So, Even if You Don't Plan On Raping a Child, You Might Want to Avoid Louisiana

Christ, this seems a tad extreme. Gov Bobby Jindal Signs Castration Law.

I feel better about executing a convicted child rapist than I do about chemically, or even physically castrating him. This couldn't seriously get through the courts, right?

'Cause My Anaconda Don't Want None Unless You Got Buns Hun

In news that's certain to be good for somebody -- you know who you are -- Florida women are apparently eager to show up at hotels with strange men and have even stranger things pumped into their asses:

Miami-Dade's medical police busted a ''pumping party'' Thursday, where a man with no medical license had set up shop in a hotel room, offering to pump an unknown substance into women's backsides for ``buttocks enhancement.''

As the procedure was about to start, the women, three undercover police detectives, arrested Anthony Donnell Solomon, 22, of Miami, charging him with practicing without a license.

A similar incident resulted in the 2001 death of a Carol City woman.

''What's amazing to me is that this is not even unusual,'' said Dr. Seth Thaller, chief of plastic surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine. 'People get themselves injected with God-knows-what. What I want to ask them is, `What were you thinking?' ''

Read the whole story here. Wikipedia page on Sir Mixalot's classic here.

Can You Trust Anybody On The Internet These Days?

From the Tampa Tribune:

UTZ - The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is pursuing leads from a high-priced jewelry heist involving a nude maid.

A resident of Maisons Drive on May 23 reported that a woman hired from a nude cleaning service that he found on the Internet had stolen more than $40,000 worth of his wife's jewelry, sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said.

The woman came to the house, stripped and cleaned the house, Carter said. The homeowner left the woman alone while she cleaned the bedroom, and after she left, the jewelry was gone, Carter said.

Carter did not have any information on how the jewelry vanished.[Emphasis added]

Ummm, so the guy hired a nude cleaning lady and then left her alone? Not only did that make the heist possible but it kind of defeats the purpose of the service, doesn't it?

Baltimore to Remove 'Blue Light' Cameras

Arguing that the technology requires too much manpower to be effective, Baltimore police are phasing out the first generation of blue-light cameras -- among the city's most visible crime-fighting tools.

Baltimore City Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said the portable cameras, which represent about 18 percent of all crime cameras in the city, will slowly be replaced with more sophisticated closed-circuit units.

The blue light cameras were always more symbolic instead of a crime-fighting tool, and about the only good they served was was to warn you to not get too close to the block with the blinking blue light. That being said, I would much rather have the ineffective blue light cameras over effective CCTV government cameras.

If they are going to watch me, I'd rather it be a heavy burden on the state, rather than just punching up a television screen in some central viewing area.

Full article here.

1st Quarter Homicide Rate Lowest Since 1985

Give credit where credit is due:

Something has changed. Compared to the same time last year, homicides were down 30 percent in the first three months of 2008 and shootings declined 31 percent. Last year began as the most violent in more than a decade, but the first quarter of 2008 was Baltimore's least deadly since 1985.

City and state officials caution that it's too early to extrapolate much, but they say the trends are encouraging and point to a host of factors that they believe have made a difference.

IMO the new police chief, Fredrick Bealefeld deserves most of the praise. He's prioritized community involvement with his department, put foot patrols back on the street where they belong and moved away from the zero-tolerence policing that had zero impact on the murder rate.

Time will tell though, (and I'd like to see the numbers on non-fatal shootings) but improvement is improvement.

Full story here.

Has Anyone Checked Her for a Heartbeat?

It's an old story: Stripper-turned-criminal conspirator-turned-soccer mom and former state ethics board employee goes to jail for murder. I'm thinking Maggie Gyllenhaal for the lead with Tony Fuqua to direct.

Meet Mechele Linehan. The thirty-five year-old was sentenced to 99 years in jail Wednesday for conspiring to kill her former fiance in Anchorage, Alaska, back in 1996. She was trying to get a cool mil in insurance money.

So what was she doing in the intervening years? Well, for a while she was an administrative assistant for the Washington State Executive Ethics Board, which ensures ethical conduct by state employees.

As with any good crime story, it details like that that capture interest. And this one has tons of them. Linehan was working as a stripper in 1996 at a club called - I kid you not - the Great Alaska Bush Co., when she convinced John Carlin III, a boyfriend, to shoot her then-fiance Ken Leppink.

