Baltimore and its future: crime and the attack on bicyclists

The future of Baltimore is in bicycling, and in walking.

Or it would be except for the horrific news of attacks on bicycle riders in Baltimore's northern neighborhoods, especially near where Stephen Pitcairn was stabbed to death in a heartbreaking robbery heard by his mother hundreds of miles away.

First there was Dan Rodricks' piece on an attack on a cyclist during the day near the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. A lot can be said about that story, not the least of which was the slow and uninspired police response, both on the 911 operator, the officer, and most importantly how the police force is structured to respond to crime from law abiding citizens. (Betcha, 23-1, if I said my armored car just got held up and I'm following it on Falls Road, the response might have been a little better). It's nice that the guy who got pelted with stones was able to use some moral suasion to pester the kids into shaking his hand (some of them, anyway). Buz isn't sure about that's staying power. They learn to "bank" people for fun and power in their neighborhood, but it's usually someone we never hear about. [By the way, I wonder what that police report looks like, when the officer eventually did find the victim--if any report was even written-heh, heh, since, actually, the kids committed an attempted armed robbery.]

Then we learn about folks being attacked as they ride their bikes through the "red zone" between North Avenue and lower Charles Village. Groups of guys knock riders off their bikes, and one of them grabs the bike from the fallen victim, and rides off. This has happened even during the evening commute hour.

Our city's future and livelihood as a livable urban space is dependent on young persons, young professionals, artists, hipsters, and even good ole bike riders like yours truly getting out of their cars and riding to work or school or just around town. Our future depends on bicycling.

Yep, riding bikes. Nobody seems to get this yet. And our city leaders are all wrapped up in patting themselves on the back for looking backward and sponsoring the past: the silly Grand Prix race in downtown Baltimore. (Nascar has been losing attendance at many venues.)

Wouldn't it have been wonderful instead, if our leaders looked to the future and took the coming end of fossil fuels, global warming and the oil spill in the Gulf seriously? Many well-educated young professionals get it: they choose local, organic, they recycle and they bicycle and walk.

Can you imagine the leadership shown if Baltimore dedicated itself to being truly bicycle and pedestrian friendly for that week, and making an effort to make cycling to and from work a priority all the time? Instead we pander to corporate interests, desperate to get any hunk of money from them, which will never cover the city's costs to put on the event. Desperate for few more bucks for the hotels and minimum wage jobs many offer. For a week. For a city with one of the highest asthma and allergy rates in the country, one of the highest air polluted cities in the country, and a downtown already choked with traffic on weekends when really nothing is going on, and which has one of the longest average commutes in the country. Noise, pollution, street closings for people trying to get to work for weeks in advance, and after, oh, and yeah, sure, eventually we'll go swimming in the harbor. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of police and fire overtime needed for the event, as well--in this fiscally broke city.

But the bike robberies might get a few arrests, then they'll be forgotten. The message the city is sending: who cares about bikes and safe walking and stuff: let's all go to cars and race: it's great. Um, yeah, it's about as exciting as watching paint dry--till there's these great crashes and explosions. So, like Preakness, the city evolves into being an entertainment place for a few days, with lots of partying, drinking, out-of-towners having "fun", etc. But the city's real problems basically get unaddressed, because they're too hard.

There's a lot of anger out there between the "haves" and "have-nots", and it often leads to violence. There's little or no manufacturing jobs out there, and a large chunk of the city is a no-go zone, where an internal civil war rages over the "game", and the anger pops loose--mostly on weekends. One judge told me a couple of years ago, regarding our broken criminal justice "system", "the criminals aren't afraid of us anymore". He was meaning us in general--the taxpayers.

So, despite what you may have thought about former Mayor Dixon, she did have a vision of clean and green for the city, and was an avid bicyclist herself. As John Lennon might have said, Imagine: closing downtown streets, not for a car race, but for bicycling and walking, in an effort to get folks moving, healthy, and combating obesity, and doing it often, and using it as a marketing and selling point in conjunction with the city's other strengths. An effort to bring the city to a more human scale, where we get to chat and wave at each other and therefore become safer. Instead, we get 200mph cars racing each other downtown, and the bike robberies and "bankings" continue.

