Making a Mockery

Good to see that politicians can also get away with reckless behavior virtually unscated

House Majority Leader Kumar P. Barve pleaded guilty Thursday to drunken driving as part of plea agreement.

''I'm here to take full responsibility for my actions," Barve (D-Dist. 17) of Gaithersburg told the court. ''... I have learned from this situation and I will never do this again."

District Court Judge Mary C. Reece placed Barve, 49, on one year's unsupervised probation and fined him $1,000 with $800 suspended because it was a first-time offense.

He was arrested by Gaithersburg City Police at 11:43 p.m. Nov. 29, according to traffic citations. Barve was charged with driving while impaired and driving under the influence, which required the four-term delegate to stand trial.

He also was charged with failure to obey a traffic device and failure to drive right of center, each a $90 fine.

Sadly, Barve's slap on the wrist is pretty common in the world of drunk driving and criminal prosecution in Maryland, as Greg Kline pointed out with his experiences as an attorney.

Unfortunately, Barve would have been the perfect person to make an example of. He should go to jail for his offense (like many other convicted Drunk Drivers should also be sentenced to time in jail). But he isn't.

Instead of serving as an example of the consequences of one's actions, Kumar Barve serves as an example both of the nearly criminal negligence in our judicial system when it comes to punishing lawbreakers, and also as another sad example of the Democratic Chain Gang that is tainting the highest levels of the Maryland Democratic Party and Maryland State Government.

Cockamamie Leadership

Ellen Moyer's stewardship of Annapolis Government may be the only thing that makes Governor O'Malley look like he's got a clue:

The mayor of Annapolis says the national search for a new police chief is being postponed indefinitely to allow the interim chief to implement his vision for the agency.

Michael Pristoop, a former lieutenant in the Baltimore City Police Department, took over the department in May after Chief Joseph S. Johnson announced his retirement. Mayor Ellen O. Moyer, whose second and final term ends next year, said at the time that she was wary of selecting a permanent chief with the possibility that her successor would want to make his or her own choice.

But officials say Pristoop has so far won rave reviews from the community, and a consulting group commissioned last fall to study the department recommended that he be brought on permanently. Pristoop had already implemented or recognized many of the initiatives suggested by the group by the time the $60,000 report was presented.

Moyer postponed the search indefinitely last month in an memo to members of the city council's public safety committee, saying that "conducting a full national search for a police chief at this time may be detrimental to reorganization of the police department.

I think that it's great that they are going to leave the Acting Chief in charge for the time being. But what kind of cockamamie, half-brained leader decides to "indefinitely postpone" a search for a successor?

Either the Acting Chief is the new Chief...or he isn't. You can't indefinitely postpone a search while leaving somebody in the acting role due to the fact that it undermines the chain of the command and the authority of the individual in charge. Why should the rank and file Annapolis police officers take the Pristoop's reorganization and vision seriously if Moyer can run him out of town for a new chief at any time. But given Moyer's record on crime and police matters, it's hardly surprising.

Ellen Moyer could never be characterized as a leader worth of respect. But even this is a new low for her horrifically poor management of Annapolis during her term.

New tricks not working

Obviously transit riders still aren't feeling all that great about safety conditions on MTA facilities:

Some bus riders in Baltimore brace themselves before stepping aboard. They say they never know what might happen.

Even after transit and city officials vowed to make public transportation safer after a brawl in December that left a 26-year-old woman with broken facial bones, the experience of riding buses is far from serene, some regulars said yesterday.

"Sometimes kids get on the bus and your heart is pounding," said a nursing assistant who, fearing for her safety, gave only her Nigerian first name, Ebun, as she waited for the No. 27 bus in Hampden -- the same route on which the Dec. 4 assaults occurred. "You better keep quiet or you're going to get slammed. You pray to get off safe."

Well let's face it though, would you feel that much safer because of the meek changes to MTA's security posture following December's outbreak of transit violence?

The fact of the matter remains this: the new tricks MTA implemented in order to get the public off of their back regarding their catastrophic failures in keeping riders safe are doing little if anything to improve the safety of the system. What this means is that consumer confidence in MTA facilities and services is continuing to decline. And if that confidence continues to decline further, ridership will decrease and the MTA systems will become even more of a logistical and financial boondoggle than they already are.

