Sohn is following in the steps of “The Wire” characters Dennis “Cutty” Wise and Howard “Bunny” Colvin and is working with disadvantaged youth in Baltimore to help them lead positive lives

The Washington Post reports:

This was late in 2009, during the first session of ReWired for Life, a program Sohn had conceived of years earlier and devoted herself to building after “The Wire” signed off. She hadn’t been ready to leave the show behind, neither what it stood for nor the Baltimore streets on which it had filmed. It was more than that, though. “I had an extraordinarily strong sense of purpose,” she says, in the same half-purr, half-growl voice familiar to fans of “The Wire.” “My entire life had become about this.”

Read More At The Washington Post

SEE ALSO:

The Simpsons Go Couture

Should Apple Be Boycotted?

The Algebra Project uses mathematics as an organizing tool to make sure that urban students are given a quality public school education and has fought against what they call Baltimore’s “School To Prison Pipeline.”

The Nation reports:

More than two dozen groups formed a coalition against the jail, and last October the Algebra Project’s ranks swelled as hundreds of Occupy Baltimore members joined their actions. ‘We have to stop young people from going to prison, and we have to stop building prisons,” Shaw says. “There have to be alternatives, more money put into schools, into recreational centers, programs that lend themselves to youth needs, instead of predicting their failures.” Shaw says the new prison is being pushed by developers and those that profit from a prison-industrial complex. “They are gonna make sure they fill those empty beds,” she says.

On January 16th the coalition started a week-long occupation of the prison site, but were dispersed by police and several arrests. Daily civil disobedience and teach-ins continued, and last week the State released its budget for next year and it did not include funding for the prison.

Read More At The Nation

SEE ALSO:

What To Expect In Obama’s State Of The Union Speech
Did George Lucas Play The Race Card?

At this year’s convocation and other campus events, MSU honored the legacy of hundreds of former Morgan State students who played a pivotal role in the sit-in movement seven years before the widespread launch of the tactic.

Back in 1953, Morgan State students were lining up daily at a lunch counter in Read’s Drugstore in Baltimore, demanding desegregation. A manager or waitress would try to lure the daily protesting bunch from their seats by reading Maryland’s trespassing statute. The students didn’t budge.

Picketing, sit-ins, and hundreds of arrests eventually led to some changes in segregated Baltimore. As a result of Morgan State’s relentless student activism, in 1955 owners of Read’s Drugstore opened their lunch counter to Blacks; in 1959 Arundel Ice Cream also began to change their practices.

This year’s festivities, surrounding the commemoration of the brave MSU alumni, were accompanied by a range of students, faculty, visitors, and influential Black leaders from around the country. A list of attendees included John Lewis, the Freedom Rider-turned-congressman; Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings; Lt. Governor Anthony Brown; and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

“It is important that our students know the legacy of their school and whose footsteps they are walking today,” said MSU President David Wilson as he stood at the unveiling ceremony of the recreated lunch counter at Read’s Drugstore. Along the walls near the lunch counter exhibit is a stunning pictorial display that takes viewers on a tour of Civil Rights activism in Baltimore from 1947-1963.

University of Maryland law professor Larry S. Gibson, the person responsible for the timeless exhibit, donated his collection to MSU and it will remain in the main hall of the University Student Center.

While speaking to a crowd at Morgan’s campus Gibson said, “Finally we’re going to get some history straight.”

Check out the video here

The opening line of the piece: “We met a man with an unusual name you’ve probably never heard of, but his message about education and America’s future is something we thought you should know.”

See also: Jay-Z Talks Kanye West Collaboration And Baby With Beyonce

See also: Caribbean Culture has Influenced Miami For Over 100 years

Correspondent Byron Pitts then asked Hrabowski a question I was certainly wondering: How did a black man wind up with the name Hrabowski?

“My grandfather’s grandfather was the Polish slave master in rural Alabama,” Hrabowski said.

“I am the third, Freeman Hrabowski the third,” the good president said. “And my grandfather was the first one born a free man as opposed to having to be freed.”

Hrabowski became president of the university in 1992.

Read more at Washington Post

Clash has been the voice and puppeteer for Elmo for over 17 years, but was not the original voice for Elmo who originally talked like a cave man.

See also: Keystone Pipeline Infographic: ‘Built To Spill’

See also: A girl and her dog in South Africa

Huffington Post Black Voices reports:

Clash has honed his skills creating and animating puppets since the age of 10. He landed his first paying television gig in his late teens for a CBS affiliate in Baltimore, where he ultimately attracted the attention of Muppet designer and future mentor, Kermit Love, who introduced the ambitious teen to legendary puppeteer Jim Henson, who created Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and dozens of other famous characters.

Following brief stints on the popular kids shows “The Great Space Coaster” and “Captain Kangaroo,” Clash made his “Sesame Street” debut in 1984, as the voice of Baby Natasha and Hoots the Owl. Clash said that Henson told him to “just be as silly as you want. Muppets are rebellious and that’s the way they should be. Don’t take it too seriously.”

Read More At The Huffington Post

At the age of 80, West has dedicated 60 years of his life to the advancement of science and to provide opportunities for minorities and women in the field of science.

West has over 250 patents, but his most significant invention is the electret microphone, which he along with German scientist, Gerhard Sessler invented in 1961.

To this date the electret microphone has been made over a billion times and is used in cell phones, cameras and many other devices.