Unfortunately for Linehan, Leppink had recently changed his will and even wrote an only-to-be-opened-in-the-event-of-my-death letter to his parents saying that if he died that Linehan was behind it. She got nothing. So did prosecutors, who didn't have enough evidence to try her at the time.

Linehan then apparently went straight, got a degree in psychology, married a Washington State doctor and had a kid.

Things started to fall apart in 2005 when Carlin's now-grown son provided damning testimony against his father and Linehan. She was convicted back in October.

The kicker here? She was inspired to do it by watching the movie the Last Seduction. As the AP reports:

"The Last Seduction" is a modern-day film noir in which a ruthless beauty - played by the sultry, raven-haired actress Linda Fiorentino - uses her sexual wiles to manipulate others.

A former stripper, Lora Aspiotis, testified that she watched the movie with Linehan and that Linehan admired the tough-talking Fiorentino character.

"She told me that the character was her heroine and that she wanted to be just like her," Aspiotis said.

Well, not quite. In the movie she gets away with it. Sorry, babe. Anchorage just ain't Hollywood.

A Culture of Knife Violence

A political SNAFU, or a glimpse at reality in a gun-free country?

Harriet Harman, the leader of the House of Commons, has been drawn into an embarrassing row after being pictured wearing a stab-proof vest as she toured her own constituency.

Ms Harman took to the streets of Peckham, south London, at 9am on Monday surrounded by several police officers wearing a kevlar-reinforced jacket.[...]

However the picture has annoyed some of her constituents, while Opposition leaders seized on the picture to prove Labour's poor law and order record has made the capital one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

Pretty stupid move. Wait, scratch that. It was a pretty stupid political move. Very smart move for her own personal safety.

I'll take our "gun culture" over their "knife culture" any day of the week. When it comes to self-defence, my knife fighting ability is limited to what I've picked up watching West Side Story a dozen or so times. Needless to say I can sing a mean show tune, but I'm not too handy with a knife.

Full story here.

2 Dead, 3 Others Wounded Overnight

If this headline was about a shooting at a mall in an Ohio suburb it would be front-page news across the country. However, this occurred on the streets (and homes) of east and west Baltimore in 4 separate incidents, and the story hardly gets any play on the Sun's web site, let alone any where else in the media world. If nothing else, can't we get a story on how this is a bad night, in an otherwise sorta' good year for crime? [OK -- so far, a sorta' good year. But you take the good when you get it.]

Hey, but if nothing else people like to watch The Wire. Or should I say they used to...

Armed with Video Cameras

Good article in the Baltimore Sun today on citizens video taping police officers.

Drive though some Baltimore neighborhoods at night and it quickly becomes obvious: The blinking blue-light cameras show the police are watching.

But the police also are being watched.

Citizens armed with cameras - even in their cell phones - are filming officers in action, sometimes with unflattering results.

That's a fair point when talking about the supposed controversy surrounding the act of taping police officers. If I leave my house and walk west on Washington Blvd, I am guaranteed to be on film for more than 8 blocks. No doubts about it, every time I do it, I'll be captured on film by the city. I'm not a criminal*, but the camera captures you whether you are committing a crime or not, or whether you have the intent to commit a crime or not.

The logic is that the blue-light cameras will prevent crime from happening, or allow police to solve more crimes that do occur. The cameras don't actually accomplish those goals, but nonetheless that's why they are there. Plus, if you aren't doing anything illegal, what do you have to fear? It's fucked up. That logic shouldn't apply to innocent citizens who, for perfectly reasonable reasons, feel uncomfortable about being filmed by their frequently abusive government. But that logic should be applied to government agents, who are given immense amounts of power and responsibilities, and -- last time I checked -- supposedly worked for the taxpayers.

Some police officers don't like the new reality that they can be under surveillance by the citizenry.

"I think that cops are terrified of video cameras," said Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who is now a sociologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "I think the end result is cops will police a little more carefully.

Uh, this is a good thing, right? 'Cause, if cops are more careful with their power that's a net positive for everyone, right? Better community relations, less complaints and lawsuits, and most importantly -- fewer people getting the shit kicked out of them.

But officers do have some reasons to fear the lens. Recently retired Lt. Frederick V. Roussey said that in his 29 years on the force he used to encounter suspected gang members who would walk up to his officers and take pictures of them with their cell phones.

"If I had someone doing it, I would go over and grab the phone," he said. "It would be like, 'No way.'" Roussey said he feared that gangs were compiling electronic hit lists of officers.