It is becoming more and more apparent every day, as I have been calling for for months, that not one more red penny should go to expand MTA operations and that MTA should be completely privatized. At the very least and only as a short-term solution, the entire senior leadership of the MTA should be terminated and replaced with people who might actually care about providing a reliable, efficient, and safe public transit system. Because clearly at this moment in time nobody with any decision-making authority over at the MTA actually cares one bit about the safety of their customers, and that is unacceptable as a taxpayer of this state...

Nothing can help the MTA

This is well meaning, but......

A measure calling for tougher penalties for people who assault fellow passengers on public transit has been rejected by the Maryland House.

A House committee has voted down four bills proposed by a Baltimore Democrat to set mandatory minimum penalties for certain crimes on buses. Delegate Melvin Stukes says bus violence led to his proposals, but delegates' dislike of mandatory minimums sank his plan.

The Maryland Transit Administration can't properly keep their passengers safe with the laws already on the books. Even though I support stiffer penalties for all crimes, I doubt that they will alleviate the incompetence of MTA officials.

Crime Fighting by Press Conference

Well, this charade did little to solve gun violence in Baltimore:

The mayors of Baltimore and New York announced Wednesday that the two cities will start sharing information about illegal weapons they seize, creating a database that gets around a congressionally imposed restriction on information local departments can obtain about guns seized outside their borders.

Federal law gives cities only limited access to the national database that tracks guns used in crimes. The mayors hope that other cities along the Interstate 95 corridor will sign on, and by sharing the information they will be able to spot trends in regional gun trafficking that they say are invisible to them under the current system.

"This is the kind of system that the federal government should be doing, but they aren't," said New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, speaking at a news conference in the atrium of City Hall. "Cities are fighting crime in isolation. Congress has a treasure trove of data and we are not allowed to see it."

So....how is this going to stop people from being killed in our streets? It's not. The use of "illegal guns" by criminals in an illegal fashion is still illegal. Do these liberals really think that by sharing data that they are going to "solve" the use of illegal guns?

If the mayors of these cities, which does include the violence-plagued cities of Baltimore and Annapolis, are so hellbent on fixing crime, let's actually see something done to fix the problem. Change policing strategies. Get tough on crime. Encourage vigorous prosecution of accused criminals. Implement Project EXILE. And don't do dumb stuff like buy Segways like they did in Annapolis at the expense of actual crime fighting. Our friend Brian Gill has numerous examples of the idiocy in crime-fighting in Annapolis.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns is not interested in solving crime, but is merely a fringe group in favor of further restricting the rights of honest Americans to own firearms. Their discussion of "illegal guns" is nothing more than trying to put lipstick on the pig that is their crime fighting strategies. Many of the cities involved with Bloomberg and his cronies have severe crime problems. Maybe if they spent less time having press conferences and more time trying to fix the problems in their cities, these "illegal guns" wouldn't make as much of a difference...

Broken Record

I said before that the MTA's plan to reduce violence would not be effective, and it's certainly turning out to be that way:

Maryland Transit Administration Police and city police were seeking at least two young males who assaulted a 19-year-old man aboard a No. 8 bus Saturday night as it headed south on York Road from Towson toward the city, an MTA spokeswoman said.

About 11 p.m., several youths left the movies at Towson Commons on York Road, boarded the bus and became rowdy, said Jawauna Greene, the spokeswoman. She said that as their behavior became more disturbing, at least two of them assaulted the passenger for no apparent reason.

When is the O'Malley Administration, with their newfangled "law and order" focus, going to get serious about protecting those people who have to use mass transit on a regular basis? Because at the moment, I'm not sure anybody in the Administration gives a damn about the safety of these folks.

Right now, anybody who rides public transportation is extremely vulnerable. I just wonder if the O'Malley Administration is actually going to try and do something about it.

O'Malley: Tough on Checkbooks, not on crime

When O'Malley talks about being tough on crime, this is not what I think of:

With more inmates and fewer beds, Maryland's prison agency is considering alternatives to locking people up.

Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Gary Maynard says in a report to the General Assembly that more low-risk offenders may be released on parole, and that the use of home detention may be expanded.