While at Temple University, West interned at Bell Labs where he would work after he graduated. West would wind up working at Bell Labs for over 40 years. During his time there, he would not only advance science but would provide many opportunities for African Americans, other minorities and women to follow in his footsteps, which he would continue to do as a professor at John Hopkins University.

West co-founded the Association of Black Laboratory Employees (ABLE), in order to provide give African Americans a chance to excel in the field of science. ABLE has helped to establish more that 500 Phds for minorities and women through a summer research program at Bell Labs.

Several of the people who James West provided opportunities for came to John Hopkins University to honor the man who had guided them.

Some of the people who came to honor James West were 1996 physics Nobel Prize winner, Douglass Osheroff, 2008 Presidential Medal Of Freedom winner, and neurosurgeon, Ben Carson and Princeton Professor , William Massey, who was a colleague of Dr. West’s at Bell Labs.

Massey showed West’s legacy by bringing three African American protégés from the ABLE Bell Labs summer internship program to present scientific research in their various fields. Otis Jennings, a professor at Columbia Business School presented scientific research on the inequality of the American Justice system. Robert Hamshire, a professor at Carnegie Mellon presented research on energy saving through shared usage of public cars and bicycles.

James West’s legacy is firmly implanted in history. Not only did he win the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering, but he is also an inductee to the National Inventors Hall of Fame and one of Bill Nye The Science Guys “real cool scientists.”

Still, the true test of Dr. West’s legacy is the hundreds of African American scientists he guided, mentored and inspired.

Brown, 19, and her 14-year-old accomplice became infamous after footage of them pouncing Chrissy Polis became viral on the Internet.

Polis, who had a seizure during the beating and continues to have them along with flashbacks and a deep sense of terror and anxiety, doesn’t forgive Brown.

Read more at Colorlines.

RELATED:

Why Do Violent Black-On-Black Videos Equal Entertainment?

Feds DID NOT Shut Down WorldStarHipHop.com

Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, 31, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute heroin, a day before her trial was set to begin. Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill accepted the plea, suspending a seven-year sentence with credit for time served and ordering three years of supervised probation with provisions for out-of-state travel for work.

The plea allows Pearson to move on with her acting career, instead of spending more than a year with charges hanging over her, attorney Benjamin C. Sutley said outside the courthouse.

“I can’t say she would have been found not guilty,” Sutley said. But Pearson interrupted, saying “I would have been found not guilty.”

Pearson was one of 64 people charged in March in “Operation Usual Suspects.” The federal indictment states that since 2008, members of the conspiracy bought heroin from New York and marijuana from California and sold the drugs on the streets of Baltimore. As part of the conspiracy, the indictment alleges, members discussed how those who failed to perform required tasks were dealt with violently.

Pearson was caught on a wiretap conspiring with Shawn Johnson and Jeff Gibbs, who bought heroin in bulk from New York and distributed the drugs in Baltimore, according to a statement of charges read aloud in court by prosecutor Rebecca Finn. Johnson paid Pearson to store drugs and money, including drug proceeds, at her apartment in the city, Finn said.

When another member of the alleged conspiracy was kidnapped by rival dealers, Johnson told him to go to Pearson’s apartment to get money pay a ransom, Finn said. Police interrupted the abduction outside Pearson’s apartment and found heroin in the abducted man’s car, she said. Informants also told investigators that Pearson occasionally sold heroin for Johnson, Finn said.

Some of the people involved in the wider case helped take care of Pearson when she was a teen, but she has now “learned a valuable lesson about how some loyalties you keep and others drag you down,” Sutley said.

Pearson said she knows everyone in Baltimore. Asked how she’ll avoid falling into the same situation in the future, Pearson said, “I’m moving to L.A.”

Pearson, who wore retro-style glasses with a black-and-white checked shirt and a red paisley bow tie to court, said she is working on two movies. She later updated her followers on Twitter, “I’m FREE.”

“The Wire,” which ran from 2002 to 2008, was filmed in Baltimore and put a spotlight on the city’s struggle with poverty and drug violence through the stories of the city’s police, drug organizations, schools, politicians and media. Pearson’s character, which shares the nickname “Snoop,” knocks off several people for the fictitious Stanfield drug gang.

This was not Pearson’s first brush with the law. She was convicted of second-degree murder in a slaying committed when she was 14. She served five years of an eight-year sentence and was released in 2000. Pearson was arrested on a minor drug charge in 2008 when police went to her home to pick her up for refusing to cooperate as a witness in a murder trial. She was found not guilty.

RELATED STORIES

“Wire” Creator: Snoop’s Arrest Due To Lack Of Black Acting Roles

Snoop From “The Wire” Arrested In Baltimore Drug Raid

The Huffington Post reports:

In an April 5 report to Congress, Perez’s unit said that some of these investigations would lead to lawsuits or settlements this year.

“We’re a majority African American community, and there are people in this city who take great offense when institutions take advantage of a community’s historical lack of access to credit, and in some cases lack of sophistication, by putting them in loans they can’t afford,” said George Nilson, Baltimore’s city solicitor. “It’s offensive behavior and we shouldn’t tolerate it.”

Read The Whole Story At The Huffington Post

RELATED STORIES

City Of Baltimore Sues Wells Fargo For Racist Lending

Wells Fargo Accepting Applications For Black Business Owner Award

“Put my baby somewhere safe and call somebody. He’s probably hungry,” the baby’s mother, Whitney McGee said.