Bullshit. To the best of my knowledge one police officer was killed in all of 2007. He wasn't even on-duty, he was robbed, and shot to death while returning home from work. Just like other innocent Baltimore residents who aren't adequately protected by our failing city services. According the Baltimore Police Department's website, the last officer killed on-duty, in a non-traffic related accident, was in 2004. Almost 4 years ago. If thugs in west Baltimore are compiling electronic hit lists of cops, they aren't making much headway on them. Which is surprising, because if there is one thing Baltimore criminals are good at, it's killing people. Most likely, criminals understand that killing a cop is bad for business, so they tend to avoid it. But forget about logic; let's look at the facts. In the same period that one police officer was shot to death, on-duty, we've had 49 fatalities at the hands of police officers. 49. 49-1. With that ratio, who needs to be filmed?


*I use the term "criminal" and "not" loosely. I do not consider the occasional Pigtown tranny pick-up to be a crime. I hardly ever pay; most time I just trade them drugs for oral sex**

**ATTN Baltimore PD: This is not a confession of illegal acts (although I'm not sure I want to live in a country where trading crack for a blow job is illegal), this web site is merely for entertainment purpose only and should not be taken seriously.

21230 Stands Tall

My zip code is home to the 277th "official" murder of the year in Charm City. What makes the 277th victim so special? They are the winning run of '07 murders; surpassing '06 tally of 276 victims. With a few weeks to spare...

My guess at how many murders we've actually had? Over 280. Baltimore Crime's count stands at 284, and I trust them more than the Sun and BPD combined.

Catch It at a Corner Near You

The highly anticipated sequel to Stop Snitching, (creatively titled Stop Snitching 2) is now available for pre-order. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a Carmelo appearance, but nevertheless the director promises new stars will be made.

Don't Do the Dance If You Can't Do the Time

Add it to the list of reasons to be arrested.

But a 16-year-old Baltimore City boy learned Wednesday that the “Crip Walk” isn’t the most fun way to entertain his friends, when a police officer arrested him for doing the dance, charging him with disorderly conduct.

I thought it was always the "culture of violence" that our politicians and policemen had to defeat. Now I realize instead, it's the "culture of dancing" that we are fighting.

You Tell 'Em Ozzy

Ozzy Osborne is rightly pissed about the underhanded tactics of the Cass County, ND, Sheriff:

Osbourne claims his reputation was tarnished when Sheriff Paul Laney invited 500 people with outstanding warrants to a phony party at a Fargo nightclub before the rocker's concert with Rob Zombie at a nearby arena. More than 30 showed up and were arrested.

"Instead of holding a press conference to pat himself on the back, Sheriff Laney should be apologizing to me for using my name in connection with these arrests," Osbourne said in a statement.

"It is insulting to me and to my audience and it shows how lazy this particular sheriff is when it comes to doing his job," Osbourne said.

Although maybe the people were a bit naive for believing this, and undoubtedly many of them deserved to be arrested, this strategy makes me uncomfortable. It's probably a safe bet that many of them had warrants for nothing more than pot possession or unpaid parking tickets.

Yes, I know these things are in fact illegal and the sheriff must enforce the law, but the means seem like overkill. Did the Sheriff actually, you know, knock on these people's doors first?

And it doesn't help when the Sheriff says shit like this:

He said mentioning Osbourne's name in the invitations was no different than a bar advertising a Super Bowl party by mentioning the teams playing in the game.

Actually, it's completely different. Off the top of my head:

* The Super Bowl is real. When the bar advertises it, the event will actually happen.

* The bar wants to attract voluntary customers, not to take them into custody.

* The teams in the Super Bowl are widely known anyway.


And this is just unbelievable:

"Three people called to say, 'I got one of those letters. Since you're being so creative, I'm turning myself in. Give me a court date,'" Laney said.

Next Mayor of Philly

Michael Nutter, the soon-to-be mayor of Philadelphia:

PHILADELPHIA - Michael Nutter, the man who is nearly certain to be Philadelphia's next mayor, promises to reduce gun violence, launch an all-out crackdown on no-bid contracts and offer $10,000 tax breaks to companies that hire convicts.

Can someone give me a sound argument against the tax break idea? I'm tempted to say it's a decent idea....Logistically it might not work, but as a concept -- What's wrong with giving tax breaks to companies that give convicts (the majority who have drug convictions) a chance to escape the criminal world? That's gotta be in the top 5 for worst symptoms of the Drug War. Too many black males in our inner-cities are not hireable because of past convictions and this in turn prevents them from any real shot at a future.

