The perils of a small business in Baltimore

Buz has learned through experience that most small businesses in Baltimore (and probably in most big cities) will eventually be victimized by crime, particularly robbed physically using force or threat of force, or broken into--burglarized.

Recently spoke to an attorney who told me that his office was in a "zero" crime happening very quiet and peaceful area of North Baltimore. In June his office was broken into overnight, the perpetrators wearing gloves. They took several desktop computers and several laptop computers, and various other electronics and various other valuable property. It was not just the theft of the machines which were a modest financial hit, but like many small business owners, sensitive personal information for his clients/customers were on the machines. He also learned that the keys to a storage locker nearby were taken, along with the pass code.

He called the storage place, and had the pass code to get into the yard and building changed. But, lo and behold, here they come up to the gate on camera and pushed and entered and fooled around with the key pad trying to get into the storage unit yard. Were these guys bold or what?

Now, the camera at the storage place got a pretty good picture of the driver's face, his tattoo, and best of all the tag number of the car. Sounds like enough for a search warrant to me. And, the storage firm had an auction that day of stuff from units that had not paid rent. These auctions allow anyone to come into the yard to look at the stuff for sale. These guys were on camera coming back, wandering around, but couldn't get into the building (the padlock on the storage unit had been changed, but......)

Despite the film being held for them, the city burglary unit detectives still (burglary happened in June) have not gotten around to following up. Now, we know their job is mostly pushing paper and "clearing" cases on paper, but here's one which not only might be solved, but these guys, if arrested, might lead to solving other cases in North Baltimore--big commercial burglaries. Wonder what's up? And why no movement here. Lawyer friend is very frustrated.

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.

Buz gets jury duty

Well, Buz, like all good citizens in Baltimore got his jury duty summons a while back, and kinda felt relieved: his number was 900. Wow! I thought: very unlikely to be called, since it used to be that if your number was higher than 600, you were saved by the night-before phone call which told you not to come.

Well, were we wrong! Saw a judge at the gym over the weekend, and he said that they often go well into the 900s, but he thought that many judges were not around in this Baltimore July. (Of course, he didn't bother to add that not many jurors were likely to be around in this Baltimore July.)

Alas, our luck ran out. The recording said that jurors with the numbers up to and including 900 must report. Dang! (Why do we all hate jury duty?) But like a good soldier, Buz had made up his mind to go ahead and make the best of it. So, he took some real paper newspapers, the book about the Columbine massacre, and an Alan Furst novel (if you haven't read Alan Furst, you're missing great reading).

So, the next thing to do was to figure out how to best get there. And guess what: the MTA Maryland has a great web site, where you can plug in your starting location, ending location, time you want to arrive, and it uses all-powerful google to tell you what bus, where and when.

So, I plugged in 4300 Roland Avenue, near the water tower, and 100 St. Paul Street; it told me the bus would be at University and Somerset at 737am, arriving across from the courthouse at 8am or so. The bus arrived at 7:38 am. Is this a great transit system, or what!

My adventure:

• The bus ride was a piece of cake (of course, it was the #61, coming down Roland Avenue from Lake). I didn't have the hassle of driving and looking for a place to park, or walking from the parking place to the courthouse (and paying for the parking,either).
• It was a new bus and had like 7 or 8 security cameras in the ceiling. No rioting kids, no problem, but the bus got very crowded as it wound its way down St. Paul to the downtown area. $3.50 got me an all day pass, and I got off right across the street from the Clarence Mitchell courthouse. Did not wear my tie this time: too hot, and I got selected for a civil case despite it. (No criminal cases for Buz).
• Very long line of jurors waiting to get thru security; it looked as though all 900 decided to show up to see the movie. So we went across from the courthuse to a little snack shop to get some unhealthy snacks (and brew!) to hold us over as we waited in the line. Saw a high-ranking sheriff in there that I knew from back in the day in the pd. Asked him how it was going, and was he keeping up on all the discipline problems in BPD. He said, interestingly, it's the same in his organization: guys going around doing stupid stuff, getting into trouble. He also said a lot of sheriff deputies left for greener pastures, found out they're not greener, want to come back, but couldn't because of the hiring freeze.
• As we were waiting to go thru the scanner into the courthouse, a huge deputy said: "Ladies and Gentlemen: be mindful of what's in your pockets! Be mindful of what's in your pockets!" Huh? Wha...? Is he into some kind of yoga meditation or something? A new kind of court & pocket mindfulness? I know being mindful and in the present moment is healthy, but in my pocket? Does he think I might have a gun or knife in my pocket? The lady behind me said it: somebody emptied their pocket, and there was weed. Buz didn't notice that, but wondered: what do they do if someone has weed? : lock him/her up (do they credit them with jury duty?); confiscate the weed, continue on for your jury duty (we'll give it back to you when you're done--then lock you up); keep the weed, and pretend it didn't happen; throw it down the court house toilet, or what? Just wonderin'.
• Buz was impressed by the cross section of Baltimoreans who came to jury duty: these are the taxpaying (for the most part), law abiding (for the most part), good citizens here to do their civic duty. It's actually, in its own way, impressive to watch. I know, I know: the OJ case and all. But I subscribe to what the attorney Bob Verderaime told me long ago: most jurors try to do the right thing most of the time.
• The quiet room was very quiet; it was amazing how the people there actually abide by the rules and don't talk much, and whisper when they do. The main sound heard all day was the "bing" when emails came into people's laptops.
• Buz was coming back from the water cooler when he noticed Baltimore Brew on this woman's laptop, on which she had been furiously typing all morning. www.baltimorebrew.com is her website, and she is Fern Shen, a former Evening Sun and Washington Post reporter who writes in a positive vein about Baltimore stuff. (I guess my reader who things the city should be burned to the ground won't like that site.) So, we whispered a bit, and I introduced myself; she had read my humble blog from time to time, and it's always good to put a face to the writing.
• Anyway, groups were called, went, came back, and I learned a big murder trial was going to start somewhere in the building; that's why they summoned so many. Since I was 900, i didn't even go to a court room by lunch time.
• For lunch, I went to Au Bon Pain in the old Alex Brown building, er, old Deutsche Bank building, and now it's named something else. But they still had all the traders coming down from upstairs, to get sustenance while they were hard at work practicing banker gangsterism, ruining the economy, and trading worthless pieces of paper with each other. Oh, and making a lot of money, too. However, all the traders were nice and well-dressed, and it's a nice place to eat.
• Back to court and called for a case. A civil case: two white guys, maybe around 60, in suits, get into a road rage fight in Cockeysville(?), and one severely injures the other. HUH? Cockeysville?! Your consultant couldn't help but wonder why the case was moved to Baltimore City: certainly not to get a jury of their peers. Perhaps they knew all the judges in the county, know what I'm sayin? Perhaps one of them felt he couldn't get a fair trial because he was a well-known big-shot. Who knows!?
• Of course, Buz did not get selected for this jury. He had been in a couple civil cases in the line of duty as a police officer. No lawyer is gonna take the risk of having him on the jury. However, Fern did get selected! We're hoping to hear a full report of the vicious beating one of these county residents sustained, and the jury's verdict.
• Upon rejection, back to the quiet room for a little quiet. We were dismissed at 4; it was over for another year.
• Buz made his way up to Charles Street to wait for the northbound #61 to take him back to the water tower on Roland. What an interesting, fascinating vibrant thing it was to sit in the shade and watch the city evening rush hour evolve. Even saw a woman bicyclist in heels with helmet and dress riding up Charles; nobody was getting banked (except down at the old Alex Brown building). And it was really interesting taking the bus, and being able to look out the window, noticing things one rarely did when one has to watch the traffic and lights and other cars. This bus was an older clunker and every bump banged and clanged; only 4 security cameras in the ceiling, none in the way back where all the good guys hang out. Was glad the woman who was talking out loud to herself and everybody else got off. Was glad that the people who were boorishly talking on their cellphones got off eventually.
• Noticed a lot of security in this late afternoon around the JHU Homewood campus, guards on bikes posted up and a HopCop or two in their Honda CRVs.
• Up to Somerset and University, exited the rear door as directed by the lovely computer voice, one of my neighbors holding the door for me. And on to the Wine Underground to get a cool, refreshing beverage in order to recover from this onerous task.

