An former Baltimore Police detective testified Tuesday that several corrupt Baltimore cops kept fake guns in their cars to plant on suspects in case they were ever accused of a “dirty shooting.”
Maurice Ward, who is a former member of Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force — the group now involved in an ongoing corruption trial in Maryland — told the jury that while on duty with the Task Force, he noticed that several of his colleagues kept BB guns and other fake weapons in their glove compartments. Ward claimed they kept the toys “in case we accidentally hit somebody or got into a shootout, so we could plant them,” according to the Baltimore Sun.
Although Ward was unable to say whether Baltimore cops had actually ever planted a fake weapon on a dead suspect, at least one of the defendants, one of Ward’s fellow detectives, was found to have a fake gun in his glove compartment following his 2015 arrest.
Six members of the Task Force have already pleaded guilty to racketeering. Two others, Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor, remain on trial for everything from robbery to faking evidence. (Read more from “Horrifying: Ex-Cop Testifies That Baltimore Police Carried Fake Guns to Plant on Suspects” HERE)
Overnight, Imamu Baraka was walking past a Baltimore hospital when he noticed something he says he’ll never forget.
The hospital’s security guards had just wheeled a patient to a bus stop, and in the freezing temperatures they left her there. The only thing she had on was a hospital gown.
“It’s about 30 degrees out here right now,” Baraka says in a recording of the encounter. “Are you OK, ma’am? Do you need me to call the police?” he asks.
It’s called “patient dumping” and it doesn’t just happen in Baltimore. In 2007, “60 Minutes” investigated the practice of removing homeless patients from Los Angeles hospitals and leaving them downtown.
Often the patients are not insured or have other financial issues, but it’s unclear if that was the case in Baltimore. (Read more from “Man Captures Video of ‘Patient Dumping’ Outside Hospital” HERE)
Baltimore’s state attorney and the city’s police commissioner admitted that police officers using heavy policing tactics in the past helped keep Baltimore’s murder count down.
Baltimore is currently struggling with one of its highest murder counts in years, something that could have been influenced by a change in policing tactics, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis implicitly acknowledged in an exclusive interview with the Baltimore Sun Wednesday.
Years ago, the city had tamped down on the violence and brought the homicides down to less than 200 in a year by using “heavy handed police tactics” that are now frowned upon, the two noted in the interview. (Read more from “Baltimore Police Commissioner Admits Heavy Policing Kept Violence at Bay” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/police-224426_960_720-1.jpg607960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-08-24 23:34:192017-08-24 23:34:50Baltimore Police Commissioner Admits Heavy Policing Kept Violence at Bay
A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case of Baltimore Police Officer William G. Porter after jurors said they had failed to reach an agreement on any of the charges against him in the death of Freddie Gray.
The decision, which came a day after jurors told Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams they were deadlocked, frustrated activists who had watched the first trial in Gray’s death closely. Outside the downtown courtroom, city officials and community leaders pleaded for calm, and authorities reported two arrests, but no violence or serious disruptions.
Porter, 26, the first of six police officers to be tried in Gray’s death, remains charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. Gray, 25, died in April after suffering a severe spinal cord injury in the back of a police van.
Jurors deliberated for three days before Williams declared the mistrial. The decision now throws the other trials into flux.
Prosecutors chose to try Porter first, planning to use him as a witness at the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson. Goodson, who is charged with second-degree murder, was slated for trial in the first week of January. (Read more from “Mistrial Declared in Trial of Officer William Porter in Death of Freddie Gray” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-16 21:36:582016-04-11 10:55:00Mistrial Declared in Trial of Officer William Porter in Death of Freddie Gray
It means to be intellectually dyslexic and morally bankrupt.
Here is the view I have from where I sit just outside of Baltimore.
To begin with, we have the coalescence of an unprecedented number of national factors that threaten the security of American citizens.
There are record levels of immigration from the Middle East against the consent of the governed. Now there are countless numbers of homegrown and immigrant Islamic terrorists in our midst similar to the family of Saeed Farook, whose family members harbored anti-American sentiments.
