City officer fires at fleeing driver, who crashes off I-83
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-07-09/news/bs-md-ci-shooting-accident-20100709_1_city-officer-fires-police-involved-shootings-police-officersA 56-year-old man who drove around a police roadblock was injured Friday after an officer shot at his back window, causing him to lose control of his pickup truck and crash off Interstate 83 in Hampden, police said.
Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said that he was concerned about the shooting and that investigators are trying to determine why the officer fired the shot after the vehicle was heading away from him.
The incident unfolded just after 1 p.m. An officer, whom Bealefeld identified as a 25-year veteran and member of the traffic accident investigation unit, had blocked off the ramp to I-83 at West 28th Street as part of a traffic detail to allow a wide-load vehicle to pass through.
"Our guy was in uniform, in a marked car, and tried to stop the man from going around the police car," Bealefeld said. "But at some point the officer fired a shot through the rear window of the truck."
The driver continued on I-83 but exited at Falls Road and lost control of his vehicle, crashing into a wall, Bealefeld said. He was taken to an area hospital for treatment.
Off-Duty Officer Fatally Shoots Unarmed Marine
Off-Duty Officer Fatally Shoots Unarmed Marine
http://kaystreet.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/3833/An off-duty Baltimore City police officer fatally shot an unarmed Marine 13 times outside a nightclub early Saturday.
According to Baltimore City police, Tyrone Brown — a 32-year-old Marine who has served two tours of duty in Iraq — was shot 13 times at close range. He died a short time later.
Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the officer shot and killed Brown, saying Brown made advances toward a woman who was with the officer.
”After the advances, the officer and the individual exchanged words,” Gugliemi said. “There was an argument, and the altercation turned physical. At that point, the officer pulled out his service weapon and fired multiple shots at our victim.”
Brown’s sister said she was there when her brother was shot. She said they were out at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday when they approached a group of people — including the off-duty officer — leaving Eden’s Lounge, a nightclub in Mount Vernon. An off-duty Baltimore City police officer fatally shot an unarmed Marine 13 times outside a nightclub early Saturday.
According to Baltimore City police, Tyrone Brown — a 32-year-old Marine who has served two tours of duty in Iraq — was shot 13 times at close range. He died a short time later.
In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the Police
BALTIMORE In the halcyon days when American newspapers were feared rather than pitied, I had the pleasure of reporting on crime in the prodigiously criminal environs of Baltimore. The city was a wonderland of chaos, dirt and miscalculation, and loyal adversaries were many. Among them, I could count police commanders who felt it was their duty to demonstrate that crime never occurred in their precincts, desk sergeants who believed that they had a right to arrest and detain citizens without reporting it and, of course, homicide detectives and patrolmen who, when it suited them, argued convincingly that to provide the basic details of any incident might lead to the escape of some heinous felon. Everyone had very good reasons for why nearly every fact about a crime should go unreported.
And then I would stand, secretly delighted, as yet another police officer learned not only the fundamentals of Maryland's public information law, but the fact that as custodian of public records, he needed to kick out the face sheet of any incident report and open his arrest log to immediate inspection. There are civil penalties for refusing to do so, the judge would assure him. And as chief judge of the District Court, he would declare, I may well invoke said penalties if you go further down this path.
Delays of even 24 hours? Nope, not acceptable. Requiring written notification from the newspaper? No, the judge would explain. Even ordinary citizens have a right to those reports. And woe to any fool who tried to suggest to His Honor that he would need a 30-day state Public Information Act request for something as basic as a face sheet or an arrest log.
"What do you need the thirty days for?" the judge once asked a police spokesman on speakerphone.
"We may need to redact sensitive information," the spokesman offered.
"You can't redact anything. Do you hear me? Everything in an initial incident report is public. If the report has been filed by the officer, then give it to the reporter tonight or face contempt charges tomorrow."
The late Judge Sweeney, who'd been named to his post in the early 1970s, when newspapers were challenging the Nixonian model of imperial governance, kept this up until 1996, when he retired. I have few heroes left, but he still qualifies.
To be a police reporter in such a climate was to be a prince of the city, and to be a citizen of such a city was to know that you were not residing in a police state. But no longer -- not in Baltimore and, I am guessing, not in any city where print journalism spent the 1980s and '90s taking profits and then, in the decade that followed, impaling itself on the Internet.
In January, a new Baltimore police spokesman -- a refugee from the Bush administration -- came to the incredible conclusion that the city department could decide not to identify those police officers who shot or even killed someone. (Similar policies have been established by several other police departments in the United States as well as by the FBI.)
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