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DeRay Mckesson, the prominent civil rights activist who last month was named interim chief human capital officer for Baltimore's public school system after an unsuccessful mayoral bid, was among more than 100 people arrested in Baton Rouge amid nationwide protests against police killings late Saturday and early Sunday. In a widely-circulated image of his arrest, the Baltimore native is seen on one knee, staring directly ahead of him wearing a T-shirt reading "#StayWoke" — a Twitter hashtag used to urge awareness of the political, social and cultural realities facing minority communities in America. Mckesson turned 31 on Saturday; he was...

Dear Gov. Hogan, Rep. Delaney, Rep. Shuster … somebody: I'm Andy Bruns, and I run The Herald-Mail. I need to tell you something disturbing about myself. At least 10 times a week, I put a bullet in the revolver, spin the cylinder, put the gun to my head and pull the trigger. One of these days, the gun will go off. My friends and family will be devastated, and my children will be fatherless. No, I’m not suicidal. I, along with thousands of others in the region, simply commute to work on Interstate 81. The gun is only a metaphor,...

Haris Qamar, 25, from Burke in Fairfax County Virginia, operated roughly 60 radical Twitter accounts expressing pro-ISIS sentiment and actively traversed the city, taking pictures of targets in the District for an ISIS propaganda video. ... Qamar told the CW on numerous occasions that he supported the barbaric violence ISIS perpetrates, describing his approval of the, “bodies, blood and beheadings.” “Qamar allegedly said, ‘bye bye DC, stupid ass kufar, kill’em all,'” . ... “Qamar tweeted his prayer that Allah ‘give strength to the mujahideen to slaughter every single US military officer,

The U.S. Capitol was locked down Friday morning after reports that a woman entered one of the House office buildings with a gun. Police sent a message to those on the Capitol campus that the U.S. Capitol Building and Capitol Visitor Center are on "LOCKDOWN until further notice due to police activity. Update to follow." House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., declared the House in recess and canceled a 9:15 vote.

Already beset by a public outcry over the high-profile death of a black man in police custody and a rising murder rate, Baltimore's police department is facing another headache: it's shrinking fast. The number of uniformed officers in the mid-Atlantic city fell 6.1 percent last year and has shrunk by even more in the first half of this year, according to police data seen by Reuters and not previously reported. The fall in 2015 was the biggest decline in police numbers among nine comparably-sized U.S. cities reviewed by Reuters. The police force in Detroit and El Paso shrank by 4.9...

Already beset by a public outcry over the high-profile death of a black man in police custody and a rising murder rate, Baltimore's police department is facing another headache: it's shrinking fast. The number of uniformed officers in the mid-Atlantic city fell 6.1 percent last year and has shrunk by even more in the first half of this year, according to police data seen by Reuters and not previously reported. The fall in 2015 was the biggest decline in police numbers among nine comparably-sized U.S. cities reviewed by Reuters. The police force in Detroit and El Paso shrank by 4.9...

Business owners in White Marsh are suing Baltimore County and the state over highway improvements and environmental projects that they say have caused chronic flooding on their properties. The Maryland Transportation Authority spent $1.08 billion widening Interstate 95, adding express toll lanes and reconfiguring exit ramps between Interstate 895 and White Marsh Boulevard. Baltimore County has spent $15.5 million on White Marsh Run over the past two years. The work was intended to improve the flow of highway traffic through the area and reduce runoff into local waterways. County officials say the stream restoration was designed so that it could...

Baltimore came up empty-handed Wednesday when the federal government turned down Maryland's request for $231 million to fund two large transportation projects. The state had been seeking $76.1 million in federal assistance for an Interstate 95 interchange project to spur redevelopment at the 160-acre Port Covington site in South Baltimore where Sagamore Development wants to build a mixed-use project with a new Under Armour corporate campus, housing, retail and more. The state also came up short on its bid for $155 million to help alleviate the freight rail bottleneck caused by the obsolete design of the Howard Street Tunnel, which...

A judge in Maryland has granted a retrial to Adnan Syed, whose conviction for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend was the subject of the first season of the hit podcast “Serial,” Mr. Syed’s lawyer announced Thursday. C. Justin Brown, Mr. Syed’s lawyer, tweeted the news Thursday afternoon and confirmed by phone that the motion for a new trial was granted by Judge Martin Welch. The decision to grant Mr. Syed, 35, a retrial is a major victory for an inmate who has long maintained his innocence and has exhausted all other avenues of appeal. He was convicted of the...