There are almost a million illegal aliens that have been ordered deported, however they remain at large. In addition, there are 375,000 known criminal aliens at large who have been released into our cities.
The Department of Justice has embarked on a program to release 46,000 felons, including many violent drug dealers or those who have committed gun crimes. Additionally, Republicans and Democrats in Congress are working on legislation to retroactively release felons who have committed violent crimes with firearms.
Piled on to those disquieting national realities, anyone living in the Baltimore area has to contend with record high crime and homicides.
Naturally, any law abiding citizen of Maryland would want to exercise his or her Second Amendment right to protect himself and his family given the circumstances. But guess what?
Not only is concealed carry prohibited in Maryland (except for rare exceptions), as of October 1, 2013, but anyone desiring to even purchase or rent a handgun must obtain a Handgun Qualification License (HQL). This entails paying several hundred dollars for four hours of instruction, getting fingerprinted and monitored like a criminal by the state police. Only after that process does one enjoy the privilege of waiting potentially weeks to hear back from the police to even embark on purchasing a firearm for home defense.
While police officers are on trial for allegedly not putting a seat belt on a violent and belligerent drug dealer, a policy that was enacted only weeks before the alleged infraction, the city of Baltimore is burning. Thanks to the “space to destroy” that was afforded to the criminals, shootings have spiked 80% since last year. Baltimore is second only to St. Louis in the rate of homicides per capita for 2015. Robberies have increased sharply as well.
Consequently, after passing the most draconian gun laws in the nation, “shootings” in Baltimore have increased beyond belief and parts of the city look like Gaza. And yet liberals have the impertinence to suggest that law abiding gun owners are the problem and that we need stricter gun laws?
Now that liberals have made it so tedious for law abiding citizens to purchase a simple handgun and only violent criminals can get their hands on a firearm, Baltimore is experiencing the most homicides per capita since records were kept.
Law abiding residents of the Baltimore metropolitan area are staring down the barrel of the gun of mob rule that is expected to break out when the cops are inevitably exonerated – either in the trial court or upon appeal to the circuit court. And so many of them will be unable to properly defend their bodies while walking the streets and even in their homes.
If your blood is not already boiling, consider the following: earlier this year the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that illegal aliens, even those about to be deported, have standing to sue in federal court for gun rights. Also consider that, according to the courts, states have the power to pass laws prohibiting concealed carry and even limiting gun ownership – unalienable and foundational rights of our Constitution – yet those same states lack the power to pass marriage laws, even though marriage is not mentioned in the Constitution and is therefore left up to the states.
The perverted sense of justice and governance emanating from all levels of both our government and political class, coupled with the dyslexic debauchery endemic in our court system represents a fundamental threat to our democracy. Over a decade ago, conservative jurist Robert Bork warned that we were “Slouching Towards Gomorrah.”
Well, I’m here to tell you that we are no longer slouching towards Gomorrah. We are in it. (For more from the author of “Baltimore, Gun Control, and the Moral Bankruptcy of Liberalism” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-10 01:43:472016-04-11 10:55:18Baltimore, Gun Control, and the Moral Bankruptcy of Liberalism
Baltimore’s bloody summer ended with a barrage of bangs, as the rate of homicides and gun crimes continued to spike in the wake of the racially charged case of Freddie Gray, whose death in police custody left citizens angry and cops demoralized.
For September, homicides were up 39 percent and non-fatal shootings nearly doubled over the same month in 2014, continuing a disturbing trend that has gripped the Charm City since Gray’s death in April and the rioting that followed. For the year, murders are up 52 percent and non-fatal shootings 80 percent over last year . . .
For the year, the 246 homicides recorded through Sept. 26 put Baltimore dangerously close to the record pace of 1993, when 353 people were victims of homicide. The fact that the spike occurred after April 19 bodes even worse: Before the unrest following the Gray arrest, Baltimore had recorded 65 homicides for the year. A four-decade high of 42 homicides in May was topped in July when 45 people were killed in homicides, making Baltimore the second deadliest city in America on a per capita basis, trailing only St. Louis.
