Tag: Maryland

More of This

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Baltimore City is send a city charter change to voters for prohibit privatizing its water and sewer:

Baltimore City Council members concerned about lobbying efforts to privatize the city’s water supply unanimously approved legislation Monday that, if approved by voters, would make Baltimore the first major city to ban the sale or lease of the water system.

City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young waived council rules to allow for fast-tracked approval of a charter amendment that will go to voters on the November ballot.

“Access to clean and affordable water should be looked at as a basic human right,” Young said.
Baltimore council considering charter amendment to ban sale of city water system

The move could make Baltimore the first city in the country to amend its charter to preserve public ownership and control over its water and sewer systems, and the largest U.S. city to prohibit sale or lease of its water system. Northampton, Mass., passed legislation in 2016 prohibiting the sale or lease of its water system.

Incorporating this into the city charter doesn’t make it more difficult to sell off the water system, it means that there has to be a public vote, and weeks, if not months, of public discussions, which the privatizers would probably lose.

Given the record of privatizing public services, this is a very good thing.

Silly Rabbit, Party Unity is a One Way Street

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A @DemSocialists-backed candidate beat a self-funder in Montgomery County, so a centrist Dem is running as an independent, potentially spoiling the race for her party. https://t.co/EwTB6tNfi8

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 11, 2018

Have you noticed the pattern?

The Democratic establishment calls for unity, and then, once one of their own loses a primary, they they do their level best to sabotage the the winner in the general election:

Longtime Democrat Nancy Floreen launched an independent bid for Montgomery County executive on Wednesday, calling the Republican and Democratic nominees for the office “flawed extremes” and urging residents of the affluent and liberal suburb “to put principle and pragmatism above purely party politics.”

Montgomery’s 1 million residents have not chosen a non-Democrat to the top political job since 1974. But Floreen, an at-large council member, has been elected countywide four times. She could be a formidable opponent for Democratic nominee Marc Elrich, a progressive with strong union backing who also holds an at-large council seat and has supported rent-control laws and charging impact fees to developers.

“I am determined to give Montgomery County a third, independent choice come November,” Floreen said in a statement explaining her decision to drop her longtime Democratic affiliation to run as an independent.

………

Elrich narrowly defeated Potomac businessman David Blair in the June 26 Democratic primary, a six-way contest that was not decided until late Sunday after provisional and absentee ballots were counted.

………

Throughout the primary campaign, business leaders expressed concerns about Elrich, saying he would prioritize the social safety net and holding developers accountable over boosting economic development and improving the county’s business climate.

………

But former Rockville Mayor Rose Krasnow, who also sought the Democratic nomination for county executive, said she will back Floreen, whom she described as best positioned to lead the county at a time of tepid growth when, some say, businesses and residents are moving elsewhere because of high costs.

“I understand the idea that we should all support the Democrat, but I’m really worried about the future of our county,” Krasnow said.

The business leaders supporting Floreen include Bob Buchanan, chairman of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corp., who said this week that she is “a person the business community has come to rely on.”

(emphasis mine)

The (small d) democratic process is all well and good, but they need the campaign donations from the real estate developers.

This is pathetic.

Maryland Too

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It appears that a number of prominent Democrats in the state house lost primaries to socialists last week:

Thomas V. Mike Miller has been president of the Maryland Senate since 1987. Come January, he’ll have to rebuild his leadership team essentially from scratch.

Three of Miller’s top lieutenants went down in Democratic primaries on Tuesday. Thanks to other losses and retirements, most committees will have new chairs next year. Among those ousted were Nathaniel McFadden, the Senate president pro tem; Joan Carter Conway, who chairs the Education, Health and Environmental Committee; and Judiciary Committee Chair Joseph Vallario.

“Mike Miller’s going to go to Annapolis in January faced with a decimated leadership team and a far more progressive Senate than he’s faced before,” says Todd Eberly, a political scientist at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “It may be a Senate that isn’t comfortable with him as a leader.”

Voters in Maryland were willing ousted veteran members they considered an impediment to progressive issues like criminal justice reform and a $15 minimum wage.

“The folks who are energized, the folks who are engaged, these are folks for whom progressive legislation is very important,” says Christopher Honey, communications director for SEIU Local 500, a labor union that targeted Miller and his allies. “It’s no surprise that this happened in a blue state like Maryland.”

I was too busy following the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — Joe Crowley race, and I missed that there was kind of a (VERY WELL DESERVED) blood bath in the Maryland state Senate among Mike Miller’s cronies.

I think that state Senate president Mike Miller, and state House speaker Michael Busch are, and will continue to be, a part of the problem in Maryland politics, but, for this session at least, their positions are secure, though less secure than they were a few months ago.

Maybe next session.

About F%$#ing Time

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Baltimore City Solicitor Andre Davis said Wednesday that city officials do not plan to cover any costs or damages arising out of civil lawsuits filed against convicted police officers who were members of the Gun Trace Task Force.

 The corrupt officers, he said, are on their own.