Thoughts and observations about crime and security around Town

Some thoughts on the past year as a security consultant and observer of crime in the Baltimore area:

• Commissioner Bealefeld and his crew deserve a lot of credit on murders and other crimes in Baltimore this past year.
• When I was in the hot tub and my favorite gym ( and Michael Phelps's), a woman asked me: so, why is crime down this past year? My answer: I didn't know. (ha, that's an honest answer, isn't it?). But seriously, who knows? The crimes that have been reported, of course, are way down from previous years, especially murders. But why? Commish Bealefeld would say that it his strategy of "targeting bad guys with guns". Perhaps. And perhaps all these guys who used to have guns were doing other crimes too. But crime is down, generally, throughout most of the country. Is this a statistical artifact? Or is it really down, or is this just a lull in the reported numbers? Or is there an "issue in measurement?"
• The heavy snowfall helped a lot in keeping the numbers down the first couple of months of the year. And though the department says that "similar" weather in the 95-96 winter had almost double the number of homicides, no storms compared to what we've had in the last 3 weeks could be called similar. Normally we get 18.5 inches a season of snow. This season, so far, we've had 80 inches! And some of Baltimore's biggest snow storms have been in March.
• We're really glad to hear that the Police Commissioner is going to focus more attention on robberies. I've always thought that that is the crime that's the most important as a reflection of a city's safety. It usually occurs in public, is stranger-to-stranger, and places victims in immediate fear of serious injury or death.
• During '09 one had to wonder, though, if burglary wasn't decriminalized in the city. Several of the private schools were broken into during the winter and lots of electronic stuff was taken. To my knowledge, no arrests were made and nothing was recovered.
• One lawyer friend had his offices broken into, and the thuggies spent a lot of time there. They took the keys to a rental storage unit nearby where he had stuff. Fortunately, he discovered this and changed the codes. However, the security cameras captured the thieves (or their friends) as they were trying to get into the place using the wrong code at the barrier gate. They got the tag number of the car, a guy's face, and his tattoo on his arm. All this info was given to the city police: "we're too busy". They, the detectives, never followed up, no arrests were made, and no property was recovered.
• The Rodgers Forge neighborhood in Baltimore county was hit with a wave of burglaries in the latter part of 09 (thankfully, they seemed to have stopped for the time being). They even asked yours truly if he would come and speak to them about securing their homes better. And I did: my talk at Rodgers Forge Elementary School, with 25-30 residents, lasted about an hour and a half, including question and answer session. And I got one homeowner who asked for a modest security audit out of that.
• The weirdest thing: for more than a year I was on a yahoo listserve in a North Baltimore community reading their thoughts about crime and other suspicious things in the area near Belvedere Square. I asked to come onto the list serve, and the moderator allowed me to come on, apparently learning about my background. So, I "lurked" on the talk forum for more than a year. Neither she nor they ever asked for my thoughts about anything related to crime or any advice. I never posted. But once, on this blog, I posted something she said the police said (which sounded a bit ridiculous, but after all, she said the cops said it), and I attributed to the group without naming them directly. She kicked me off the forum for "violating the sacred confidentiality of the the yahoo talk forum"! Needless to say I was dumbfounded since I did not mention the name of the group, or anyone in it, nor did I identify even the user names they use. Nevertheless, she said I endangered the "crime-fighting effectiveness" of the group. Oh.
• But that wasn't good enough for this mean-spirited person. Apparently, she is on several listserves/talk forums. When she saw that Rodgers Forge had invited me to speak about burglary prevention, she sent a nasty unsolicited email basically saying that I could not be trusted! They had me speak anyway.
• The burglaries in Rodgers Forge seemed to have stopped for the time being. I've noticed a huge trend throughout the northern border of the city, along with greater Towson, Rodgers Forge, Cedarcroft, Parkville, etc. Buz wonders if burglary is now legalized.
• The cops and firefighters have decided to sue the city to demand their full pensions as promised to them---though the city says it can't afford it and doesn't have the money. Stand by for more budget-cutting all you friends of Foxtrot and the pretty horses.
• Note to College Park students: if, after a basketball game, you decide to go to Route 1 for some action, please go the other way when riot-equipped police are coming at you. If you get clobbered by an implement of some kind, it means you are too close to the "action". If you get arrested, no whining. You have been advised!