Maynard also says the agency is expanding its use of technology enabling low- and moderate-risk offenders on parole or supervised probation to report through computer kiosks instead of in person.

Notice that Secretary Maynard did not say "non-violent offenders" but "low-risk offenders." Whatever that means.

Of course, the problem with these kind of odd little ideas is the fact that programs like these realistically do little to improve public safety, and certain do little to provide the punishment that incarceration is supposed to bring. It's bad enough that parole continues to exist, since it should be abolished for all criminals for all offenses. But this kind of "catch and release" program seems to address a serious problem by creating an even more serious problem for the working and middle class families that will live and work among these freshly released convicts everyday.

I just wonder how O'Malley can talk about making public safety a priority when his administration wants to put criminals back into our communities in this manner.

No end in sight for transit system violence

Will the violence on Baltimore area transit systems ever end?

In the latest of a series of violent incidents on Maryland Transit Administration property, a 14-year-old boy was shot and wounded on board a bus in West Baltimore this morning, according to city police.

Agent Donny Moses, a department spokesman, said the incident occurred about 12:45 a.m. on the No. 15 bus in the 1100 block of Poplar Grove St. He said the youth got into an argument with another male, who stepped off the bus at a stop, then leaned back in and fired a shot, hitting the boy in the leg.

In the latest of a series of violent incidents on Maryland Transit Administration property, a 14-year-old boy was shot and wounded on board a bus in West Baltimore this morning, according to city police.

Agent Donny Moses, a department spokesman, said the incident occurred about 12:45 a.m. on the No. 15 bus in the 1100 block of Poplar Grove St. He said the youth got into an argument with another male, who stepped off the bus at a stop, then leaned back in and fired a shot, hitting the boy in the leg.

This is just the latest in a series of violent incidents on Maryland Transit Administration operated systems. Problem is that, at least with last week's unveiling, the MTA has been asleep at the switch for months on the issue of safety on public transit:

Bus operators are being encouraged to call police and stop the vehicle at the first sign of disruptive behavior as part of a plan to curb violence on public transit, the Maryland Transit Administration announced yesterday.

Responding to a series of assaults recently on its buses in Baltimore, the MTA also said it would step up patrols by its police force and forge a closer working relationship with the Baltimore Police Department and the city school system.

Among other steps, the MTA plans to speed notification of city officers when an incident occurs on a bus or other transit facilities in the city. Under this change, city police would receive word of 911 calls involving MTA facilities at the same time as the transit agency's police force so the closest unit could respond.

"Whoever gets there first," said MTA Police Chief David C. Franklin. "It's not about egos. It's about making the system safe."

At a news conference at the Mondawmin Mall Transit Center, MTA Administrator Paul J. Wiedefeld described what he called a "comprehensive approach to disruptive behavior," called Operation: Safe Transport.

"We want to reassure citizens we have taken strong measures to protect public transit users," he said.

Of course, I have anything but confidence in the MTA to fix these problems. The fact of the matter is that public transit overseen by the MTA has never been safe, and few measures seem to ever be taken to make the system safer other than going beyond lip service. And lip service sounds exactly like what the MTA is proposing now, because a lot of these things make me think, "Wait, they didn't do this before?" Are the people over at the MTA really so clueless that they didn't think to step up its patrols until after several acts of violence on its system? Does anybody have a clue over there?

What's completely disheartening about the MTA is the fact that they seem to be oblivious to the issue of rider safety (much like they are with competent timetables) while at the same time asking for billions of dollars in new construction and improvements to expand MARC rail, and also to build new transit options in Baltimore City. However, the MTA clearly can't get it's act together to male their current system safe. So why should anybody expect the need for a multi-billion dollar expansion when people will likely avoid the system since the system can't provide them with a safe environment? And it's not just the issue of crime, but the issue of existing infrastructure that adds to this problem.

Clearly, I believe that privatization is what needs to happen here in order for the mass transit to get it's act together here in Maryland. However, since the likelihood of that happening in the immediate future is slim, I think that it is time that the General Assembly cut all new spending directed at the MTA until the MTA gets its house in order. Until public transit in Baltimore is relatively safe, we should not spend one penny more in state money to expand a system that cannot promise its riders a safe environment.