This, I don't like the sound of (and we have it in certain neighborhoods in Baltimore). It has failed to work wonders yet.

He promises to declare a "state of emergency" in high-crime neighborhoods and use "stop-and-frisk" tactics to crack down on guns.

Translation: Whatever few rights remained against unlawful search and seizures has now been thrown in the trash like a used condom. If cops want to stop you and search you because you look suspicious and are in a shitty neighborhood -- aka any young black male in the city -- then it's A OK to do so. I'm not sure where in the 4th Amendment that exception is specified, but I'm going back to double-check...

Full article here. Thanks to Sean Higgins for the link.

Around the Papers

Yikes. Detailing the economic impact of the impending writers strike. It's not pretty for LA County.

Looks like someone may be getting a kidney back. Here's hoping it works out for my favorite Socialist mayoral candidate.

Massive protest (or as the organizers were calling it, a "lie-in") fails to be massive. Organizers had planned to match the total number of murder victims (246ish) with live protesters lying down on the ground wearing "No More Murders." Unfortunately no one seemed to care and only about 175 total showed up, including not one elected official. Here are the organizers on the seeming irony of the situation. The Baltimore Sun:

"Apathy, alienation and cynicism have taken root in our community - But we believe that these weeds can be removed before they spread further," reads the Web site for Justice Maryland, the group that planned the event.

Asked whether yesterday's attendance shortfall was evidence of the very issue she was trying to combat, Kimberly Haven, executive director of Justice Maryland, said, "We don't know why people didn't come.

Ahhh. That's right, we just need to believe. Is it possible to believe that I could be even more cynical?...

Mobtown Beat

Fun with numbers:

As of Wednesday, Oct. 17, 241 people had been murdered in Baltimore City in 2007. On that same date in Washington, a city with just 50,000 fewer residents than Baltimore's 630,000, there had been nearly 100 fewer homicide victims to date. And New York , which has a population of more than 8 million, had just over 100 more murders than Baltimore on that date.

Put into perspective, 38 out of every 100,000 Baltimore City residents are murdered, based on this year's homicide numbers. In New York, just five out of every 100,000 residents is murdered. If New York had Baltimore's homicide rate, more than 3,100 people would be murdered there each year--yet the highest number of murders the city has seen in recent years is 2,262, in 1990. On the flip side, if Baltimore had New York's murder rate, the city would see just 29 murders per year. Instead, the lowest the murder toll has fallen in recent memory is 253, in 2002. That number will likely be passed for 2007 by the time Justice Maryland holds its Oct. 28 lie-in.

So the local NAACP branch, and other activist groups like Justice Maryland (sounds like they should all be wearing capes) are planning a lie-in on the War Memorial downtown as a way of...a way of...Well it has a purpose, I'm sure of it.

I poke fun, but of course I'm behind any actions that might get people to care about living in a war-zone. Even if it is stupid and ineffective. What really burns me is this:

Cheatham is critical of the work being done by the city and state government and the police to stem the violence. "I think the new commissioner definitely is concerned, but there's a major disconnect between the police department and the community," he says. "And some of that has to do with the people that they're hiring. They're hiring people that don't look like this community, they don't live in this community, and to a degree don't respect this community. How can they help people that they don't even respect?"

Both local and state governments, he says, have failed the city by failing to act on the crisis. "All of them run on an education platform, on a crime platform, and some of these folks have been in office 10, 15, 20 years," Cheatham says. "They have to accept some responsibility."

I can't really blame the police for not "respecting the community". Have you seen the community Doc? I can blame the War on Drugs, and piss-poor, one-party management for ruining this city and it's people, but at some point the people who call the neighborhoods their home have to stand-up and take a certain amount of responsibility for the conditions. I suppose if vigils accomplish this then great. But if the point of rallies and vigils is to get people to care --the people who are used to living in violence -- then I'm unsure how some signs and candles will accomplish anything. These things work where people care in the first place. It a way of organizing people who care. Not of getting someone who lives in the shit to see the number of murders written down on a sign and say "Oh shit, that's a lot of murders...I hadn't realized"

Oh, yeah Doc, we are aware of the fact that the same buffoons have been running this city for year after year after year. More like 90 than 10 or 15. That's what happens when you choose to deal with only one party. It boggles the mind.