Ki’Yauhn Birch has been missing since Friday evening when he was left at his father’s house with his 16-year-old baby sitter. Both Birch and sitter, Jonae Boozer are missing. As of now, Boozer is the prime suspect.

Police said they believe Boozer may be in Prince George or Montgomery county. She is Black, 5 feet, 4 inches tall, and has a blond mohawk hairstyle and piercings in her lips, nose and eyebrow.

Read more at The Grio.

RELATED:

Man Says He Was Kidnapped By Gang To Give Up Shaq Sex Tape

Former St. Louis Ram Charged With Kidnapping, Sexual Assault

Adams, who began his career as a number runner, graduated to becoming the city’s first prominent Black venture capitalist, bankrolling numerous black-owned businesses.

He died of pneumonia last week.

Read more at The Root

RELATED:

15-year-old whiz kid graduates from Baltimore University

“The Attorney-General’s kind remarks are noted and appreciated,” he wrote. “I’ve spoken to Ed Burns and we are prepared to go to work on season six of The Wire if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanising drug prohibition.”

Simon further claimed that the government’s current anti-drug policies are “nothing more or less than a war on our underclass.”

Read The Whole Story

RELATED STORIES

Fiending! Attorney General Holder Begs “The Wire” For More Shows

Eric Holder Joins “The Wire” Actors To Fight Drug Abuse

The Baltimore Sun reports:

Hobson-Powell gave up a fledgling basketball career when he began college three years ago, commuted more than an hour each way from his home in Northwest Washington after transferring last fall from Howard University and once completed 27 credits in a single semester while shuttling between classes at Howard, Montgomery College and the Internet.

Powell will be going to law school in the fall, and is considering medical school after that!

Check out an interview below with Powell while he was still a student at Howard.

RELATED:

“Urban Video Game Academy” Gives Baltimore Students New Careers

Black Harvard Graduate Gets His Own Radio Show On Oprah Network

BALTIMORE — A woman who played a Baltimore drug gang assassin in HBO’s “The Wire” has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to sell heroin.

Felicia “Snoop” Pearson entered the plea Tuesday morning during an arraignment in Baltimore Circuit Court. An Aug. 9 jury trial date was set.

Pearson is one of 64 people charged in March in “Operation Usual Suspects,” a joint state-federal prosecution of an alleged east Baltimore drug gang. She is charged in an indictment with conspiring with two men to distribute heroin.

The 30-year-old Pearson was released weeks later on $50,000 bond with electronic monitoring that has allowed her to leave the state to pursue her acting career.

She declined to comment after the arraignment. Attorney Benjamin Sutley says it’s too early to know if the three will be tried together.

RELATED:

Snoop from “The Wire” maintains her innocence in drug arrest

RELATED: Black Presidents in the movie theaters

First of all, Felicia’s entitled to the presumption of innocence. And I would note that a previous, but recent drug arrest that targeted her was later found to be unwarranted and the charges were dropped. Nonetheless, I’m certainly sad at the news today. This young lady has, from her earliest moments, had one of the hardest lives imaginable. And whatever good fortune came from her role in The Wire seems, in retrospect, limited to that project. She worked hard as an actor and was entirely professional, but the entertainment industry as a whole does not offer a great many roles for those who can portray people from the other America. There are, in fact, relatively few stories told about the other America.

Read The Whole Story

RELATED STORIES

OPINION: Uplifting “Treme” Could Surpass “The Wire” In Quality

“The Wire” Comes To Harvard

The Wire: Streets is Watching | GIANTLife

VIDEO: On the Set with “The Wire” Cast

Baltimore’s police commissioner, Frederick H. Bealefeld has made a harsh public criticism of the HBO TV Show, “The Wire” for the way it portrays Baltimore. The Baltimore Sun reports:

“I heard all this stuff about, ‘Well there’s crime shows about L.A., about New York, about Miami,’” Bealefeld said. “You know what Miami gets in their crime show? They get detectives that look like models, and they drive around in sports cars. And you know what New York gets, they get these incredibly tough prosecutors, competant cops that solve the most crazy, complicated cases.”

“What Baltimore gets is this reinforced notion that it’s a city full of hopelessness, despair and dysfunction. There was very little effort – beyond self-serving – to highlight the great and wonderful things happening here, and to indict the whole population, the criminal justice system, the school system.”

Read The Whole Story

RELATED STORIES

“The Wire” Comes To Harvard

What Obama Learned From The Wire

The most recent bogus stop was on Sunday, when police say the man stopped a woman and made off with her driver’s license. Police say the man was wearing knee-high boots and a shoulder-length black wig.

Erin Hartz tells The Baltimore Sun that she was pulled over by the man last month. She says he looked at her driver’s license and registration and warned her not to speed.

Hartz says the man was wearing a ginger bob-style wig, an oversized police hat and pleated pants that “poofed” at the hips.

She says the incident reminded her of a John Waters movie and that “this would only happen in Baltimore.”

RELATED STORIES

Off-Duty Baltimore Cop Killed Over Parking Space

High School Basketball Star Shot And Killed In Baltimore

BALTIMORE — The search continues for Phylicia Simone Barnes, a star high school student from North Carolina who went missing in Baltimore last week. The 16-year-old honor student from Monroe, N.C., was visiting her half-sister when she disappeared three days after Christmas.