Hopkins Slasher, Kennedy Krieger hand and bag Shooting, Police crotch shooting: The Crisis of Crime in Baltimore

There have been a lot of disheartening stories about crime in Baltimore this year, but 3 are linked in Buz's iconoclastic mind: the shooting of 2 Kennedy Krieger Institute employees shot as they left work recently, not even victims or involved, but the errant shots of an angry, violent thuggy-wuggy dad who never grew up, and didn't believe in calling the cops (one of the gals was not actually shot as her handbag and contents deflected the round); the shooting by an off-duty officer of another thuggy-wuggy who, at gunpoint tried to force the officer to the floor in his own home (sources tell us that the bad guy was shot twice in his penis); and the killing of the career criminal burglar by the Hopkins undergrad this morning.

While the stats show that crime is "down" to many year lows, one has to wonder if the system of measurement is faulty. And though we are pleased that the commish and his team are doing a good job keeping murders down, along with nonfatal shootings, we have to wonder if police intervention in a private civil war is actually having the unexpected side effect of causing other criminals in other areas to be bold and not expect to get caught. And of course, with the economy still in shambles, things will probably get worse before they get better.

I wonder about the criminal justice system, not just the police, and how many, many repeat offenders are out there, who may have been stopped much earlier in their careers with proper interventions or prison.

Our police patrol force has been cut to the bone: each district has, at last check, been assigned 160 officers, for around the clock coverage--no matter how large the district or how bad its problems: the thinking is : the Violent Crimes Impact Division will take care of it. We hope

A cynic's review of recent crime news

Despite the huge drop in crime, we are experiencing, there seems to be an unending amount of crime news these days. The curmudgeon has some comments:

• The story about the police horses seems to have taken just about the entire hour of Peter Hermann's time on WYPR yesterday. Um, it didn't really seem a lot like journalism; more like an ode to the wonder of the pretty, beautiful horsies, brave officers on top of them and the wonder of it all. Only one caller had an objection, bravely averring that officers on horseback are too distant and formidable.
• Well, Buz wonders if the Mounted Unit is subjected to the same sorts of scrutiny which other units are at the now famous Compstat. I mean, it's only a handful of officers, a very small unit, but we just wonder: how many arrests have Mounted officers made in, say, the last year? Tickets? Any? Guns seized?
• OK: I know, they are a "different" kind of elite unit, sort of like the honor guard, but cost a lot more: food, housing, 24/7 attention, vets, and that's not even counting the special equipment for the riders, and the salary and benefits of the hostlers and riders.
• Of course, it's the commissioner's department. I would imagine that he has a great deal of discretion when it comes to budget cutting that's needed. So, perhaps if he really wants to keep the unit, he could by giving up something else. I'm not sure "they" out there somewhere could make him give up the unit, as long as he gave up the same amount of money. It's just that one has to be able to justify it under "public relations", or "crowd control capability" or something. But the idea of the public helping fund it is a nice try.
• I think horse units are nice, they're great if deployed in a coherent mission, but I don't see it here. Anti-drug? Crowd Control ? (at night, too?) Traffic? Anti-crime? Public Relations? Not clear. They are probably capable of any of those things, but have significant downsides: they are not an around the clock, all weather deployment; they have to be rested frequently, and fed; the officer cannot sit there and take your report; he/she will have some difficulty in detaining a suspect who doesn't want to be detained; the horse unit runs high risks operating after dark in heavy motor traffic areas (especially with irresponsible and drunken and texting drivers; the unit is not easily and cost-effectively deployed outside of the downtown riding area (figure about an hour to load and another hour to off-load cutting into your deployment time), et al, etc. In any event, there's only a handful left.
• The idea of having a nonprofit collect funds for the Mounted Unit is interesting and ironic. It cannot be a one-time thing, as any director of a nonprofit will tell you. If the development director of a nonprofit is unable to raise funds or get grants for ongoing operations, the nonprofit will cease to exist. Few donors want to contribute operating expenses. The irony here is that the former PAL program, when rolled out by Commissioner Frazier, was in fact a 501(c)3 full nonprofit. It was unable to raise enough money by fundraising or grants, and it essentially went out of business, even before it got euthanized this year--even though it initially had grant funding and several business supporters. But if you can't keep the money rolling, you're out of business. It has to be an ongoing thing.
• Saw the police surveillance video of the SWD shooting of little Raven. The film is so bad, one could argue either way: at times it looks like he's got a monitor on, and other times he doesn't. In any event, the camera is so poor that one cannot recognize the face of the shooter. And this whole business with Juvenile Services and their monitoring is nonsensical.
• Of course, from a security perspective, it just shows, once again, that cameras do not PREVENT crime in many cases: everyone knew there were cameras up there on that pole, but after a while, miscreants sorta know: they are not working, or monitored, or have such poor quality they won't show, or just aren't looking at me. And, once again, they are often of little value in CAPTURE, if the quality is so bad--unless they are actually being monitored, and have a force available to immediately respond. (like downtown, or institutions with a security force).
• Loved (?) not right word, but was fascinated by the story of the latest breakdown of police discipline wherein a police sergeant handcuffed a homicide detective during a "dispute". One wonders, with all these bad PR things happening to the city department, if maybe they all should be assigned to the Mounted unit or something. Seriously, what is wrong with these people? Apparently, they have been infected with Aggravated John Wayne Syndrome. This syndrome is giving real, dedicated, decent officers a bad name. Seriously, there's something wrong with this picture. I mean I know policing the city is tough, but............One thing the commissioner needs to do though (perhaps the FOP might agree, but probably not): when an officer is involved in a "strange incident", e.g. silly testimony, silly video watching, crazy accidents, handcuffing people (or each other), taking people for "rides" and dropping them off, visiting a project and getting shot "on your lunch break", being accused of rape, shooting at cars off duty, pointing guns at people off duty, the list goes on, the officer(s) involved need to be taken down to Mercy for a drug test. I know it sounds weird, but the fire department is much more rigorous about this stuff.
• On the sad death of a woman just driving down the street by the worthless, "erratic" clown fleeing the Regional Auto Theft Task Force: oops, he wasn't fleeing, he was driving because he got scared and saw police. There's almost certainly gonna be a lawsuit here; and if a supervisor ordered the chase to cease, as they say, and it continued (with ANY evidence to that), there's going to be heavy liability for the city or county or whoever.
• In all the hullabaloo over the umpteen people shot on Ashland, the two young man murdered the same night on Conkling street have received almost no notice--like it didn't even happen. Whassap with that?

Crime news is rampant !

Wow! There has been so much news about crime lately, the Buz cannot seem to keep up. Been away working hard consulting recently, so posting has been not recent.

I was however, intrigued about how the department former Internal Affairs attorney (not sure about her exact title), is threatening to pull away the curtain on the cesspool which is Internal Affairs, according to her attorney, the famous Warren Brown.

