
True dat.
The background and more in Justin Felton’s story in the Sun.