Phylicia was last heard from Dec.28 via Facebook when she posted a note saying she was at her sister’s apartment with her sister’s boyfriend. The 5 foot 8 inch straight-A, African-American student has been missing ever since.

“I was going to turn this city upside down to find my child, and I was going to leave no stone unturned,” Russell Barnes, Phylicia’s father, told ABC News.

Aside from Baltimore and her hometown near Charlotte, N.C., Phylicia’s disappearance has garnered little media attention, raising the issue of a double-standard because of her race.

The dissappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway while on vacation in Aruba nearly six years ago sparked a media frenzy. But news coverage has been relatively sparse in Phylicia’s case.

Speaking about the lack of national media coverage, the Baltimore Police spokesman said, “Birds are falling out of the sky in Arkansas and two headed calves, and this girl may lose her life.”

The Baltimore Mayor’s office says it shares the concern about the possible existence of a double-standard in the coverage of Phylicia’s disappearance but is more distressed about the case because of its heartbreaking nature.

“You see other cases that get attention, other kids that go missing and its immediately up on television and you know, I know there’s frustration,” said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

Nearly 9,000 people have joined a Facebook page called, “Pray for Phylicia Barnes.” The charter school Phylicia attends in North Carolina, Union Academy, held a vigil for the promising student.

“Just so scared, just praying that she’s going to turn up and she’ll be safe and sound,” Lindsey Helms, a student at Union Academy, said.

Her father said, “Phylicia had a bright spirit and just a glow about herself. Our greatest hope is that she can walk in the door and … be reunited with her family.”

Read more at ABC.com

RELATED:

Missing NC Teen

Maryland — Carmelo Anthony’s Sister, Michelle Anthony has died at age 32 in Baltimore. She died of a pre-existing medical condition and leaves behind 4 children.

Carmelo Anthony has left the Denver Nuggets to join his family.

RELATED STORIES

Four Reasons Why Carmelo Anthony Will Remain A Nugget

Carmelo Anthony Says His Twitter Account Was Hacked For Kat Stacks Threat

The company said in a statement that Baltimore has claimed racist, predatory lending practices at Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) which they say has led to increased foreclosures for a certain demographic.

Read The Whole Story

RELATED STORIES

Wells Fargo Accepting Applications For Black Business Owner Award

UPDATE: Tavis Smiley Drops Wells Fargo, Makes Statement

Baltimore officials say black male students are the main reason behind the city school system’s improvement in its graduation and dropout rates.

Over the last three years, black males have improved their graduation rate and decreased their dropout rate at a faster pace than city school students as a whole.

The graduation rate for black males still lags behind the system as a whole. About 57 percent of black male students graduated in the most recent school year, compared to 66 percent of all students.

In 2007, there were 1,537 black male graduates and almost as many dropouts. But this year, there were 1,724 graduates and only 593 dropouts.

City schools chief Andres Alonso says only Houston has seen similar improvements over the last three years, and national education experts say the city’s achievement is unusual.

RELATED:

HS Basketball Star shot and killed in Baltimore

Share this post on Facebook! CLICK HERE:

The Associated Press reported that a preliminary police investigation has revealed that a suspect struck the off-duty officer with a large rock or piece of concrete.

Detective Brian Stevenson, an 18-year-veteran, was celebrating with a friend for his birthday on Sunday. He would have turned 38 today.

After sustaining head trauma, Stevenson was taken to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, where he later died.

The suspects, described as a man and a woman, fled the scene. Interviews with witnesses on the scene led investigators to “people of interest,” who have been taken into custody, according to the Associated Press.

Read entire article at NBCwashington.com

Share this post on Facebook! CLICK HERE:

There are few details at the moment, but court records show Mario — whose full name is Mario Dewar Bennett — is charged with one count of second-degree assault. Sources said they were called to the 900 block of Fell St. after the singer’s mother, Shawntia Hardaway called police.

At 12:53 a.m., an officer was dispatched to the 900 block of Fells St for a call for a “mental case breaking up property” inside an apartment. Officers met Hardaway in the front lobby — she was crying and appeared very upset, officers wrote. She said Mario was “throwing and damaging property” in the apartment they share, and had pushed her using his hands and forearms, causing minor pain. When police went up to the apartment, they found a damaged china cabinet and the floor littered with broken glass. A mirror was broken, and there was a large hole in a closet door.

She said it was the second such time he had put his hands on her in recent days — on Sept. 27, she said, they got into an argument in which he pushed her “eight feet into a living room wall, where Ms. Hardaway hit her head on the wall,” police wrote in charging documents.

Read The Whole Story

RELATED STORIES

NAACP Launches Push To Catch Baltimore Rapists

NBA All-Star Accused Of Being “Major Marijuana Supplier”

Click here to join the 2011 Black History Month contest

Share this post on Facebook! CLICK HERE:

The Baltimore Sun is reporting that a man who was recently released from prison is being accused of stabbing one man to death and injuring seven others.

A 28-year-old man who was recently released from prison was charged Saturday night in what police described as a bloody melee that left one dead and seven others wounded at a high school reunion in Cherry Hill earlier the same day.

James L. Dixon of 900 Kevin Road was charged with fatally stabbing Carrington McNutt and injuring at least seven others at a Walbrook High School reunion for classes 1995 through 2005 at the Patapsco Arena on Annapolis Road, said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman.

“One individual basically went on a stabbing rampage,” he said.

