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While the three-year spike in violent crime in Baltimore draws most of the attention, business owners across the city have suffered a similar increase in commercial robberies. Such crime has risen 88 percent in the last five years, from 560 commercial robberies in 2013 to more than 1,000 last year. Business owners are also complaining of threats outside their stores: drug dealing, intimidation, stabbings and shootings. They’re fighting back with security measures — guards, surveillance cameras, door buzzer systems — moving out of the city or, in some cases, shutting down altogether. “Our members are very concerned,” said Cailey Locklair...

Abbas, 82, will be returning to the West Bank on Friday after what officials described as "ordinary" checks in the US city of Baltimore. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday said he received “positive and assuring” results for medical examinations he underwent at hospital in the United States The PA president underwent routine medical checks on Thursday at a hospital in Maryland, according to a Palestinian official. “Praise God all of the results are positive and assuring,” Abbas said in an interview with official PA television. The Wafa report did not provide details about which examinations Abbas underwent. Abbas...

Baltimore’s highest-ever per capita homicide rate in 2017 also made it the deadliest big city in the country, USA Today reported Monday. Though official data from the FBI won’t be available until later in the year, USA Today reviewed the homicide rates in the nation’s 50 largest cities and Baltimore came out on top. The 342 homicides the city experienced in 2017 were a 17 percent increase over the prior year, and translated to a rate of 56 killed per 100,000 people. That easily outpaced New Orleans and Detroit, which both had about 40 killings per 100,000 people, according to...

The collective homicide toll for America’s 50 biggest cities dipped slightly in 2017, a USA TODAY analysis of crime data found. The FBI won’t publish its annual comprehensive crime report until later this year, but an early review of police department crime data shows that killings decreased by at least 1% in large jurisdictions compared with 2016.

“Two Baltimore detectives were convicted Monday of robbery and racketeering,” the Washington Post reported, “in a trial that laid bare shocking crimes committed by an elite police unit and surfaced new allegations of widespread corruption in the city’s police department.” Before reaching the guilty verdicts, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise presented the 12-member jury with “things more horrible in some cases than you ever could have imagined.” Test your own imagination: * Four police officers, already convicted of felonies, testified in amazing detail to routinely violating the rights of citizens in order to steal cash and property worth hundreds of...

As we’ve discussed here previously, a series of trials have been underway in Baltimore, Maryland alleging widespread corruption among members of the city’s Gun Trace Task Force. This week, the trial of two detectives associated with that unit, Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor, ended in convictions on serious charges which could lead to lengthy prison sentences. The details of the robberies they pulled off and the shocking abuse of police authority were stunning even to those who have seen some of the worst incidents of official corruption. (Baltimore Sun)

DALLAS - If you can’t win big, go small. That’s the strategy gaining momentum among criminal justice reformers in the age of Trump, as the federal government hardens its approach to law enforcement. Instead of pouring money and energy into squeezing change out of Washington, national civil rights organizations are teaming with local groups to push their agendas in county-level district attorney races, where a few thousand votes can determine who asserts the most influence over the local justice system. Picking their targets carefully, and crunching election data to influence pivotal voter blocs - and benefiting from the largesse of...

A college student said she flushed her emotional support hamster down the toilet after Spirit Airlines refused to let her bring her furry pet on the plane. Belen Aldecosea, 21, of Miami Beach, Florida, told the Miami Herald that she contacted Spirit Airlines before her flight from Baltimore to South Florida on Nov. 21, 2017, regarding traveling with her dwarf hamster, Pebbles. Aldecosea claimed the airline told her it was not a problem to bring her hamster on the flight.

One officer involved in the city's massive corruption scandal said officers kept the replicas "in case we accidentally hit somebody or got into a shootout, so we could plant them." Last week, the beginning of an explosive corruption trial involving eight members of Baltimore's elite Gun Trace Task Force revealed that a handful of Baltimore cops allegedly kept fake guns in their patrol cars to plant on innocent people—a failsafe they could use if they happened to shoot an unarmed suspect, the Baltimore Sun reports.Detective Maurice Ward, who's already pleaded guilty to corruption charges, testified that he and his partners...