Some thoughts on this:

• When Buz first heard "cesspool", his silly mind actually thought that maybe Mr. Brown (a fine member of the bar, by the way), was referring to his own swimming pool in Ashburton, when a gentleman was shot in his car in the back of Mr. Brown's house. The injured driver accelerated, and the car smashed thru the wall into Warren's swimming pool. Now, that's a cesspool! {Buz respects Warren Brown, and was glad that nobody was injured in his family; I believe the victim died, though.}
• During her little news conference, she did not really cite any specifics except some generalities about her supervisor "tampering" with her cases. She did cite the strange case of the KKK websites, and the prosecution of Terry Love, and the alleged Southwestern District rape case--which have been widely written about in InvestigativeVoice.com.
• She mentions people who have had charges modified and plead guilty to lesser charges, etc. Buz wonders if she ever engaged in plea bargaining when she was a prosecutor for all those years.
• She also mentioned that the Commissioner did not follow trial board recommendations at times. Well, that's his prerogative as commissioner; he can't change the verdict, but he can do anything he wants with the punishment, as long as he justifies it.
• And yeah, there seems to be a lot of problems with discipline and disciplinary processes in the police department here (and probably elsewhere), but you know, you are not going to eliminate discretion completely: you can only structure it and make it be justified--which this department has tried to do. To believe and argue that all discipline should be somehow standardized strikes me as naive. A lot depends on the exact nature of the offense, the offender's record, and the degree of culpability and intent. There are few exact matches. Now, if you have mean and nasty and bad people, no discipline system will be fair. At least the commissioner is saying:ok, we're gonna settle these cases and move on.
• The real cesspool is what's inside the minds of most of Mr. Brown's clients. He makes his living defending people accused of murder and other heinous crimes in Baltimore.

On the shooting of the Western District officers yesterday: why was only one officer present on a domestic violence call? And when he called the suspect on the cellphone, why did he ask him to come back to meet him? To chat about it? To "get this all straightened out"? To arrest him? Now, clearly, the suspect thought that it was going to be the latter, probably because he'd been arrested in other domestic violence cases before. Perhaps the officer should have called for another unit to meet him, with the suspect on the way. Not criticizing, just would like to have some more details. In any event, two officers should have been dispatched on a domestic violence or disorderly call; it may not have made a difference, but it may have caused Mr. Tough Guy to not try to be so tough. Or was he really looking for suicide by police?

Sometimes, I think that the website Investigative Voice is determined to convince its readers that the Baltimore Police Department is an unusual hotbed of racism, sexism, KKK members, and what...............? We just don't think it's like that. Was the Baltimore Police Department a racist organization in the past? Absolutely. Are there racists still working there? Probably. Is it a place full of vicious racists? I don't think so. (in fact, the last stat I saw was that 44% of the officers are other than Caucasian). And we have had several black commissioners: Bishop Robinson, Tilghman, Eddie Woods, and other high-ranking command staff. Your consultant thinks that over time, the people actually working out on the street pretty much get along and work together, no matter who they are: and it's us against the criminals. The hard part is dealing with the petty internal politics and backbiting, and touting of your buddies, and sucking up, and badmouthing others who are not part of your clique.

Of course, like most citizens, we are distressed to see all the bad press the cops get for doing stupid stuff. And we wish they were more disciplined. But we also hope that when we read stories, that there is a measure of balance and judgment, and considering of sources, and context. The average officer out there, patrolling right now, deserves a fair shake and nothing less. Let's not make their job out there harder.

Thoughts and observations about crime and security around Town

Just a few thoughts related to recent meanderings around Baltimore and notions of crime, security, and safety:

• Buz likes to eat at the Subway sandwich shop on Falls Road, near 37th Street, sitting by one of the windows looking out onto the street in beautiful downtown Hampden, hon. And we saw Hampden's version of Citizens On Patrol. Only it was JOP: Junkies on Patrol! Up and down, back and forth; wandering aimlessly all day long, some of the gals looking longingly at guys in passing cars. 
• Before I went into the shop a guy stopped before entering, and went "putoooo", as he spit on the sidewalk in front of and before he went into a food store. Nice. But as I was sitting in there eating, watching the JOPs, a guy in a big pickup swung his head out his window, and went "plottch", as a big gob of spit went flying out into the street. Um, public health, anyone? As the swine flu starts to hit bigger, many people will whine and complain, but simple measures like not spitting on a public street will go a long way toward slowing the spread. Baltimore was once one of the hardest hit cities by the spread of tuberculosis, and outlawed spitting on the sidewalks with a city ordinance because of this. Needless to say, ignorance is bliss, and one can see a lot of spitting almost everywhere you look. Like, why? Kinda holding onto that tough guy image, I guess. And since a large number of folks in Bmore never finished high school, they didn't learn much about health and stuff like that.
• Your consultant ran into an officer who used to work for him in Northwest a few years back. He said that the Inner Harbor areas are, as John reported to us, staffed with lots of recent academy graduates, as well as cops detailed from the Tactical Section and other places. He and I also expressed amusement that the Pimlico race course in trying to market the infield as a "family event" this year. You gotta be kidding!
• At this writing, haven't heard much about the reported stabbing and kid/gang fights going on around the Inner Harbor over the weekend; it really hurts when the Sun has no staff working over the weekends because of Wall Street.
• Buz noticed that Pimlico's infield security staff last year didn't seem to really have control of some situations, and didn't really want to get into it with some of these muscular drunks out there fighting, "playing", wrestling, etc. He was told that they had gotten a black eye for some of the action nationally posted on YouTube. It's really hard to believe that Pimlico's insurance company didn't have something to do with the new rule: no outside liquor allowed to be brought in. And in a city with such huge substance abuse issues, it's hard to believe the amount of publicity given to guzzling booze, drunkenness, and general irresponsibility which goes on and has gone on for years in the Infield. At least the city police aren't providing hundreds of officers (some of whom get hurt) to enable this "party".
• We noticed that Holly G in Mount Washington had a security "riot screen" barrier in addition to wire mesh installed in one of their doors. Guess the window smashers were out that way too.
• Recently Grind-On Cafe had its window smashed and lost substantial stuff of value, also.

But, of course, since crime is "down", we don't have to worry about any of that.

Updated/More Ups and Downs of crime, policing, and security in Baltimore for 2008

Baltimore's crime/security situation in 2008 was filled with a lot of downs, bu only a couple of ups. In reflecting back on the year just passed, Buz has come up with some significant things of note, which I invite readers to agree or disagree with.