Read The Whole Story

RELATED STORIES

High School Basketball Star Shot And Killed In Baltimore

7 Die In Holiday Weekend Shootings In Baltimore

Montgomery County Police say a man arrested for throwing semen on a woman in July is also responsible for a similar assault that occurred at another store in November 2009.

It happened at the Michael’s craft store in the Kentland’s Shopping Center.

Police say the woman was walking through aisles of the Michael’s craft store when she noticed the suspect following her. At one point, the suspect walked right behind the woman and she felt something strike her back. An unknown substance was left on her back and the floor. The suspect then left the store without making a purchase.

Video surveillance footage from Michael’s shows the suspect walking through the store.

Read more at MyFoxDC

Click here to view photos:

RELATED:

HIV Infector, Nushawn Williams, Set To Be Released From Prison

Detroit School Official Charged With Fondling Himself During Meeting

From Baltimoresun.com:

A 21-year-old Reisterstown woman threw her newborn baby out of a window last week, a Baltimore County police spokesman said.

Rebecca Himes of the 100 block of Virginia Ave. gave birth to a baby in the bathroom of her home Thursday, placed the baby into a plastic bag and threw the bag out the window into some bushes, said Lt. Robert McCullough.

Click here to read more

Click to see our gallery of children and violence

RELATED:

Baltimore’s Crime Drops as War on Drugs Becomes War on Violence

Opinion: The Myth of Black on Black Crime

WASHINGTON — A minor earthquake shook residents awake in the DC area early Friday.

The quake hit at 5:04 a.m. EDT and had a magnitude of 3.6.

The quake was centered in the Rockville, Md., area said Randy Baldwin, a physicist with U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center.

Police in Washington and in nearby Montgomery County, Md., said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

On the U.S. Geological Survey’s website, people as far away as Pennsylvania and West Virginia reported feeling the quake.

Lucille Baur, public information officer for the Montgomery County Police Department, said the department received a lot of calls from people wondering what had happened.

Debby Taylor Busse said she was in the basement of her home in Vienna, Va., in Fairfax County when she felt the quake hit. She was already awake watching television, but her husband had been asleep in a second-floor bedroom when the tremor woke him.

“I didn’t know what it was,” Busse said. “I have never been in an earthquake before. It felt like an airplane going overhead or thunder, but it wasn’t coming from above.”

She said it lasted just a few seconds and compared it to a strong thunder strike — enough to rattle the house, but not enough to knock anything over.

Brett Snyder, who lives in Gaithersburg, Md., told AP Radio he was awakened by the quake but said it wasn’t a big deal.

“It happened very instantaneously and then off to a day’s work,” Snyder said.

Click here to view photos:

RELATED:

Earthquake Accentuated Wealth Gap In Haiti

Haiti Struggles As Earth Quake Debris Clean-Up Continues

From BaltimoreSun.Com:

Basketball coaches began noticing John Crowder when he was in sixth grade. By eighth grade, he stood 6 foot 7, was still growing and was ranked nationally. This spring he attracted the attention of college coaches along the Eastern Coast.

But in an all-too-familiar Baltimore story, a promising future for the forward from Our Lady of Mount Carmel High School vanished during an overnight shooting. Police found the 17-year-old bleeding in a yard in Northeast Baltimore about 1 a.m. Monday. He died of gunshot wounds a few hours later at Johns Hopkins Hospital, police said.

Click here to read more.

Click here to view photos:

RELATED:

Murder Of Derion Albert’s Classmate Is Caught On Tape

7 Die In Holiday Weekend Shootings In Baltimore

The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office announced today the sentencings of two gang members, including the infamous Ronnie Thomas, known as Skinny Suge, the producer of the Stop Snitching videos (link goes to YouTube, video contains offensive language).

In the video, Thomas said, “I can say what I want. F— the police. F— Patricia Jessamy. I can’t go to jail for that. This is how I feel. What y’all getting me for? Freedom of speech?” What they got him for was racketeering conspiracy, and he got nearly the maximum sentence.

The video came to symbolize Baltimore’s witness intimidation culture, and got NBA star and native Baltimorean Carmelo Anthony in hot water for a cameo. The player later apologized and said he didn’t endorse its message.

Click Here For More

Take a look at our Black Hollywood photo gallery below:

RELATED STORIES

OPINION: Should Black People START Snitching?

Al Sharpton Launches Start Snitching Campaign

Don’t forget to check out NewsOne’s Pics Of The Week!

BALTIMORE – A convicted sex offender with a tattoo of Adolf Hitler on his midsection is scheduled to go on trial Tuesday in what authorities say was an unprovoked beating of an elderly black fisherman.

Calvin Lockner faces charges including armed carjacking and armed robbery in the beating of James Privott (pruh-VAHT’) last August while the victim was fishing in a south Baltimore park. Court documents show Lockner confessed to the beating and said it wouldn’t have happened if the man had been white.

Lockner will be tried alongside 18-year-old Zachary Watson. Watson told police he didn’t participate in the beating. A second teenager had his case moved to juvenile court.

Lockner is an avowed white supremacist who’s been incarcerated for most of the past decade.

RELATED STORIES

ROUNDUP: Teabaggers Brawl With White Supremacists And Anti-Racists

“I ‘Swastika’ Obama” Carved Into Massachusetts Golf Course

BALTIMORE — Police are investigating a series of shootings that left seven people dead and three more injured over a violent Memorial Day weekend in Baltimore.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says there have been ten shootings since Friday.