Organizers of Baltimore’s third Ceasefire weekend spent much of Saturday looking back at recent violence, and forward to the potential for better days.Specifically, they hoped Sunday would arrive without anyone being killed on the city’s streets. The goal for Ceasefire, a movement advocating for a break in the pace of Baltimore homicides, remained the same as in two previous campaigns last year: A 72-hour stretch without death.This weekend’s Ceasefire has included music, rallies, discussions and memorials to the dead. Organizers listed nearly 20 events for Saturday alone and say their message is penetrating deeper into the community.Last year, there were...

A third of Baltimore Police recruits set to leave the academy and hit the streets lack a basic understanding of the laws governing constitutional policing and are being pushed through by the department nonetheless, according to the academy’s head of legal instruction. “We’re giving them a badge and a gun tomorrow, the right to take someone’s liberty, ultimately the right to take someone’s life if it calls for it, and they have not demonstrated they can meet [basic] constitutional and legal standards,” said Sgt. Josh Rosenblatt Friday. After a gun and badge ceremony at the academy Saturday, the recruits will...

BALTIMORE -- 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...

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.

**SNIP** Harold Martin is scheduled to plead guilty to one count of willful retention of national defense information on January 22 in a federal court in Baltimore, according to court filings, Reuters reported. Prosecutors said that the ex-NSA contractor spent two decades taking classified government information from the U.S. intelligence community and hoarded the secrets at his home in Maryland. The Justice Department accused Martin in 2016 of a “breathtaking” theft of government secrets. During a raid of his home, authorities seized dozens of laptops and digital devices in addition to six full bankers’ boxes worth of documents.

Baltimore public schools spend more than $15,000 per student per year, but Democrats Bill Ferguson and Zeke Cohen say they can’t afford to heat the classrooms in January NPR just published this article about how students at Baltimore’s public schools are freezing because the classrooms do not have any heat.One student said she couldn’t feel her feet.Another student said he was wearing four shirts, two hoodies, and a jacket.The same article also says that Democratic State Senator Bill Ferguson and Democratic City Councilman Zeke Cohen both said that the city’s public schools did not have enough money.But like all people who...

Baltimore students and teachers returned back to school from holiday break on Tuesday, expecting to start the new year with a bang, but that was an overly optimistic assumption for a collapsing school system, as they found their classrooms flooded and indoor temperatures barely above freezing. Starting off on the wrong foot, Baltimore’s school system could be on track for a turbulent year, in conjunction with a widespread cheating scandal. The recent cold snap in Maryland has sent temperatures across the state plunging. For instance, on Wednesday morning, Baltimore printed at 11 degrees. On Tuesday, the cold weather parazyled...

I remember a time in the not so distant past. The year was 2016, and racial tensions were running high. Freddie Gray was a resident of Baltimore, Maryland. He was arrested and notoriously died while in police custody. Soon afterward, Black Lives Matter and other activists became enraged. They began to protest the police department's presence in their neighborhoods over alleged brutality. Let's fast-forward a couple of years later to present day. Now we see over 300 murders in the City of Baltimore this past year. When I saw the number of murders, I was shocked. All of the intellectuals...

Baltimore has set a new per-capita homicide record as gunmen killed for drugs, cash, payback - or no apparent reason at all. A surge of homicides in the starkly divided city resulted in 343 killings in 2017, bringing the annual homicide rate to its highest ever – roughly 56 killings per 100,000 people. Baltimore, which has shrunk over decades, currently has about 615,000 inhabitants. [Snip] The main reasons are the subject of endless interpretation. Some attribute the increase to more illegal guns, the fallout of the opioid epidemic, or systemic failures like unequal justice and a scarcity of decent opportunities...

For the third year in a row, Baltimore, Md., has had more than 300 murders, reaching a new record of murders per number of residents in 2017. Some residents attribute the high murder rate to relaxed police patrols in the city following high-profile cases of police brutality. Officers have backed off in neighborhoods, like the one where Freddie Gray was arrested.

In an alley where a teenager became one of Baltimore’s latest bodies to fall, Erricka Bridgeford whispered prayers and directed smoke from burning sage in a gathering intended to transform spots where people are slain into a kind of sacred ground. The spiritually minded activist began to cry, letting her tears fall on asphalt where the 17-year-old boy she didn’t know was fatally shot the night before. She called out “You matter! You matter!” in a raw voice that came from somewhere deep inside her 5-foot-2 (155-centimeter) frame. Over the past year, the African-American woman from West Baltimore has become...