Burglars ripping and running

It's come to my attention, that, apparently, a lot ob burglars simply take the siren of your residential alarm and rip it off the wall--to shut the darn thing up. A resident of Mt. Washington just told Buz about this happening during a burglary at his home a while back.  Apparently, this was done recently at several burglaries during the recent wave of B&E's in Pigtown. The consultant recommends that prevention against burglaries be a defense in depth. Alarms have to be supplemented with good doors, windows, locks, and lighting systems. One will not be able to deny them entrance completely and indefinitely, but the object is to deter, delay, and detect their intrusion.

Many burglars, research has shown, shy away from houses which have alarms, but, of course, it is unknown how high this percentage is. But most hard-core burglars will know that they have a window of 5 to perhaps 15 minutes before arrival of police. The siren is only useful at times. So, it's important that alarms be such that the intrusion is detected pretty early, and your locks or grates keep the perpetrators out so long that they don't want to risk apprehension or simply give up and go somewhere else.

New Developments in Security around the Baltimore area

1. Apparently, the burglaries at Bryn Mawr and Boys' Latin earlier in the year have evolved into becoming "whodunits": it now appears that unless the stolen property suddenly appears somewhere, this case will never be solved. I wonder about what, if anything, the two schools are doing with their contract security service-Abacus.
2. Buz suggested that the rear door of Alonso's needed additional securing after a server was robbed on a smoke break a couple of weeks ago. Eddie installed several powerful lights and video cameras in the immediate area.
3. The rape of the Roland Park woman  last summer has apparently become a "whodunit" along with that of the GEDCO employee, and now the city school student who was reportedly waiting for a bus at 33rd and Greenmount.
4. Article in the Sun reports that landlords have a website they can go to to find out about bad tenants. Consultant feels that if proper tenant checking is done, one will not have to  use such a website--usually. The first step is getting good ID and security deposit from the tenant, as well as a check of employment and past references. Try not to rely on phone numbers the prospective gives you for employers.
5. Did you know that landlords are the most-sued of all businesses?
6. The Reader's Digest just did a survey of college security situations and our Johns Hopkins Homewood came out #1 in the country. Loyola was #14. Kudos to former Secret Service honcho Ed Skrodzki at Hopkins and "Colonel" Tim Fox at Loyola.
7. MICA is looking for a new Director of Campus Safety. Applications close this week.
8. The Sun had a chilling article that the murder of Correctional Officer David McGuinn may have been ordered by corrupt guards--his colleagues. Buz wondered why no one could explain, right after his murder, why or who ordered his return to the tier after threats were made against him. And everything about that was all hush-hush. What's up with all that. Now the AG's office doesn't want anything released to the killer's defense attorneys about the alleged CO's personnel records. Well, forget that..........what about the killer's allegations. Of course, all those cell phones the gangsters in jail buy, and have, and use have to somehow get into and be used in the institutions somehow. Hmmmm.
9. Poor new fire chief Clack is coming to Bmore, and making the same mistake former Commissioner Frazier did. He's not bringing in several new command staff members to watch his back. I wish him well, but the signs area not hopeful, especially since they don't believe in para-military style discipline in Minneapolis (though it has failed us several times in Baltimore recently.)
10. Dan Rodricks has another article over the weekend about prisoners wanting help to get jobs, etc. when they get out. Buz suggests one solid thing which might help: DOC should ensure that each inmate, before they get out, has a Maryland State ID, and a Social Security card. I see lots of ex-offenders who don't have either or neither. Also, the first week they are incarcerated is the time to start working with them to get ready to get released, not their last few weeks: I'm talking GED, drug treatment, and life skills. I've learned that the vast majority are not interested til they start thinking near the ends of their sentences. Well, people make decisions!

Thoughts on the double murder near MICA

Buz has some strange eclectic thoughts about the shooting on Mt. Royal Avenue the other night in which two people were killed:

• Buz knows you're not supposed to blame the victim, but if an arrest is ever made in this case, experience shows that those charged will be very similar in many respects to the driver-victim: male, criminal record (long), a ne'er do well, unemployed, and just wandering around the city getting in trouble. Oh, sorry, he was just looking to turn his life around.
• Ok, so the argument with the guys in the green Jetta started around North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue. HMMMMMM. Everybody knows that they're selling real hot and heavy around there: coke and weed and sex all up and down the Avenue. One of Buz's recent clients told him that she doesn't want to go the library at North and Pennsy because she's trying to stay clean and there's too many people dealing around there.
• So, the consultant will venture a guess that they were driving around looking to cop, when they got into a beef near North & Pennsy with the Jetta-boys.
• By the way, what's a grown man "from Harford County" doing drifting around in the city with a 16-year old girl from Dundalk and two male teenagers in the back seat. Paper says they were friends. Huh? Ok, I know, he was running an after-school program, and they were all looking for jobs.
• I wonder, since he appeared to be unemployed, and had an address in Harford County, who was paying for his car, insurance, gas, and other living expenses.
• Buz sees that he had a lengthy criminal record, including domestic violence. He has dealt with a few domestic violence offenders and while most are ok, a large minority are very pushy, bossy, and hard-headed (sorta like Buz!--once in a while). Buz couldn't but wonder if he encountered a couple of guys who not did like to feel they were being disrespected and "punked out". 
• That service drive off of Mt. Royal is very dark in that block; it's not terribly surprising the thugs in the Jetta decided to make their move there. (Most of the side streets near MICA are dark).
• The Sun said that the incident happened two blocks from MICA. Well, yes, if you go by MICA's mailing address; but the college owns houses in that block in which students and some faculty reside; and it is only a half-block or so to one of MICA's dorms.
• Cops are keeping tight lips on this case--not saying if the Jetta, found in Northwest, was reported stolen or not or whether they have any prints or other evidence in it. I saw from TV that two of our best homicide detectives were on the scene: the black guy, whose name escapes me who was the hero when the woman in Roland Park got abducted and thrown in her car's trunk, and Dennis Raftery who is a good cop and used to work for me in Northwest. (He's from New York, like Ed Norris).
• The consultant notes that, a far as he knows, the other two recent fatal "road rage" incidents have not resulted in arrests: the shooting of the Pakistani cab driver in Charles Village, nor the Christmas shooting of the woman on Orleans Street near Hopkins hospital.

Guns on Campus

Some higher education campuses are moving toward an armed security force, at least partly as a result of the Virginia Tech shootings. Nice solution to the problem, but it did not help at Virginia Tech which had a sworn and armed campus police force. As in most of these campus shooting rampages, the suspect took his own life before police arrived on the scene.

Buz thinks most schools would be better off, and save a lot of money, if they did not introduce firearms to their security force. The cost and the risks are enormous--unless you are in a high crime area, and have a fairly large number of officers working as backup.

On the other hand, there are schools which should have armed police officers and don't. They don't because of philosphical objections or want to play the game of using off-duty police officers--so any liability gets thrown on the local jurisdiction where the officer is employed.