Weekend incident in Hampden, little reporting, and a negative to our democracy

Buz was struck how the recent incident in Hampden received next to no news scrutiny. Last Sunday night: several dozen police, many streets blocked off, not only to cars, but also to pedestrians, hundreds of residents watching, bunches of them "trapped" in their houses, armed dangerous man in his house with or without hostages, tear gas, police shooting the street lights out, helicopter circling overhead---all for hours.

And nary a peep in the Sun, except a 13-second blurb from its media "partner" WJZ. Oh, and a small piece in the Messenger by Adam Bednar.

Why? Not because people weren't interested: Buz's little blog posting about the incident got more comments than he has ever had before. And it drew a wide range of comments about the incident. I suppose this is the advantage of "web 2.0", but we'd really like to hear more details about the incident: the basics of what really happened, unearthed by a professional reporter, an official statement from the police, what happened during the standoff, what were the charges against what suspect, etc., etc., etc.: did he make bail, what is the bail, what is the trial date,and so forth.

But, nada: all the reporters were off, because the Sun doesn't have enough money to pay them to work on Saturdays, Sunday, holidays, etc. So, just using this as an example, whatever happens on weekends, stays on weekends, just between the police and the thugs and what little the neighbors learn among each other and the few neighborhood bloggers out there.

It's the coming wave. Wal-Mart first featured the race to the bottom, now we're feeling the results of Wall Street's race to the bottom; the democracy suffers from lack of information for its citizens to know about what's going on, and perhaps maybe we would've got a Tweet if we were on Twitter..............but only if the police felt we should. (The Sun had always been a profitable paper, but Craigslist and Wall Street combined to make that not matter). So, of course, we don't need the Sun: we can find out all we need to know on line. Maybe.

Barricade Situation in Hampden!

Buz has just returned from visiting an ongoing barricade situation in the 3600 blk. of Paine Street in Hampden. Details are sketchy, but police have all of 36th Street closed from Chestnut Avenue to Roland Avenue--almost all of that closed to pedestrians, as well as cars. Elm Avenue and 36th Street has been established as the command post. Several command vehicles are there, plus 2 emergency services trucks, and a big black van serving as the headquarters of the negotiators. EMS personnel and a fire truck from the Hampden station were standing by just in case.

Major Ross Buzzoro, the district commander was there in his civvies (he gets no extra money for coming in on Sunday night to oversee the festivities).

It appears that one old Hampden man, who has an affection for cool, refreshing beverages, and in his spare time maintains Redman's Hall on Hickory, was being picked on by some neighborhood punks. He skirmished with several of them. We heard several people say that the kids in the area are nasty and out of control. Anyway, one of the fathers of the punks apparently intervened ready to beat the old man up. The old guy supposedly went into the house, got a gun and a machete to even things up a bit.

Depending on who you spoke to, the inebriated gent waved the gun around and barricaded himself in the house, or grabbed one of the kids and made him come into the house with him--creating a hostage situation. I was unable to determine which it was, but police were in no hurry to force the issue, apparently.

A full squad of SWAT/QRT members was present and were surrounding the house. As three new SWAT officers arrived in an unmarked car and suited up in full regalia and went toward the scene, a few loud pops were heard! Shots? Tear gas? Nope. At an inopportune moment, some dumb-dumb not too far away, in an area filled with cops and tension decided to shoot off his illegal fireworks. {I say his, because the overwhelming majority of women are too smart to do this kind of stupid stuff.}