Mobtown Beat here. Sun article on the event here.

P.S. Justice Maryland is on the right side of the drug policy debate, as well as other criminal justice issues. For that I give them credit.

News of the Day: Allowing Untrained Cops to Take Patient's Suspect's Blood Sample Could Lead to Infection

Nothing says a fun night out like getting stopped by a cop for suspected drunken driving and ending up with an infection in your arm. After he jabs you a couple times with a syringe.

Attorneys are putting new scrutiny on a practice that has become common among law enforcement in the West-- having officers, not medical personnel, draw blood with syringes in suspected drunken driving cases.

That comes after a man developed a persistent infection at the site of a blood draw administered by a Pima County sheriff's deputy. He has filed what is believed to be the first claim in Arizona against the practice, which could put local taxpayers on the hook for any damages.

Arizona law requires that drunken driving suspects submit to a test or lose their license for a year and it's the officer's choice, not the driver's, whether to use a breath or a blood test.

And the reason for this unsafe, and invasive policing tactic?

Law enforcement agencies say having officers do blood draws themselves is quicker and more convenient than going to a hospital and more accurate than a breath test.

Or, we could just start arresting anyone in a bar who has keys in their pockets. Quick, certainly more convenient, and the most effective way to make sure no one ever drives drunk again.

Via The Corner, full article here.

Head to Toe: No Longer an Option?

SFGate is reporting that due to lack of space, some 50-60 "criminals" in San Francisco's biggest jail have been forced to sleep on the floor. In fear of a lawsuit for trampling on basic rights, early releases have been scheduled for those convicted of petty crimes.

Sheriff Michael Hennessey said,

"If they keep bringing more people in for low-risk crimes, at some point I'm not even going to take them...And that point is coming up pretty darn soon."

But wait!...then the Sheriff said something very un-Sheriff-like:

"You can't continue to crack down on drugs, crack down on the homeless and make more typical drunk-driving and violent-offender arrests without having the jail space to put them in," Hennessey said. "And you can't keep hiring more cops - who if they're doing their jobs are going to make more arrests - without having the space."

What I am sensing here, Sheriff Hennessey --- and you can totally refute this --- is that you don't necessarily think all of these people who committed "petty crimes" should be in jail in the first place? Implying that, maybe, we should seek other ways to deal with "crime" so as not to make an Alcatraz out of an AA meeting?

Oh, and what is that? Mayor Gavin Newsom agrees with you?

"For his part, Mayor Gavin Newsom is "committed to pursuing a variety of options" to address the overcrowding, a spokesman said. Those include home detention monitoring and residential drug treatment."

Oh, hold the phone! I think my brow just furrowed and my bureaucracy bullshit meter just buzzed! I'll get back to TtP in ten years when this story develops!

Ron Paul

So I'm lazy. Comes as no surprise to the handful of readers that would like to see more than 3 new posts a day, but at least I'll admit that I'm lazy. I'm so lazy that I missed Ron Paul speaking on the Drug War, death penalty, and other criminal justice issues at the last GOP Candidate-less Forum. In Baltimore. Where I live. I think I may have had to actually try not to watch it. We are talking like a full week after the fact, and I'm just now catching the video. Luckily for the blogosphere we have guys who actually pound out posts that are full of information, facts and passion. And not horse on man passion. We have plenty of that here. Facts are harder to come by at TtP, but we do occasionaly make some shit up that sounds awfully convincing. Does that count?

We Need Code Pink at a City Council Meeting

Violence rages on throughout Baltimore, including police-involved shootings. 27 total this year to go along with the 215 murders up to this point. It's time someone said it, the War in Baltimore is a failure. Insurgents control whole neighborhoods, local authorities are hopeless to contain them.

A Baltimore police sergeant shot and wounded a man who authorities said pointed a gun at officers as he tried to run from them early this morning in Northwest Baltimore, according to a department spokeswoman.

[...]

It was the third police-involved shooting since Sunday. Today's incident pushed the total number of police-involved shootings this year to 27 -- nine fatal and 18 nonfatal. In all of last year, five people were fatally shot by officers and 10 people were wounded, according to police statistics.

Street violence has been on the rise this year, fueling a sharp rise in the city's homicide rate. So far this year, 215 people have been killed, compared with 191 victims for the same period last year.

Full article here.

War On Casual Sex In Minneapolis

Believe me, I tried hard not to blog about Sen. Craig. But Radley's post here is dead on.