Whether due to demoralized cops, emboldened criminals or some combination of the two, the city is scrambling to turn the tide. Twenty-six killings in September represented a welcome drop from the record 43 seen in May, when the city was roiled by protests and police were ordered by the mayor to stand down in the face of riots. In a statistical quirk that may have an ominous explanation, other categories of violent crime, such as rape, robbery and assault, are only up marginally since the death of Gray, a drug suspect whose death in a police van led to criminal charges against six cops.
In the wake of the riots and amid a strong perception Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and other civic leaders did not support cops, union officials openly acknowledged that their members felt abandoned. (Read more from “Bloody Baltimore: No End Seen to Post-Freddie Gray Spike in Homicides, Shootings” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-10-05 22:13:502016-04-11 10:57:43Bloody Baltimore: No End Seen to Post-Freddie Gray Spike in Homicides, Shootings
Baltimore State’s prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, may have a huge problem, if not an explosive scandal, on her hands if defense claims in just-filed court papers prove to be true.
The Baltimore Sun reports that defense attorneys for the “Baltimore Six” police officers charged by Mosby’s office in the Freddie Gray case have raised serious questions about whether the prosecution has properly turned over relevant evidence that could exonerate their clients.
The most shocking defense claim brought to the attention of the court on Thursday, according to the newspaper account, is that Mosby’s office is intentionally withholding “information indicating that Freddie Gray ‘attempted to injure himself’ during a previous arrest.”
Gray died in April after suffering a severe spinal cord injury, supposedly while being transported in a police van. Six officers who were involved face charges that range from misconduct to second-degree murder. The prosecution’s case against the six rests largely on the belief that Freddie Gray suffered his fatal injury because of police misconduct.
The newspaper report says the bombshell the defense just dropped could undermine the case that Mosby has prominently put herself out in front of since day one:
In their filing Thursday, the defense attorneys said prosecutors have withheld “multiple witness statements from individuals who stated that Mr. Gray was banging and shaking the van at various points” after his arrest April 12, as well as “police reports, court records, and witness statements indicating that on prior occasions, Mr. Gray had fled from police and attempted to discard drugs.”
(Read more from “Mosby’s Freddie Gray Case May Have Just Blown up in Her Face With 2 HUGE Claims” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-08-01 03:53:542016-04-11 10:58:14Baltimore’s Freddie Gray Case Against Cops May Have Just Blown Up With 2 HUGE Claims
As evidenced in the past few months with Ferguson and Baltimore, Black and minority communities are looking for answers to confront real issues in their cities. The anguish in America’s hard hit communities are a result of policies and leadership that has compelled children to feel trapped in neighborhoods and schools where they often have limited mentorship and incentives to propel forward.
Situations have heightened as we look at the moral decay in our minority communities and are told that the government is not doing enough to help them. That is why we believe that we must come together to PRAY and applaud the efforts of the tireless work of dedicated pastors and leaders to first PRAY and then collaborate to help bring solutions to these issues.
[Listen to Star Parker talk about what happened in Baltimore and why:]
This multi-ethnic prayer event is scheduled for today, noon to 5 p.m.
The following leaders are participating: Rev. Derek McCoy from C.U.R.E. will join Bishop Angel Nunez (Bilingual Christian Church), Bishop Marcus Johnson (New Harvest Ministries), Bishop Clifford Johnson/ Pastor Darryl Brace (Mt. Pleasant Church), Bishop Willard Saunders (Created For So Much More), Pastor Matt Stevens (Somebody Cares), Lt. Col. Melvin Russell (Chief, Community Partnerships Baltimore Police), Bishop Harry Jackson (The Reconciled Church), Bishop Mike McDermott (Life Source Int’l), Bishop Monroe Saunders (Transformation Church), Pastor Toni Draper (Freedom Temple AME Zion), Bishop Abel Palomo (House of Prayer), Pastor Benjun Uybengkee (River of Life Int’l), Rev. Dr. Harold Carter, Jr., (New Shiloh Baptist), Rev. Dr. Errol Gilliard (Greater Harvest/President, Baptist Ministers Conference.