In two of the fatal shootings, police have identified persons of interest, and charges are pending against one of them.

Text continues after gallery …

Guglielmi says the department is responding with extra patrols, special deployments of plainclothes officers, and additional homicide detectives.

He says most of the shootings appear to be related to drug activity, while one of them appeared to be a domestic dispute.

RELATED STORIES

Baltimore’s Crime Drops As War On Drugs Becomes War On Violence

Baltimore Mayor, Sheila Dixon, Will Resign

From WBALTV.com:

BALTIMORE –The Rev. Al Sharpton stopped in Baltimore to support a proposal to create a black cultural arts and entertainment district in the city.  Sharpton was the guest of radio talk show host and former state Sen. Larry Young at the downtown rally. Several hundred people turned out at the War Memorial Building to voice their support for the proposed district.

Click here to view photos.

“If Baltimore can find a way to develop the harbor, if they can find a way to develop casinos, they can find a way to develop symbols of self respect, and self worth and self regard for the children of Baltimore city,” Sharpton said. “You made deals for the stadium, you made deals for developers. Now let’s make a deal for the children of Baltimore.”

The Baltimore Arts, Culture and Entertainment Consortium has its eye on real estate just south of M&T Bank Stadium.

The group said that with the help of state and local tax breaks, and private funding, transforming the area into a family-friendly district is achievable. It could include a recreation center, a senior center, book stores, a concert hall, a comedy club, boutique shops, night clubs and other businesses.

Click here to read more.

RELATED STORIES

Sharpton And Phoenix Mayor To Lead March Against Immigration Law

Sharpton Sermon Rocks Church Celebration

BALTIMORE – In a blighted west Baltimore neighborhood, Lt. Ian Dombroski turns his unmarked police car around a corner and sees several men standing outside a liquor store. They scatter immediately.

Dombroski knows they’re probably selling drugs, but he keeps driving. Five years ago, he said, officers who happened upon a similar scene wouldn’t take such a selective approach.

“We’d all jump out, grab all the junkies, find out who had the drugs on ‘em, lock ‘em up, and that might be three or four drug arrests right there,” Dombroski said. “And we’d go, ‘Good, those are numbers.’”

But under Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, officers in one of the nation’s most violent cities are no longer being told to beef up arrest statistics. The number of arrests has declined the past two years. Yet homicides and shootings are down, too — to totals not seen since the late 1980s.

Officers familiarize themselves with a list of 120 dangerous criminals and patrol where they live, talking to them and working acquaintances for tips. The serving of arrest warrants has been reprioritized to focus on people with violent backgrounds. Gun offenders are also required to register with the city, much like sex offenders do in many places.

“I’m not trying to win the drug war,” Bealefeld said. “I’m out to win the war on violence and deal effectively with violence.”

Experts and other police leaders don’t see Bealefeld as an innovator, exactly, but he’s notable for his focus on guns. He rejected a zero tolerance policy for minor offenses that the department followed in the early 2000s, which calls for enforcement of quality-of-life crimes to prevent more serious offenses.

“I consider possessing a gun on the streets of this city, illegally, a crime of violence,” Bealefeld said.

Criminologists caution against assuming a correlation between policing strategies and crime statistics, which can be affected by demographics and other trends. Nonetheless, the numbers in Baltimore are encouraging.

Homicides dipped from 282 in 2007 — Bealefeld took over in July of that year — to 234 in 2008. While murders held steady in 2009, with 238 slayings, nonfatal shootings dropped from 582 in 2008 to 450 last year. And this year, with 64 slayings through May 11, the city was on pace for 178 homicides. That would be the lowest total since 1977.

The department also arrested 4,000 fewer people in 2009 than it did in 2008. Last year’s arrest total was down by nearly 20,000 from 2002, when the city was at the height of the zero tolerance strategy.

A grim reality remains: In a city of about 636,000 people, the murder rate per 100,000 residents last year was 37.4, meaning the home of crime dramas “Homicide” and “The Wire” remains one of the nation’s deadliest cities.

David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, places Bealefeld among a handful of police chiefs willing to acknowledge that the strategies their departments used for decades were ineffective, even counterproductive. He’s confident that the big drops under Bealefeld are no coincidence.

It’s common sense, Kennedy said, to focus on a small number of dangerous people instead of rounding up people for “low-level nonsense.”

A specialized unit in Baltimore takes the lead in building cases against the “bad guys with guns,” as Bealefield calls them. Officers in the Violent Crimes Impact Section carry lists of violent repeat offenders — people with gun arrests or convictions in their backgrounds.

About 120 are on the list, and many know it, said Col. Dean Palmere, who oversees VCIS. That’s intentional — if criminals know police want to catch them with a gun, they’re less likely to carry one.

Officers try to talk to the people on the list when they see them, but that rarely leads to an arrest. Instead, officers work informants and friends. Dombroski, a VCIS platoon leader, cites a recent case in which a repeat offender was caught with three guns in his house. The break came when police arrested a friend on a drug charge, and she tipped off officers to the home where the guns were found.

Witnesses to homicides or shootings are asked about known violent offenders, and if police can peg a criminal charge on a witness, all the better. Baltimore residents aren’t known for volunteering information to police, but that changes if you “catch ‘em dirty,” as Dombroski says. Witnesses who cooperate can see the charges against them dropped or their punishment reduced.