No matter how unbecoming Craig's approach was, if trying to get laid is now a crime, I seriously need to rethink my game plan.

Also, if this is what the police do at Minneapolis airport, I'm robbing a gift shop next time I'm there. It must be comforting to real criminals to know that as long as you keep your feet still while on the crapper, you might just get away with whatever else you might be up to.

Late Afternoon Friday Links

Retrosexual? Or just homosexual?

Measuring 6 feet 3, with chiseled pecs and a bushy beard, George seemed like a model of manliness. Yet two years ago the 47-year-old Virginia businessman (who declined to give his full name to protect his privacy) decided he didn't look quite macho enough. So he went to see Dr. Jeffrey Epstein, a Miami hair-restoration surgeon, to have 3,000 hair follicles ripped from his scalp and transplanted into his face, chest and belly.

Amy Winehouse might have a drug and weight problem. In other shocking news; I like pot and I'm going to try and bone my female roommate tonight.

Depending on which count you go by, Baltimore has surpassed 200 murders for 2007. Baltimore Crime has 204 (although they note it is not definitive), Murder Ink has it at 198 (once you add the 2 murders since the 15th). Who knows what the Sun has it at; I couldn't find a count anywhere on their site.

Finally, a reminder for any TtPers in the Seattle area. Hempfest is this weekend. The Seattle PI has a glowing profile of Rick Steves, who is a outspoken critic of US drug policy, and is speaking at Hempfest. From the piece:

Off camera and off mike, so many people who interview Steves on radio and TV whisper "Right on!" to him but only a few celebrities and high-profilers risk saying it out loud. "We're embracing a lie in a country based on truth and freedom," Steves said. "And it hurts the credibility of parents and teachers and the police. If I were a kid, I wouldn't listen to any of them."

I Say Up the Ante, Go For 300,000 Arrests

One more hole in the zero tolerance policing approach, from the Examiner:

Zero-tolerance policing implemented under former Mayor Martin O’Malley has failed to slow the soaring homicide rate in Baltimore, internal police statistics indicate

[...]

And even after two straight years of more than 100,000 arrests, in 2002 and 2003, the number of homicides has not dropped to the 2001 low of 251, the stats show.

[...]

“I’m not surprised,” said former Police Commissioner Ed Norris, who presided over the most dramatic drop in homicides in the past decade, from 305 in 1999 to 261 in 2000. “I’ve never supported zero tolerance. We would make low-level arrests, but it was with a purpose. It was focused on an area that was having problems. We would have detectives on hand to debrief people to solve homicides.”

[...]

Since 1999, city police have arrested more than 700,000 people — a pace of 250 people day every day for eight years. Arrests peaked at 110,000 in 2003, when the number of homicides rose nearly 7 percent.

I tend to think that a zero tolerance approach, when executed forcefully, will reduce violent crimes. I tend to think this; but I certainly don't study the statistics enough to give an intelligent and informed opinion on the subject. Since the certificate on my wall that says "Trained Criminologist" is really a place mat from a Greek restaurant that I wrote -- in crayon -- "Trained Criminologist", I'll let the experts debate what lowers crime, and I'll stick to asking questions about the larger implications of living in a police state.

i.e., is it a good idea, even if violent crime significantly drops, to arrest citizens at a rate of 1 in 6? And remember, we are talking about arresting individuals for quality of life infractions, and not bringing charges against them. It's a significant infringement on your civil liberties to be held in jail for a day or more, and then not be charged with a crime. This is standard practice in an O'Malley style zero tolerance approach.

How much does crime need to drop to make serious civil liberty violations OK? Any? Is there a percentage where it becomes acceptable? Is there a long-term effect from criminalizing a large segment of the population? Mostly the members of what you could call the underclass. It certainly can't be positive for community police relationships...Full article here.

Updates!

The Guardian Angels announce they will open a chapter in New Haven, CT, and walk beats alongside the Edgewood Park Defense Patrol. How bad is your neighborhood when it's reminiscent of 1979 New York?

In related New Haven governmental apathy, a man struck and detained a robber with an ax handle, then called police. When an officer finally arrived, he arrested the man -- and very nearly arrested an off-duty detective who intervened on the man's behalf. Thank you, New Haven Police Department. Your lack of judgment and slow response times are a shining example to racist cops everywhere.

MeMe Roth received death threats after she criticized American Idol winner Jordin Sparks.