Common Sense on Sentencing is needed

State Sen. Nancy Jacobs is trying to do something you would think would've made sense from the get-go: truth in sentencing for sex offenders.

Maryland law should be changed so that sex offenders' sentences are not shortened for good behavior, a state senator said yesterday, days after a man with a record of burglaries involving sex offenses going back 30 years was found in a Dundalk boy's bedroom.

State Sen. Nancy Jacobs, a Republican who represents parts of Harford and Cecil counties, said that she intends to introduce a bill in the next legislative session that would prevent sex offenders from spending less time in jail because of good conduct, a practice known as diminution.

"You assume that when someone is sentenced to 25 years and it's a mandatory sentence without parole that that person is not going to see the light of day for 25 years," Jacobs said. "The average person doesn't know about diminution credits and that's why they're so outraged right now."

You would think that this kind of common-sense legislation would sail through Annapolis, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that the trial lawyers will make sure that this gets shoved in a committee drawer somewhere.

This goes back to the greater concept of our justice system in the first place. Why do we sentence criminals to five years if they are on the street in two? Or less? Why is a sentence not a sentence?

Perhaps this is the time that Maryland really needs to start a conversation about its justice system and the way that justice is handed out. I'm not talking about mandatory minimums or anything like that. I am talking about ending parole. For all criminals, not just sex offenders. It is very hard to say that a criminal has paid his due to society when society does not see the criminal locked up for their full sentence...

Perceptions propagate problems

Apparently the Moyer Administration down in Annapolis is starting to learn that if people perceive crime to be a problem, then it is:

With the sudden force of a summer storm off the Chesapeake Bay, much of Annapolis seems to be in an uproar over crime.

Businesses are offering reward money to catch violent robbers. Residents are meeting to discuss their safety. The mayor has issued four policy statements on law enforcement the past month, proposing longer police shifts, security cameras at public-housing complexes and officers on horseback and Segways.

Yet violent crime in Annapolis actually dropped 8 percent during the first six months of 2007 as compared with the same period last year. The city has had as many homicides this year -- four -- as bigger cities report in a week. And all those cases were quickly solved.

Then why the sudden concern? Combine a couple of high-profile crimes in prime locations of the city, alarm being sounded by City Council members while the mayor was away on an extended vacation, and the fact that one victim was walking home from the influential Annapolis Yacht Club.

"That's almost the perfect storm," said Ross H. Arnett III, a yacht club member who is also a Democratic alderman, representing Ward 8. "It doesn't happen that often."

The crimes that led to the heightened concern were near some of the city's best-known restaurants and businesses. On July 24, a restaurant worker was severely beaten and robbed by a group of people while walking home in Eastport, a neighborhood of upscale businesses and homes. On July 31, a young female employee of the yacht club was assaulted by a robber in Eastport while returning home.

Neither case has been solved. Although overall crime is down, incidents of aggravated assault and motor-vehicle theft are up for the first six months of the year.

The July 31 attack, in particular, "got the yacht club energized," said Arnett, whose district includes Eastport. "The yacht club has a lot of powerful members."

Other than the obvious slant against the rich, the story goes on to point out that crime as a whole is down in the city of Annapolis. It's only that the perception is that crime is in fact rising, particularly in affluent highly trafficked areas. There is absolutely no way to publicly deny that a problem is happening if so many people perceive that there is a problem. And the city has been absolutely incapable of doing anything that makes it seem like anything other than a crimewave is sweeping the city.

Do I ever feel imperiled in Annapolis? Absolutely not. Then again, I stay on heavily trafficked areas and don't actually live there, so my experiences may be somewhat different. The city's problem is that it isn't the tourists who have a problem with seeing the crime; it's the residents, and that creates big big problems for elected officials and city leaders.

Of course, having an absentee Mayor off in Europe for two months probably didn't help the cause, either....