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh recently joined 16 other state Attorneys General to launch, in their own words, “an unprecedented, multi-state effort to investigate and prosecute the ‘high-funded and morally vacant forces’ that have stymied attempts to combat global warming—starting with holding ExxonMobil and other industry giants accountable for fraud and suppression of key climate science.” In explaining his support of “AGs United for Clean Power,” Frosh said: “There is no doubt that climate change is an existential threat to our society and to our entire planet….I am deeply troubled that oil companies have contributed to the problem by intentionally...

Now Deray will work for the Baltimore School system. The Baltimore Sun reported: Civil rights activist and former Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson will return to his old stamping grounds at city school headquarters to lead the district’s office of human capital. Mckesson was named interim chief human capital officer on Tuesday by incoming schools CEO Sonja Santelises. It was the second and most high-profile cabinet appointment made by the new chief, who begins her tenure Friday. Santelises said Mckesson, who spent about two and a half years overseeing key reforms as a strategist and special assistant in the human...

Not many details yet, active shooter at Andrews.

An activist law professor with a penchant for weighing in on high-profile legal cases has called for Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby to be disbarred over her prosecution of six city police officers in the Freddie Gray case. John F. Banzhaf III, a public interest law professor at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, said he intended to mail a full complaint against Mosby to the Maryland Attorney Grievance Commission on Wednesday. In the written complaint, obtained by The Baltimore Sun, Banzhaf calls Mosby a "runaway prosecutor" who has violated ethics rules governing the conduct of attorneys in...

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Brexit vote is a concern to the mayors from around the country who are meeting in Indianapolis this weekend. More than 200 mayors are in town for the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors. They are here to discuss a number of issues of mutual concern. Leaders said the conference will focus on infrastructure spending and federal government support for law enforcement, among other things.Conference president Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said that the Brexit vote could have a big effect on cities.“I think it sends up a lot of red flags to our country and countries around...

The acquittal of Baltimore City police officer Caesar Goodson in the Freddie Gray case has led to a flurry of speculation as to whether state's attorney Marilyn Mosby will continue the prosecutions of Goodson's fellow officers, having so far lost two of three (with hung jury in the other). The speculation is misplaced. These trials are political, not legal in nature. Were Mosby a competent and ethical prosecutor, she would have never brought the cases. If she drops charges against the remaining officers she will be ruined politically, and she is not about to let ethical or legal scruples guide...

Former D.C. Congressman Walter Fauntroy, 83, is back in the U.S. after several years absence and, according to his attorney, he is in jail in Loudoun County, Va. Attorney Johnny Barnes said Fauntroy was arrested at Dulles Airport in Loudoun County Monday morning on his return from Dubai on an "unexpected" warrant from Prince George's County, Md. It involved Fauntroy's failure to appear in a court case in 2011 on allegations of fraud involving a 2009 Obama inauguration party that never took place.

A 20-year-old man who was seen in widely circulated photos squirting lighter fluid on a pile of propane cylinders during the rioting in Baltimore in April 2015 was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison. Donta Betts of Baltimore pleaded guilty in March to making a destructive device near the intersection of Pennsylvania and North avenues on April 27, 2015. He also pleaded guilty to shooting a woman in the leg over a $20 drug deal on July 2, 2015, federal prosecutors said in court Friday. "Donta Betts engaged in arson, looting, assault and other mayhem during the Baltimore riots,"...

After last year’s unrest in Baltimore, federal prosecutors vowed to bring rioters to justice. On Friday, they made good on their promise, sending one man to prison for 15 years. Prosecutors say 20-year-old Donta Betts was one of the key players in the Freddie Gray riots, looting, starting fires and even attacking police Squirting lighter fluid on a pile of propane cylinders, the infamous photo of Betts from the Freddie Gray riots went viral. He will now spend 15 years behind bars. “Donta Betts was a menace to society here in Baltimore. The scope of the criminal activity he was...

Baltimore had the highest increase in homicides in the nation last year, a criminologist commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice reported, with more than twice as many extra killings as the three cities that tied for second. The city suffered 127 more homicides in 2015 than in the previous year, Richard Rosenfeld wrote in "Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions," released this month by the Justice Department. Chicago, Houston and Milwaukee came in second with 61 more killings. Cleveland and Washington had 57 more.

Detective Dawnyell Taylor said in a daily log of case notes on the investigation that a prosecutor handed her a four-page, typed narrative at the courthouse just before she appeared before the grand jury. "As I read over the narrative it had several things that I found to be inconsistent with our investigation," Taylor wrote, adding: "I thought the statements in the narrative were misquoted."