 Dozens of state and federal lawsuits are expected against the eight task force members who were convicted of various federal crimes, including racketeering and robbery. Six pleaded guilty, while two were convicted at trial this week.

 In one of the first federal lawsuits, filed by Ivan Potts in 2016 against the city and three of the officers, city government lawyers are arguing that taxpayers should not be responsible for potential damages.

 “Each and every one of the wrongs … were committed outside of the scope of the officers’ employment as BPD law enforcement officers and in pursuit of said officers’ private and personal interests,” city government lawyers wrote in a filing last month.

 Davis said Wednesday that this is a strategy the city plans to use going forward with other actions, though he said officials would consider each suit to see if there should be an exception. And in some cases, a judge could order the city to pay.

………

While the move could save the city millions of dollars, plaintiffs lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union argued victims could be deprived of much-needed compensation.

“That is a travesty,” said David Rocah, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Maryland. “The city bears significant responsibility for enabling these crimes by its failure to adequately supervise the officers. It can’t now simply wash its hands of the matter.”

Needless to say, the Baltimore police union is freaking out, placing them on the same side as the ACLU, which is a remarkably bizarre development.

As many as nine Baltimore police officers could have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in damages after juries found they acted with “actual malice” in the course of making arrests — a development that prompted a warning from the police union and, in turn, a fiery response from the city’s top lawyer.

The union asserted in a memo Tuesday that forcing officers to pay such damages themselves was a change in the city’s policy. But both City Solicitor Andre Davis and his predecessor said Wednesday the policy has not changed and officers have potentially been on the hook for decades in such cases.

Davis said what has changed is that he has been more transparent about the policy, noting it in materials submitted to the city’s spending board in December. Davis called the memo by a local Fraternal Order of Police leader an attempt to “stir something up.”

I’ve suggested before that personal liability for police officers, along with a requirement that they carry insurance, can serve as a deterrent to police misconduct, and this is a good first step.

Hmmmmm…….

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On November 15, Baltimore City police detective Sean Suiter was shot, the next day, he died.

We now know that the day after he was shot, he was scheduled to testify against fellow officers in a racketeering trial:

Last Wednesday, Detective Sean Suiter, along with an as-yet-unnamed partner, were in the West Baltimore neighborhood of Harlem Park. Suiter’s usual partner in the homicide unit, Detective Jonathan Jones, was off that day.

The police version of what happened, as relayed to the Baltimore Sun, goes like this: The detectives were looking for a witness to an unsolved triple homicide case that is nearly a year old when they spotted “suspicious activity” nearby. Suiter and his backup partner split up to cover different exits of the block. Suiter then confronted a man, who shot him in the head after the detective tried to speak. Suiter, an 18-year veteran of Baltimore’s police force, and a 43-year-old married father of five, was pronounced dead a day later, becoming the city’s 309th murder victim of 2017.

………

The neighborhood was promptly put on lockdown. Over the course of the week, the reward fund to find Suiter’s killer climbed to $215,000 – a figure experts think might be a state record. The Harlem Park neighborhood lockdown was justified as a way for cops to preserve the crime scene and collect evidence.

………

Six days after the murder, The Baltimore Sun reported that the city was entering “uncharted territory” for the police department, which usually apprehends police killers shortly after the fact. The longest it’s taken Baltimore police to do so over the last five decades was five days, in 1985. In that instance, the suspect had fled to Oklahoma.

………

The rumor that had been circulating through the neighborhood was that Suiter was preparing to testify against some of the seven officers indicted for racketeering charges in March. An eighth was indicted in August and a ninth last week. (The charges were filed by former U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, a month before he was named Deputy Attorney General in Trump’s Department of Justice. It was there he would have his moment in the historic sun. After Trump blamed him for firing FBI Director James Comey, he appointed special counsel Robert Mueller.)

A spokesperson for the current U.S. Attorney for Maryland told The Intercept on Monday that they could not comment on whether or not Suiter was planning on testifying in their case. But on Wednesday evening, Commissioner Davis confirmed that Suiter was in fact set to testify before a grand jury that Thursday, a day after he was shot. He also said that Suiter appeared to have been killed by his own weapon after a struggle.

(emphasis mine)

Despite the ubiquitous radio reports, I hadn’t been following this case particularly closely, but it has suddenly become much more interesting.

There is a Thin Line Between Terrorism and Pumpkin Spice Air Freshener

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Just ask the Baltimore City fire department and its hazmat teams:

There was an unusual smell Thursday afternoon at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Upper Fells Point. The smell was on the third floor. Students and teachers didn’t know what it was.

“It was a smell that they certainly weren’t used to,” said Bill Heiser, the school’s president, who was off-campus at the time. “It appeared to be getting stronger.”

Several students and teachers reported difficulty breathing, Heiser said.

The school’s principal evacuated the building and the fire department was called. After arriving, the fire department requested a Hazmat team, which ran several tests for hazardous materials. All of them were negative, according to Baltimore fire spokesman Roman Clark.

………

Firefighters began to open all the windows in the building to air it out.

Then, Clark said, they located the source of the smell in a third-floor classroom: an aerosol plugin. Flavor: pumpkin spice.