Well....no kidding

Doesn't really require a PhD to figure out this was going to happen, either (H/T Instapundit):

Following the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, in which seventeen people were killed by a man armed with two 9mm pistols, Britain passed a law outlawing the ownership of most handguns, despite researchers finding "no link between high levels of gun crime and areas where there were still high levels of lawful gun possession." It's a law so severe that the Britain's Olympic shooting team is forced to train abroad, lest one of its members try to shoot up a grammar school. So how effective has the law been? A doubling in gun-related crimes since the ban, naturally. The London Times on the spate of gun crime in Merseyside:

Golly, you'd almost think kind of effect would be similar to the issues we have in Baltimore and Washington, no?

Fighting Crime through stupidity

This is asinine:

Baltimore could become the first big city to publicize names, photographs and home addresses of people who are convicted of shootings or other gun-related crimes, the latest twist on a national crime prevention trend of exposing names of certain types of criminals.

Legislation that Mayor Sheila Dixon introduced in the City Council last week would direct the Police Department to create a database for gun offenders that is similar to the existing online statewide sex offender list. She said she would like the names to be public, and offenders would have to register with the department, in person, every six months or face a misdemeanor charge and possible jail time.

Other cities - including Chicago, San Francisco and Boston - that have seen increases in gun violence in the past few years are considering similar measures for gun offenses, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police endorsed the concept at its annual conference in Boston last fall. New York City began a registry this year, but it is not open to the public.

"This will help inform the community about some of the activities taking place in their neighborhood and hopefully will act as a deterrent to people not to get involved with illegal gun activity," Dixon said in an e-mailed statement. "I am hoping people will just think twice about picking up a gun because of the risk of the registry and the long-term stigma attached to being placed on it." She expects a hearing on the bill Aug. 8.

This reminds me of a line spoken by Lt. Kaffee in A Few Good Men:

Thank you for playing "Now Should We or Should We Not Follow the Advice of the Galactically Stupid".

The naïveté of Mayor Dixon's plan is so mind-numbingly amazing that it is astounding that she has ever been elected to City-wide office. Is Dixon so out of touch that she really believes that a "long-term stigma" is really going to stop a repeat offender in a city like Baltimore? Where 300 people are brutally murdered every year? Is Dixon so out of her mind that she really believes a gun registry is going to stop violent crime on the streets of Baltimore.

It is complete lunacy like this that is the reason that big city streets, except in rare instances such as Giuliani-era New York, see dramatic decreases in violent crime. Instead of dealing with real solutions to reduce crime, such as increasing police or using tough crime fighting strategies, cockamamie ideas such as this are proposed instead. It is mind-numbing to consider that city leadership would rather reduce crime through stigmatization and computers than by actually arresting criminals, prosecuting criminals to the fullest extent of the law, and getting them off the streets.

More proof that it doesn't really matter who wins this upcoming Mayoral election...

An Odd Comment

This series of statements from this morning's Sun is just odd:

Mayor Sheila Dixon said yesterday that she replaced her unpopular police commissioner because she "wasn't feeling that drive like I wanted to" and said she was impressed with the way his interim replacement, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, peppered colleagues with engaging and challenging questions during crime meetings.

In an interview hours after she formally announced she had asked Leonard D. Hamm to resign amid plunging support and soaring numbers of homicides and shootings, Dixon confirmed long-standing claims from officers and their union that Bealefeld has effectively been running the department for months.

For this reason, the mayor said Bealefeld's appointment would not signal a change in the strategy to fight crime. But his style could reinvigorate a department struggling with what Dixon called an "out-of-control" murder rate.

So in an effort to turn around crime in the city, Mayor Dixon is appointing the guy who has been running the show while things were going to hell in a handbasket? Is that really the kind of admission that any Executive wants to make? That their department head has been an absentee manager and was replaced due to performance while simultaneously promoting the guy who was in charge while performance was poor?

That's no way to run the Rotary Club, much less a city with a skyrocketing murder rate...

What the Hell is Going on Around Here?

Last Week: Armed Robbery in Chesterfield

Yesterday: Shooting at a Wendy's near Marley Station

Today: Officer shot, bank robber killed in Severna Park

Can anybody explain what is going on? Why all of a sudden there has been an explosion of violent crime in Northern Anne Arundel County. All at a time when, as we discuss in this week's podcast, Annapolis seems intent on being softer on most criminals.

What is happening? What is causing this? And how do we stop it? (The last answer is easy to come up with; the question is whether or not people have the political will to do it).