• The website spotcrime.com came into its own as a viable web alternative to the city's crime mapping site. Both have their limitations, because, for some reason, the gendarmes don't like to give out crime info. Some ideas on why can be found on an earlier blog posting.
• Though the city ended with a modest drop in murders, true a whole busload of less people killed, it is too early to tell if the drop is sustainable or means very much.  Baltimore still remains a very high crime city, and the stats other than murders and nonfatal shootings were pretty much similar to a year ago.
• Newcomers to Baltimore are getting much less likely to want to live in even the hip areas of the city as in past years. Many young professionals are not even considering the city, despite my best efforts. They would rather sit in their car in traffic, than have to deal with "street stuff".
• The Northeastern District of the city showed a huge increase in robberies, and for a time led the city in robbery. The shocking Ken Harris murder, it aftermath, and the long quest for suspects only epitomized the downturn for this area of the city.
• Pit bulls are now often seen as the "prestige" dog to have with thugs, wanna-be thugs, and plain ole young people. But it scared me though, when I was going to get something to eat walking down Harford Road, that an unleashed pit bull, accompanied by an ignorant teenager, was crossing my path, and kept turning around looking at me, as though we were something to eat. Um, leashes, please, folks.
• Speaking of leashes, your consultant rode his bike last summer to Robert E. Lee Park, and was shocked to find dozens and dozens of lawbreakers having taken over the park. Gang members? No, dog lovers, who were allowing their animals to run freely "as god intended,"  one said. Forget the leash laws! Who cares if the park had to be shut down for more than a year because the poop level in the grass was so high that the health department deemed it unsafe for kids to play in the grass! And the city spent thousand and thousand of dollar repairing the turf. No doggie bags were seen by your scared bike-rider. It's really interesting in actually seeing how some people want to pick and choose what laws they believe should be followed, and yet are critical of other kinds of people who violate different kinds of laws.
• The amount of prostitution is really very noticeable in several parts of the city, more so than it had been in the past, in your consultant's most humble opinion: though the Baltimore John Watch crew has claimed they're "winning" the battle against prostitution in Pigtown, we wonder. Perhaps it has just moved up to Wilkens Avenue, which is technically not in Pigtown. Buzz recently came home from a trip to Charlottesville using Route 1, and it took him 4 minutes to see his first prostitute after entering the city. Before turning north on Fulton to head home, he saw 3 more. And Harford Road in Hamilton/Parkville border areas is starting to see an uptick, particularly between Northern Parkway and the city line; but recently on a Saturday they were going at it in a car on a Non-profit's lot in Hamilton til interrupted. The guy even argued: why do i have  to leave? Go ahead, call the cops! And of course, Falls Road in Hampden always draws stares from the gals if you're a single guy driving down the street.
• Cell phones and other mobile devices have so proliferated that they have now, in Buz's humble opinion, come to rival drunken driving as a hazard on the road. When, in the past of my career's earliest days, I saw a person going very slowly or tailgating and then not, and weaving, i thought it was a drunk driver; but now (except for early morning drinking hours) it's just as likely to be a person yakking or yelling or dialling a cell phone. Betcha: 2-1, the gal who killed the Howard County officer who stepped out to wave her car down was looking at her phone or texting instead of driving. Hope her call was important.
• The biggest "UP" of the year was the drop in killings. At one point, during a community meeting in, I believe, October, the Northern district commander averred that the department may have less than 200 murders in 'o8. The end of homicide as we've known it! then came November:yuck. A wave of violence started  in November, continued into December, and now in January of the new year, we've had just about one or so a day, though commish & co. are hoping it's just a "spike". Who knows!?
• Baltimore crime blog has gotten its millionth look; it is the best source of a quick summary of crime news from a variety o;f sources, for those of us in the field who wish to keep up on such things--with a few snarky comments thrown in their from time to time by the author and the readers. Keep up the good work, MJB!
• Citizens in the Old Homeland and Bellona Avenue areas have started a yahoo news group so that they can communicate with each other about crime. One of the leaders was a lady who organized a meeting at the Govans library after Homeland refused crime stats to some non-members. Buz is interested in watching this group and its comments, and truly believes that doing something/anything is better than nothing. It is a small, very, very neighborly, neighborhood group. Most citizens-on-patrol groups like this tend to be very hard to start up and extremely hard to  keep going. Best of luck. They call their group: Citizens Teaming Against Crime.