The department has also prioritized how it serves the city’s more than 42,000 open arrest warrants. Someone with a violent background gets pushed to the top of the list, even if he’s wanted for a nonviolent offense such as failing to appear in court, meaning the warrant can be served months earlier.

In 2008, Baltimore became the second city, after New York, to create a gun offender registry that functions much like a sex offender registry. Gun offenders must register their addresses after being released, and officers do frequent home checks. About 370 people are on the registry, and since it began, only 3 percent of registrants have been arrested for new gun crimes.

The drop in shootings means city prosecutors are getting fewer gun cases, but also better ones. Prosecutors dropped charges in 25 percent of felony gun possession and nonfatal shooting cases last year, down from 40 percent the year before, according to the State’s Attorney’s Office.

Bealefeld says these efforts have contributed to a long-overdue reduction in crime. While violent crime has dropped throughout urban America since the early 1990s, Baltimore was slow to share in that success. That’s in part because it’s had what Kennedy calls “a series of, for the most part, relatively foolish criminal justice strategies,” including the zero-tolerance policy.

Some residents of the city’s poorest neighborhoods say they’ve noticed a difference since Bealefeld took over. Linda Moyd has lived for the past decade in Gilmor Homes, a notorious, sprawling housing project on the city’s west side. She said she feels much safer than 10 years ago, even though she recently called 911 to report a stabbing outside her home.

“It was a mess when I first came,” Moyd said. “It was like they thought it was legal to shoot guns.”

RELATED STORIES

OPINION: Why Elite Colleges Offer Courses On “The Wire”

“Urban Video Game Academy” Gives Baltimore Students New Careers

From The Baltimore Sun

Baltimore police are investigating how an 18-month-old girl contracted gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease, and are trying to determine whether a family acquaintance is responsible, according to a department spokesman.

No criminal charges have been filed. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said detectives are focusing on a suspect based on statements from the infant’s parents. “We are working as fast as we can with the Baltimore Child Abuse Center,” Guglielmi said.

Click Here For More

RELATED STORIES

27 Arrested In Apartment Complex Where 7-Year-Old Was Gang-Raped

Fugees Director Accused Of Beating, Raping And Impregnating Daughters

From Slate.com:

Among the police officers and drug dealers and stickup men and politicians and dockworkers and human smugglers and teachers and students and junkies and lawyers and journalists who populate the late, great HBO series The Wire, there is one academic. His name is David Parenti and he teaches social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He is not a major character, but he appears throughout the show’s fourth season—an earnest, well-meaning man defined in part by his naïveté about the inner-city kids whose lives he wants to improve. As for Johns Hopkins, Baltimore’s best-known university, it only comes up as a place where the show’s police officers can get cushy campus security jobs after they retire. Academia, in other words, is not a culture that the show’s creators, David Simon and Ed Burns, betray much interest in exploring.

Text continues after gallery…

Academics, on the other hand, can’t seem to get enough of The Wire.

Click here to read more.

RELATED:

What Obama Learned From “The Wire”

Harvard Will Have Class On “The Wire”

“The Wire” Creator Takes On New Orleans

BALTIMORE – In a remarkably sharp face-to-face confrontation, President Barack Obama chastised Republican lawmakers Friday for opposing him on taxes, health care and the economic stimulus, while they accused him in turn of brushing off their ideas and driving up the national debt.

The president and GOP House members took turns questioning and sometimes lecturing each other for more than hour at a Republican gathering in Baltimore. The Republicans agreed to let TV cameras inside, resulting in an extended, point-by-point interchange that was almost unprecedented in U.S. politics, except perhaps during presidential debates.

With voters angry about partisanship and legislative logjams, both sides were eager to demonstrate they were ready to cooperate, resulting in the GOP invitation and Obama’s acceptance. After polite introductions, however, Friday’s exchange showed that Obama and the Republicans remain far apart on key issues, and neither side could resist the chance to challenge and even scold the other.

Obama said Republican lawmakers have attacked his health care overhaul so fiercely, “you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot.” His proposals are mainstream, widely supported ideas, he said, and they deserve some GOP votes in Congress.

“I am not an ideologue,” the president declared.

But Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., pointedly asked Obama: “What should we tell our constituents who know that Republicans have offered positive solutions” for health care, “and yet continue to hear out of the administration that we’ve offered nothing?”

Obama showed little sympathy, disputing Price’s claim that a Republican plan would insure nearly all Americans without raising taxes.

“That’s just not true,” said Obama. He called such claims “boilerplate” meant to score political points.

At times it seemed more like Britain’s “question time” — when lawmakers in the House of Commons trade barbs with the prime minister — than a meeting between a U.S. president and members of Congress.

Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana defended Price on the health care proposals. He said a GOP agenda booklet given to Obama at the start of the session “is backed up by precisely the kind of detailed legislation that Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi and your administration have been busy ignoring for 12 months.”

Obama shot back that he had read the Republican proposals and that they promise solutions that can’t be realized.
In another barbed exchange, the president said some Republican lawmakers in the audience had attended ribbon-cutting ceremonies for projects in their districts funded by the 2009 stimulus package that they voted against.
Pence said Obama was trying to defend “a so-called stimulus that was a piecemeal list of projects and boutique tax cuts.”
Obama replied, “When you say they were boutique tax cuts, Mike, 95 percent of working Americans got tax cuts.”
“This notion that this was a radical package is just not true,” he said.