And finally: this is a week old, but law enforcement surrounding Ed Brown's Plainfield, NH home disbanded uneventfully, although they did seize his wife's dental practice and its alleged network of tunnels in nearby West Lebanon.

Brown, who asserts that the federal government has no jurisdiction in New Hampshire and no authority to charge him under a non-existent law, said the activity surrounding his properties in Plainfield and West Lebanon yesterday was a "Zionist, Illuminati, Free Mason movement."

And with that, any remaining sympathy I had for the man officially evaporated.

Good Advice

The Examiner:

Annapolis (Map, News) - Nearly five years after Straughan Lee Griffin’s carjacking death in Annapolis, law enforcers are divided over how to prevent the type of violent crime that killed him.

The prevailing philosophy for responding to carjackings and other armed robberies — complete submission — has changed, said Officer Hal Dalton, a spokesman for the Annapolis Police Department.

“Traditionally, police everywhere used to tell people not to resist robbers,” he said. “We’ve rethought that now. They have to make their own choice based on their own abilities.”

It would be fun to try and compile some extremely vague stats about the number of people killed because they were blindly following the traditional advice of law enforcement. Of course, if you think you had a chance to fight back during an attack, and you choose not to based solely on the advice of police who do not know you and often do quite a poor job themselves in preventing crime, then....maybe it didn't matter.

It just seems to me a bit odd that we have law enforcement officials instructing us to make our own best decisions in a life or death scenario, based upon the facts available to us. Shouldn't that be common sense? Full article here

Raiders of the Lost Park

Murdering time yesterday in New Haven allowed me to reacquaint myself with the city and how far it's come in the 12 years since I first moved there. Temple Street was barely recognizable to me. In 1995, the three blocks between Chapel and Route 34 were nothing but empty storefronts and hypodermic needles in the gutters. Yesterday it glittered with bars and restaurants. A cineplex has taken over the deserted meeting hall of the vaguely sinister White Eagle Club. And of course now there is also the Omni Hotel.

But appearances aside, New Haven is still the same city I knew and detested in the mid-90s, an urbanscape constructed on the borderland of perpetual civic breakdown:

People don’t feel safe in the daytime anymore, said East Rock alderman Roland Lemar, due to recent brazen crimes. Two people were mugged in broad daylight in mid-May, including one woman who was beaten up. There have also been nighttime muggings by gun-toting teens; a pair of Yale English grad students were held up at gunpoint on Edwards Street.

Source (second item).

Mrs. Kuhl lived on Edwards; I lived a few blocks away. East Rock is a nice, well-kempt residential area full of enormous Victorian and early 20th-century homes, many subdivided into apartments for the students. It's difficult to imagine it as a place of violent street crime, even though such things happened when we lived there too. I would blame DeStefano but he's only been in office 13 years. Don't rush the man!

Recently the police force numbered as many as 419, but they’re now down to the 370s, mostly due to retirements, explained Assistant Chief Herman Badger. They’d like to be up in the 450s, but the recruitment drives have had such a poor turnout that New Haven police won’t be able to fill enough positions to restore the ranks to 419. The current class of police recruits is only 29 strong—they’ll graduate in September.

All of this by way of explaining what's happening across town in Edgewood:

Members of a politically influential yeshiva led by Rabbi Daniel Greer -- who have spent more than a decade rebuilding their stretch of Edgewood -- have organized an armed citizens patrol.

This is already all over the MSM which, as usual, is light on background. The yeshiva is an island in a poor, predominantly black ghetto. While the rabbis and black leaders occasionally stage a photo op together and mumble something about brotherly love, really they just hate each other. The attack on Rabbi Dov Greer, which apparently precipitated the formation of the Edgewood Park Defense Patrol, was outrageous but probably not random.

The group takes its name from nearby Edgewood Park, a series of rolling, lightly wooded hills perfect for every variety of crime. Police don't patrol it because, like the rest of the citizenry, they're terrified of going inside. Yet now it seems that a bunch of whiskered Torah-readers have the cojones to do what New Haven's crookedest cannot. G-d bless 'em!

Curtis Sliwa is supposed to meet with the Patrol today. Yesterday, while waiting for my big break, I compared the Edgewood Patrol to the Guardian Angels and the teen behind me didn't know who or what I was talking about. Boy, did I feel my age.