The event provoked a kind of Hampden street scene, with The Avenue closed to traffic. People were sitting on the middle of the street, walking dogs and kids, talking and gawking. Frazier's on the Avenue had a band, and though they were inside and the doors were closed, they were so loud it created a strange atmosphere out on the street. Buz couldn't help but notice, though how some of the "original" Hampden young adults/teenagers could barely talk intelligible English, as they talked to each other or on their cell phones. It was sort of a guttural street mumbling, more of a series of animated grunts, with "yeah", and "you know" sprinkled heavily. Buz thought he heard one ordering some drugs on the phone, and another smoking a joint. Oh, well, I guess they're not really worried about their SAT scores anyway. It's the street that's where it's at, you know? Jobs? Whassat? We can always go work in a warehouse somewhere, ya' know? But, Baltimore is a great city, with lots of different people, and Buz hopes the situation is resolved peacefully with the old guy getting a month's vacation on Fallsway.

Maurading, Disorderly Crowds and the Disconnect with Compstat

Buz watched and read with interest how the many reports of ordinary common folks getting smacked upside the head seemed to conflict with the stats showing crime in the city is down dramatically (except murders and larcenies, the latter up a lot).

Trouble is, the commissioner talked about the drop in crime and got pre-emptily defensive, apparently because he had previously heard criticism of "fuzzy math". And, in fact, he and the stats are widely disbelieved by many people in the city who don't feel safe.

There are lots of reasons for this, not to mention the fact that the Baltimore Police have a real PR problem, which Mr. Guglielmi cannot solve. Police are seen by many citizens as aggressive (unnecessarily), profane, arbitrary, and insensitive, not to mention bureaucratic. Also, Buz has heard from many citizens the downside of the Compstat process: police don't wanna take the report, and citizens don't bother reporting.

But the overriding factor I think, is this: there are two things that police do (sometimes forgotten by the police Compstat hysteria and the mania for numbers, by the press, often by th citizens themselves): they fight crime, and they maintain order. Crime fighting is measured by the reported crimes sent to the FBI under Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines, specifically so-called "Part I" crimes of murder, rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, arson, and larceny. They represent a measurable crime rate, and are most discussed at Compstat. [Apparently, our top leaders are also entranced with drug calls, deploying officers where the most 911 calls for druggies-in-progress come in.]

However, order maintenance is not able to be clearly measured. Disorderly gangs of kids going around banking people for fun are hardly measured at all, in fact, are probably not even really reported unless someone is seriously injured. These incidents are probably rarely even worthy of police attention, and even if an arrest is made, it is for disorderly conduct or common assault, worthy of only disdain by the command staff, not a mention at Compstat, I'll betcha (23-1). Uniformed officers were once the backbone of the department, and many saw their jobs as nipping this kind of stuff in the bud. Baltimore once prided itself with a significant, compared to other cities, police presence on the street, and a quick and significant response to calls for service regarding maintaining order. But the uniformed patrol force (except in the last couple of weeks) has been regarded over the last few years, as Sam Zell might have put it, mere "overhead". Something you gotta do for appearances, you know: the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment "proved" patrol is "worthless". So, over the years, Baltimore consistently reduced its patrol posts, first on midnight shift, then on all shifts, because, well they were considered, um, BS. The real work was done by drug cops, ripping and running, taking down street dealers, and building cases against big offenders with guns and stuff. Calls for service in most districts were back up at the start of the shift, and nobody cared. The cops were burned out, late, and preferred not to write reports (boring stuff), when they could roll to the next gun call. Everyone was the enemy, if they got in the way of the stat. If you got enough stats, as a young "go-getter", you could get to go to the Violent Crime Impact Division and not have to wear that silly uniform again for a while, but you'd go to court when you could, and if lucky, you might get on a federal task force, and get a take-home car.

The citizens know some of this: when they call the police to report a crime, sometimes there is no followup, calls for service take forever, and there does not seem to be a significant police presence. Sometimes the police are borderline rude, and try to talk you out of making a report. Everyone you know has been victimized, and now people are worried about getting "jumped" in certain areas they thought were ok.

So, crime is down, but disorder is up and Compstat is askew with the public perception. Quality policing is not measured by Management by Objectives criteria. So, I feel for the commish: he's doing a good job in many ways, especially in keeping some crimes down or steady, but nobody seems to believe him.