Republicans are feeling energized after winning a Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts, and Obama is trying to refocus his stalled agenda more on jobs than health care. With Obama at a podium facing a hotel conference room full of Republicans, both sides jumped to the debate.

“It was the kind of discussion that we frankly need to have more of,” said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia.

“I’m having fun, this is great,” Obama said when Pence asked if he had time for more questions.
“So are we,” said Pence.

Some Republicans prefaced their questions with lengthy recitations of conservative talking points. The president sometimes listened impassively but sometimes broke in.

“I know there’s a question in there somewhere, because you’re making a whole bunch of assertions, half of which I disagree with,” Obama said to Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, whom he mistakenly called “Jim.”

Obama, a former law school professor, launched into lectures of his own at times. He warned lawmakers from both parties against demonizing a political opponent, because voters might find it incomprehensible if the two sides ever agree on anything.

“We’ve got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes, because it boxes us in in ways that makes it difficult for us to work together because our constituents start believing us,” Obama said. “So just a tone of civility instead of slash-and-burn would be helpful.”

Republicans sat attentively for the most part. There was some grumbling when Obama remarked — after being pressed about closed-door health care negotiations — that much of the legislation was developed in congressional committees in front of television cameras.

“That was a messy process,” Obama said.

GOP lawmakers pressured him to support a presidential line-item veto for spending bills and to endorse across-the-board tax cuts. Obama said he was ready to talk about the budget proposal, though he disputed accusations that his administration was to blame for big increases in deficit spending. And he demurred on the idea of cutting everyone’s taxes, saying with a smile that billionaires don’t need tax cuts.

In his opening remarks, Obama criticized what he said was a Washington culture driven by opinion polls and nonstop political campaigns.

“I don’t believe that the American people want us to focus on our job security, they want us to focus on their job security,” he said.

The president acknowledged that Republicans have joined Democrats in some efforts, such as sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. But he said he was disappointed and perplexed by virtually unanimous GOP opposition to other programs, such as the economic stimulus bill.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said of the event, “In some places I kind of felt like I was in my high school assembly being lectured by my principal. In others, I felt like he was listening.”

RELATED STORIES

Obama Reassembles 2008 Team To Confront GOP In Midterm Elections

Obama Urges Scaled-Back Health Care Bill In Wake Of Mass. GOP Win

There is a new school in Baltimore that uses video games to give disadvantaged students careers in video game development and design. They recently received news coverage for their efforts.

Urban Video Game Academy featured on CBS, WJZ-TV from Mikey Digital on Vimeo.

Here is a list of their objectives.

1. better prepare disadvantaged youth for college-level study in video game design and related fields such as computer science, digital art and engineering;
2. excite and inform disadvantaged youth about career alternatives in the video game design industry and related fields such as computer science, digital art and engineering;
3. instill in disadvantaged youth a positive self image and teach them teamwork, leadership skills, positive social interaction and good communication skills;
4. provide after-school and weekend activities that will keep disadvantaged youth engaged in productive activities; and
5. encourage related businesses and public organizations to support these efforts.

From The Baltimore Sun

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon entered an Alford plea to one count of perjury and pledged to tender her resignation effective Feb. 4 as part of an agreement settling the active criminal cases against her.

The plea means that Dixon acknowledges that prosecutors had enough evidence to find her guilty of charges related to not disclosing gifts from a developer doing business with the city.

Under an agreement between defense attorneys and prosecutors and agreed to by Judge Dennis Sweeney, Dixon will be sentenced to up to four years of unsupervised probation, and will be required to perform 500 hours of community service. Dixon must also contribute $45,000 to charity.

Click Here For More

RELATED STORIES

Baltimore Mayor Convicted Of Stealing Gift Cards Meant For Poor

Baltimore Mayor Indicted On Theft And Perjury Charges

A business in Baltimore is offering Jesus Christ bail bonds. Some people find their commercial funny, while others think they are trying to profit off the name of Jesus.

From The Baltimore Sun

A Baltimore County woman alleged in a court filing last week that Ravens linebacker-defensive end Terrell Suggs knocked her down and spilled bleach on her last month after an argument over game-day tickets, records show.

Candace Williams, 26, who identifies herself as Suggs’ fiancee and the mother of his two children, received a temporary protective order Friday requiring Suggs to stay away from her and to vacate their Windsor Mill home until a District Court hearing this Friday. Suggs, 27, who suffered a knee injury in the Nov. 16 game against the Cleveland Browns and has not played since, was inactive for Monday night’s game against the Packers and did not travel with the team to Green Bay.

She said Suggs said she had hurt his arm and began yelling obscenities at her, and Williams said she spat on his chest. She wrote that she heard one of Suggs’ friends, who was present in the home, say, “Oh no, Sizz, come on, don’t do that.” When she turned around, according to her complaint, he knocked her to the ground and sat on top of her, grabbing her neck and holding an open bottle of bleach over her.

Williams wrote that Suggs used an obscenity and said he was going to “drown [her] with this bleach.”

She put her hands over the cap, but the cleaner spilled onto her and their son, she wrote. He then told her to get out of the house, dressed and left for the game, she wrote.

Click Here For More

RELATED STORIES

NFL Star Being Investigated For Champagne Bottle Assault

NFL’s Braylon Edwards Charged With Assaulting Lebron James’ Friend