F%$#ing pumpkin spice strikes again.

Now it’s not just polluting our Starbucks, it’s interfering with the education of our kids.

It must be stop.

Support Your Local Law Enforcement

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Well now we have seen at least 34 cases tainted by evidence tampering by the Baltimore cops:

Maryland prosecutors have tossed 34 criminal cases and are re-examining dozens more in the aftermath of recent revelations that a Baltimore police officer accidentally recorded himself planting drugs in a trash-strewn alley.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said that, in all, 123 cases are under review in the wake of a scandal in which one officer has been suspended and two others put on administrative duty. Body cam footage revealed nearly two weeks ago showed one of the officers planting drugs when he didn’t realize his body cam was recording. The Baltimore Police Department’s body cams, like many across the nation, capture footage 30 seconds before an officer presses the record button. The footage was turned over to defense attorneys as part of a drug prosecution—and that’s when the misdeed was uncovered.

………

Mosby added that the authorities are likely to dismiss many more cases, and they have reviewed hundreds of body cam videos. At least one other is suspicious, she said.

The real question is how common this sort of behavior really is.

My guess is that this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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Clearly a Conscientious Officer

A police officer in Baltimore was filmed planting evidence on his body cam.

He was unaware that the camera constantly recorded video, and saved the 30 seconds before the camera was turned on, and a sharp eyed public defender spotted this:

………

Now there’s word of another such incident in Baltimore, related to video from a January drug arrest. The officer’s trickery was revealed by the fact that his body cam retained footage for 30 seconds before it was activated to begin recording. During that time, according to the footage and the Baltimore public defender’s office, officer Richard Pinheiro puts a bag of pills in a can in an alley and walks out of the alley.

The Axon cam’s initial 30 seconds of footage, by default, doesn’t have sound. After 30 seconds, viewers of the video can both see and hear the officer looking for drugs in the alley. Lo and behold, he finds them in the same soup can that he placed them in, according to the footage, which was released Wednesday. Pinheiro can then be heard yelling “yo” to his fellow officers, telling them he found drugs in the alley.

The Baltimore Police Department said Wednesday it was investigating the matter, and the three officers seen in the video. The Baltimore public defender’s office discovered the incident when reviewing body cam footage while preparing to defend an upcoming drug prosecution.

The footage paved the way for the authorities to drop charges against the drug suspect, who had remained jailed since January on $50,000 bail he could not post. The Baltimore public defender’s office said the officer in question is a witness in as many as 53 other active cases, according to the Baltimore Sun.

(emphasis mine)

Why this officer, and the two other cops in the film, haven’t been charged is completely beyond me.

There is clearly probable cause sufficient for the state’s attorney to get an arrest warrant by all three officers.

Most likely the police commissioner and the state’s attorney are busy trying to figure out what the absolute minimum to deal with this issue, because covering up for bad cops is what the authorities do.

If they are forced to prosecute by public pressure, I expect the case to be mismanaged, because they will play to lose.

Baltimore Just Got Smaller

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It’s alt-weekly, The Baltimore City Paper, will be closed down by the end of the year:

The Baltimore Sun Media Group plans to close City Paper later this year. No official end date has been announced for the alt-weekly, now in its 40th year.

“Like many alternative weeklies across the country, declining ad revenue at City Paper continues to be a challenge,” BSMG’s director of marketing, Renee Mutchnik, said in a statement. “It became clear to us this past fall that we would cease publishing City Paper sometime in 2017. Details about the closing date are still being discussed. This is a difficult decision and we are mindful of how it affects our employees, the readers and advertisers.”

Editorial staffers found out about the news in June during a meeting with senior vice president Tim Thomas, who cited declining ad revenues and future projections for those numbers as reasons for the closure.

City Paper editor Brandon Soderberg offered the following: “This is Brandon Soderberg, City Paper editor reporting live from the deck of the Titanic. Yes, we’re being closed by BSMG/Tronc/and so on. We were told this news last month and there isn’t a clear date but what we’ve been told is no later than the end of the year. We were trying to hold off announcing it because, well, it’s very sad, but also because I’m not sure about how this is all going to play out and I’m half-convinced this won’t be the end of the paper and someone will swoop in and buy us.”

The Sun bought the paper from Times-Shamrock Communications, which had owned the paper for more than two dozen years, in early 2014. In an announcement of the purchase, BSMG’s then-publisher, president, and CEO Tim Ryan praised City Paper’s independent streak. 

(emphasis mine)

That last bit, about The Sun is the most important bit: The fate of the City Paper was sealed when The Sun bought it.

As A. J. Liebling noted in his seminal book The Press, the only way to make money by buying a newspaper is to be a competitor in the market, and the profit comes from shutting it down, which allows the survivor to increase its own advertising revenue.

Even if only 10% of the ads in The City Paper go to The Sun, they will get a non trivial amount of revenue from this.

I think that Baltimore is too large and too dynamic not to have an alt-weekly.

I’m considering starting a crowd funding effort to buy them from the Tribune Company.

Any advice/aid would be appreciated.