To learn more, contact Jadan Horyn with Center for Education and Urban Renewal, 610.674.7444
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-06-20 03:56:562016-04-11 10:59:50Star Parker: Join Our Multi-Cultural, Multi-Ethnic Prayer Movement to Combat Baltimore’s Most Violent Month in 40 Years [+video]
Unfortunately some of you were born white. Guilty. All that money you’re making? If you’re white, you didn’t earn that. Somebody else made that happen.
So here’s what you should do. Take that extra savings you have, or money you were saving for a family trip to Disney World, and give it away. Not to starving children or to the Red Cross, though. You’re supposed to find a black person, any black person, and deposit that money directly into their bank account. Solely because they are black. Does that sound racist in and of itself?
Your white privilege is showing.
Now, lest ye think we deserve a boatload of hatemail for suggesting such a thing, we direct you to the source of this utter lunacy: Lawrence Brown. Mr. Brown is an assistant professor in the Public Health Department at Morgan State University in Baltimore. This leftist activist teaches that black Americans require reparations, that America is still segregated, and black Americans continue to suffer from the historical trauma of white supremacist America.
His solution to these perceived problems? Take your white privilege money (which he defines as “unearned” if you are white), and give it to a black person. Because you’re personally responsible for slavery and need to pay. Or something. Seriously. See below.
5) My new criteria for white allies is gonna be: “How much are you using your whiteness to LITERALLY eliminate the racial wealth gap?”
— Lawrence Brown (@BmoreDoc) June 1, 2015
Again, for someone who claims to fight against racism, I don’t think I’ve quite seen anyone speak in such sweeping generalities. What say you? When you head to the bank this evening, will you be making a withdrawal of your unearned money to deposit in a black person’s account… because, privilege? (See “Baltimore Professor: White People Need to Personally Give All Their Money to Black People…”, originally posted HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-06-06 03:54:112016-04-11 11:00:18Baltimore Professor: White People Need to Personally Give All Their Money to Black People…
Some conflict of interest issues have been raised against Baltimore City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby. Some are arguing that her office overreached when she brought charges against the six police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray, especially the driver of the van; he’s been charged with second-degree murder.
Gray died in custody after being arrested on April 12. He suffered a fatal spinal injury at some point during his 45-minute ride in a police van. The city descended into chaos, a state of emergency was called, and the National Guard rolled in to help local law enforcement restore order.
Well, ever since the charges have been brought forward, crime has been surging in Baltimore due to police being more “hesitant” in light of intense media and public scrutiny (via Baltimore Sun):
As the number of shootings and homicides has surged in Baltimore, some police officers say they feel hesitant on the job under intense public scrutiny and in the wake of criminal charges against six officers in the Freddie Gray case.
State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby’s decision last week to charge the officers has stoked strong opinions across the country — including praise from those who want accountability and derision from some legal experts.
But perhaps the most jarring effect has been on the Baltimore Police Department.
In 29 years, I’ve gone through some bad times, but I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Lt. Kenneth Butler, president of the Vanguard Justice Society, a group for black Baltimore police officers. Officers “feel as though the state’s attorney will hang them out to dry.”
Several officers said in interviews they are concerned crime could spike as officers are hesitant to do their jobs, and criminals sense opportunity. Butler, a shift commander in the Southern District, said his officers are expressing reluctance to go after crime.
“I’m hearing it from guys who were go-getters, who would go out here and get the guns and the bad guys and drugs. They’re hands-off now,” Butler said. “I’ve never seen so many dejected faces.
…
The city has seen 40 shootings since April 28, the day after the city’s most intense day of rioting, including 10 on Thursday alone. There also have been 15 homicides in that span, bringing the year’s total to 82 — 20 more than at the same time last year.
(Read more from “After State Attorney Charged Cops, Crime Surges in Baltimore” HERE)