• One of the main watershed events in crime of the year was the death of Zach Sower and efforts of his widow, Anna, to bring attention and focus to this issue of violent crime in the city, as well as her evolution from being a victim to, sadly, somehow, as City Paper puts it, the Antihero. I believe that this robbery, beating, and death struck a huge blow to the city's revitalization efforts among the young professionals who have tried to make their homes here, particularly in the Canton/Patterson Park areas. And the folks who work at Hopkins. You know, we begin to realize more and more, if Hopkins suddenly vanished, the city would virtually collapse. Your consultant, who also assist with relocation to Baltimore as one of his gigs, has seen a tremendous drop-off of young professionals who know longer want the word urban associated with that title. They'll prefer to look in Anne Arundel, Columbia, or north of the City, whereas in the past they only wanted to look for rentals in Baltimore's Fells Point, Canton, and Federal Hill.
• Anna's quest to strike at criminality ran into a certain, I dunno, ambivalence, policy all over the place, mistrust, and misplaced agendas. To the point that she has given up. Criminal activity north and east of Patterson Park has moved south, and the areas south of Baltimore Street have become less desirable. 
• The State's Attorney's spokeswoman "Misquoting" to a reporter were a watershed of insensitivity and in-your-face we don't care attitude perceived by many crime victims. We know the prosecutors are not like that; perhaps Ms. Burns could have a story: the Anti-Spokesperson. But, you know, Buz has believed, for a long time, that a community gets the kind of law and order (I wish I could think of a better different term) it believes and and wants.
• Baltimore john watch blog was interesting at times, if not somewhat repetitive and dispiriting. It is good that somebody is doing something to hold the "sketchy" parts of the city together--at some risks to themselves. So, here's hats off to Sebastian and others like him in the city, who are trying to stem the tide of crime, disorder, and lawlessness, and to keep our city holding on. Like most crime, street walking ladies are both a symptom and a cause of community breakdown.
• Peter Hermann, of the Baltimore Sun, became an informative paid blogger/reporter, who has given us a lot of insight into various aspects of crime in Baltimore. Welcome back, Peter. (Peter can't be too terribly snarky in his comments, because he still has to operate under the umbrella of the Sun and its standards.)
• Exhibit A came and went as a tabloid edition of the Daily Record legal newspaper. I say "went", but it's still out here on the web, just not in print anymore.
• Some parts of Baltimore County are now worse than parts of Baltimore City. In a couple of eastern Baltimore County communities, things are so bad that the pizza joints won't deliver to that complex.
• The dump-out-of-the-car homicide victims in Federal Hill have not had their cases cleared by Baltimore's famed Homicide unit. And we don't believe the one in Canton recently has been "put down", either. (The first two sound like "business"; the gal in Canton sounds domestic).
• The bunch of rapes in Mount Vernon have not been solved either. It is certainly a victory for perception of Balitmore that many, many young people enjoy living downtown, and in the Mt. Vernon area. However, young people often fail to look at the safety of their rental area in general, and their apartment in particular. Risk from crime needs to be considered along with location, cost, and quality of housing.
• Fred Bealefeld has really come to the top of his game as Police Commissioner. I was really impressed when he said he wanted his staff (Team Bealefeld) to proceed in a "thoughtful" manner when investigating the murder of ex-City Councilman Ken Harris. At one community meeting about that, he was even willing to assert that somebody's not during their job, when he said he saw no police after sitting in Northwood for an hour and a half. (However, police everywhere are scarce, because patrol is very short in large, busy districts: if Northwood's officer was on a call, and nobody there called, you probably aren't gonna get many police come by).
• And the saddest of them all: an elderly woman living alone in Remington (real estate agents probably call her block "Wyman Park) was killed when her home alarm sounded in the early morning hours. And neighbors heard her scream. And everybody cowered in their homes and called 911. And she screamed, and nobody came,  and she screamed, the alarm going off. No cops. No neighbors. NO help. Everybody scared. And nobody saw nothing. Cops finally arrived. She's dead. As of the end of 2008, nobody arrested. Right across the street, practically, from the old Public Health Wyman building where Hopkins has offices for the Institute of Policy Studies. Many calls came into the city's 911 call center, but people were asleep at the switch (maybe literally), one Police Communications Assistant disciplined. And the neighbors called the police over and over. Betcha (23-1), in my neighborhood, my neighbors would come running with baseball bats, and if he got away, they would at least have seen him. One time some kids, for "fun"jumped out of a car and loudly banged on my door, and quickly drove away. Two neighborhood women, with kids in tow, and cellphones at the ready, came running up to our house to make sure your consultant was ok. We were, and we thanked them for their bold response.
• Finally, for this posting, the guy that lives in the 3800 Block of Hickory Avenue apparently is not for "change". Since the election he's been flying the Confederate battle flag from his porch. I guess he's not going to the inauguration (we hope not, anyway). But apparently, he's got some unresolved issues.

Let's hope there's a more secure 2009 in Bmore.