The suspect, identified by police as James Smith, is holed up at a home on the West side of the city. SWAT members arrived at the scene several hours ago, and had removed a woman from the scene before paramedics arrived. Her clothing was seen to be covered in blood.SWAT members then returned to the barricaded site. At 6:40 pm Eastern Time Baltimore police tweeted that negotiators were working to try and peacefully resolve the situation.Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts has told reporters that the main concern at the moment is for the child still believed to be inside the home with Smith.”The concern I have right now is slowing this scene down and making sure we get the child out safely,” Batts said. UPDATE – For safety of emergency workers, certain operational details of barricade situation can not be disclosed. — Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) May 7, 2013 DETAILS TO FOLLOW … Read More
Baltimore prison guards indicted in massive drug conspiracy
Thirteen female corrections officers have been indicted for helping a national gang known as Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) run a drug-trafficking and money-laundering scheme from behind bars. The prison guards were among 25 defendants, including inmates and outside suppliers, charged with racketeering and drug conspiracy, with each of them facing a maximum sentence of 20 years for the charges. Prosecutors accused the 13 women of essentially handing over control of the jail to the gang, helping them conduct their business by smuggling cellphones, prescription drugs and other contraband in their clothing and hair. Four of the officers even became pregnant by one inmate, with two of them also getting tattoos of his first name. Affadavits for search warrants at the homes of the prison guards report that the inmates specifically looked for female officers they perceived to have “low self-esteem.” “The inmates literally took over ‘the asylum,’ and the detention centers became safe havens for BGF,” says FBI Special Agent in Charge Stephen E. Vogt. Court documents show that one-gram bags of marijuana sold behind bars for $50, a profit of about $1,000 per ounce, while Percocet pills went for triple their street value.Continue Reading… … Read More
Maryland prison guards helped gangs smuggle drugs, fathered inmate’s children
The guards were charged by the Maryland US Attorney’s Office after the indictment was unsealed in federal court on Tuesday, according to the Washington Post. The guards are accused of smuggling cell phones, prescription pills and other contraband into Baltimore City Detention Center at the behest of Tavon White, the alleged leader of the Black Guerilla Family gang, or BGF. White and six other inmates as well as five “outside suppliers” were also indicted. Prosecutors claimed White had sexual relations with at least four of the guards and had fathered five children with them since he was incarcerated in 2009 after an attempted murder conviction. “Correctional officers were in bed with BGF inmates, in violation of the first principle of prison management,” US Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein told reporters. “Preventing prison corruption requires intensive screening at prison entrances and punishment for employees who consort with inmates or bring cell phones and drugs into correctional facilities.” Two of the accused guards had tattoos reading “Tavon” and at least four were given gifts including luxury cars and diamond rings. Marijuana, Oxycodone, Xanax, Klonopin and Vicodin were among the drugs brought into the prison, reported Baltimore CBS affiliate WJZ. Prosecutors also included a transcript of a wiretapped phone call from January 5, 2013, in which White brags of making roughly $16,000 from black market activities in the prison in a month, among other implicating details. “This is my jail. You understand that? I’m dead serious,” White is quoted as saying in the documents. “I make every final call in this jail and nothing go past me, everything come to me. Any of my brothers that deal with anybody, it’s gonna come to me…” State Sen. Joseph M. Getty said the charges are a “pretty harsh indictment” of the prison policies set forth by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. “This is frightening to us as legislators, the level of collusion that has existed between the correction officers and inmates,” Getty said. Since the gang’s inception at the San Quentin California state prison in 1966 the Black Guerilla Family has spread throughout the US correctional system while engaging in homicide, drug trafficking, racketeering and other offenses. The BGF’s influence has been particularly evident in Baltimore, where a 2009 indictment claimed that one gangster dined on shrimp and expensive vodka from his prison cell. … Read More
Boston Bombing Suspects’ Relatives Speak to Media
Yesterday afternoon, the FBI
released photos of two suspects in Monday’s Boston Marathon
bombing. A firefight with police last night
left one suspect dead and police have
launched a massive manhunt for the other,
identified as 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, originally from
Chechnya. Now family in North America have reacted to the
media.
An uncle, from the Baltimore Sun:
An uncle of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon
bombing delivered an emotional interview in front of his Montgomery
Village home on Friday, calling his nephews “losers” while
imploring one who fled an early morning police standoff that left
the other dead to turn himself in.
An aunt, with a very different reaction, from the Toronto
Star:
The aunt of the ;two Boston bombing
suspects ;is calling for additional evidence showing they are
behind the acts.
“I am a lawyer and there are four of us in the family,” Maret
Tsarnaev told reporters Friday at her Toronto home. “I can’t
lightly accept this kind of accusations without supporting
evidence. Forgive me, but I cannot.
“Could it be staged? I have to question everything. That’s my
nature.”
Follow these stories and more at ;Reason 24/7 ;and don’t forget you
can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
at ;@reason247. … Read More
Covered at Reason 24/7: False Imprisonment Costs Baltimore $150K
The police of the fine city of Baltimore are
hard at work — costing the taxpayers a fortune. It seems they
locked up a man based on the assumption that he’d helped knock over
a Chinese restaurant. They assumed his guilt because they’d been
told that “Mookie” was the second culprit (they already had a guy
in custody), and “Mookie” must be Darren Brown. But he
wasn’t. Which they admitted only after Brown had been locked up for
seven months. That was three months after the first suspect’s
mother had identified her nephew as the real “Mookie.”
From
Baltimore Brew:
An innocent man imprisoned for seven months by Baltimore police
on the basis of his reputed nickname will be awarded $150,000 to
settle his lawsuit.
The Board of Estimates is set to pay the sum tomorrow to Darren
Brown, who charged four police officers with acting “with
deliberate and/or reckless disregard for the truth” while
conducting an investigation of an August 2008 shooting at a Chinese
carry-out on Harford Rd.
The case was settled after U.S. District Court Judge Richard D.
Bennett denied a motion by the four defendants to dismiss the suit.
The cash settlement will terminate the case, with the proviso that
the plaintiff and his lawyers not publicly discuss the lawsuit.
The Brown case is the latest of scores of settlements since 2008
– costing taxpayers an average of $3.5 million a year – paid to
citizens who have accused police of misconduct. Included in these
fees are as much as $700,000 a year that the city spends for
outside counsel defending officers from lawsuits.
Follow this story and more at Reason 24/7.
If you have a story that would be of interest to Reason’s
readers please let us know by emailing the 24/7 crew at
24_7@reason.com, or tweet us stories at ;@reason247. … Read More
Media critic David Zurawik: MSNBC spewing propaganda with Obama aide
TV critic David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun slammed MSNBC on Sunday for hiring former top Obama aide David Axelrod as a senior political analyst. “There is an advantage to having people who are in the room at key moments on this high level on your cable channel,” he said on CNN’s…
Theater Security Asphyxiate Man with Down Syndrome
http://www.youtube.com/v/lCaJ2kaNYCU?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Link: Theater Security Asphyxiate Man with Down Syndrome