UPDATE: Crime in New Haven IS down from the notorious heights of the early 90s. But to focus on homicides a moment, there were 24 murders in New Haven in 2006, comparable to those in the mid-90s (see these crime stats). If we assume a population of 124,512 (according to the 2003 estimate of the US Census) -- and if I've done my math right -- that puts the city's 2006 homicide rate at 19.275 per 100,000 people. According to the FBI, the national rate in 2005 was 5.6 per 100,000.

I'm Rooting for the Bloods

Time to partition Baltimore! Via Baltimore Crime:

BALTIMORE -- Officials at an inner city Baltimore prison have determined what caused a large prison yard brawl last week that injured 18 inmates.

According to sources at the Metropolitan Transition Center, Friday's fight stemmed from an argument between members of the Bloods gang and Sunni Muslim prisoners.

Am I crazy, or is it odd that their are Muslim gangs, in a Baltimore prison, that are broken into sects? Seems like a poor recruiting strategy -- I don't notice too many Muslims walking the streets of Baltimore...Full article here.

Another Death, and Another Death, and Another Death

It keeps getting worse: [emphasis mine]

Three men were killed in separate incidents last night and early this morning, pushing the pace of homicides in Baltimore to an average of one a day in May.

Law enforcement officials attribute at least part of the violence to drug turf battles and an increase in gang rivalries. In many cases, police and prosecutors complain that victims and witnesses are reluctant to cooperate with investigators, and instead settle scores outside of the city's criminal justice system.

Community leaders are reluctant at best to point the finger at the Drug War. Instead they talk about a culture of violence that has created young men and boys that solve every dispute or problem by picking up a gun and shooting the other person. I think they miss the point entirely. To begin with when you actually look at the murders, most are turf related or due retribution -- because of talking to the cops, or gang disputes. Either way, both are entirely caused from drugs. Think The Wire. It may be a television show, but it's awful scary how close to real world Baltimore it comes.

As for a culture of violence I don't dispute that fact. But where did this culture of violence come from? It has to be the Drug War. It's like plopping a bunch of hardened child soldiers from Africa into a civilized city and expecting them to act like responsible, non-violent members of society. Why would they? It's not a perfect analogy of course, but it's not far off. The sad thing is that this isn't some civil war ravaged, African nation. It's a mid-major city in the richest country in the world. These kids should have a chance and it's a shame for us to take that away all just because we want to stop people from getting high. Full article here.

Baltimore Beat

I was going to just comment on Leo's post, but then realized about three paragraphs deep that I can post at TtP, so why not do that?

First, I had seen Curran's idea this morning, but not the details. There has been a lot of talk about beefing up foot patrols in high-crime areas, because, surprise, it tends to lower crime when police patrol communities and engage with residents. More police tend to reduce crime in general; but the community interaction addresses the real problem in violent crime prevention in the city. The lack of reliable witnesses for violent crime. Not witnesses to the shootings or murders, plenty of people see these crimes, rather witnesses willing to come forward. A couple of reasons why that is the case.

1) No one is willing to trust the state's attorney to provide protection. It's inadequate and anyone who can read the paper or lives in the city knows that. You come forward, the criminals find you, and if you're lucky, shoot you. If you are not lucky they firebomb your house and kill your entire family in an inferno. Prove to city residents that you can protect witnesses then more will come forward.** 2) No one in this city trust the cops. White, black, poor, wealthy. No one trusts them. Why? A lot of obvious reasons that you could find in any city, i.e. police corruption (although I could make the argument that for a police force the size of the city's, corruption is abnormally high). But another factor is the lack of police patrols outside of patrol cars. We don't have regular foot beats (it's beginning to change and has shown to reduce crime) that help foster relationships between officers and communities. Increase the size of the force and require all cops to do a year or two of foot patrolling in their district and you will prevent murders. I do not doubt this.

Is the economic condition of the city as bad as Leo claims? I don't think so. The city still carries the moniker Crane City and has an increasingly vibrant downtown. To compare it Pittsburgh is comparing apples to oranges. Baltimore is still a city of neighborhoods that people actually live and work in. It has (I believe) the deepest cold water port on the east coast and it has done its part to stay competitive. It doesn't hurt that the city is located where it is, near the ever-growing federal bureaucracies and a favorable location for BRAC. I need Leo to quote more than one firm leaving the city before I will give in to her point.

**Another problem is the unwillingness of witnesses to take advantage of protection. Too often these are folks who have never left their neighborhood in Baltimore, let alone the state, and won't move to protected out-of-city residences when they are told to. Who knows how you convince these people to leave.