Taking aim at the toughest challenge of his tenure, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu will detail a new strategy to curb the city's sky-high murder rate and corral the city's most brutal criminals, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Just past the midpoint of his four-year term, Landrieu will stress in a state of the city speech that despite his progress in correcting bureaucratic dysfunction at City Hall and enticing new businesses to the city, New Orleans will not fully succeed until the killing subsides.
City and federal officials have spent hundreds of hours negotiating a consent decree designed to serve as a blueprint for erasing the notorious corruption underpinning the Police Department. Landrieu is expected to recap his administration's efforts to thwart violence and improve residents' quality of life though expanded recreational opportunities, blight-fighting programs, and infrastructure improvements, such as the ongoing push to have every streetlight in the city working by year's end.
Read full entry »A Maryland legislator accused of race baiting after warning of "black mobs" converging on downtown Baltimore and urging the the city's popular Inner Harbor be declared a "no-travel zone" is now calling on the mayor to resign unless she holds a "solutions summit," reports the Baltimore Sun. Delegate Patrick McDonough, a Republican from Harford and Baltimore counties, also called for a citywide curfew, which already exists, barring people under 18 from being without adult supervision on city streets after midnight.
"The mayor is playing a dangerous game with the lives of innocent people," McDonough said. "The violent incidents in the greater harbor area is only one symptom of youth street violence in Baltimore. It is becoming clear that beyond the usual hooligans, organized gangs are leaving their turf and joining in the criminal activities." There was no immedidiate comment from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Last week, her spokesman called McDonough's comments a "sad and racially charged publicity stunt" that "is not deserving of a response."
Maryland legislator Pat McDonough won't back down from a press release he issued alleging that 'black youth mobs terrorize" downtown Baltimore, says the Baltimore Sun. In a Saturday night radio show, he seemed to ratchet up the rhetoric ripping Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake while vowing to bring the issue of downtown public safety to the front burner of public consciousness with a "news conference" and other actions this week. He did not sound like a man about to apologize for what one of his legislative colleagues characterized as "race baiting."
The Sun's David Zurawik says that "McDonough's on-air efforts Saturday make this a media story that raises important questions about role media play in how a community talks about race -- and whether the media in Baltimore have been facilitating or failing in that crucial conversation. One minister has already called for McDonough to be pulled from the airwaves." On the radio, he said, "Either Baltimore city overcomes crime, or crime will overcome Baltimore city -- and the city will no longer be livable at all. And it's very close to that situation in a lot of ways. This is not just a black issue. Yes, the gangs down there, the mobs, are black. I know we have knuckleheads and criminals that are white, but I'm trying to focus on this issue."
Detroit business and city leaders say they are encouraged by a continuing retail revival of the city's main business corridor, but the outlook is less promising in other parts of the city where small businesses say escalating crime is pushing them out, reports the Associated Press. Optimism was on display this week during groundbreaking ceremonies for a Whole Foods Market in Midtown and a Meijer store on the former state fairgrounds, the most recent additions to a thin ribbon of vitality along Woodward Avenue.
The nine-mile stretch once known for prostitutes and boarded-up buildings now boasts a top sports and entertainment district and resurgent downtown office community along with Wayne State University, the Detroit Institute of the Arts and the Detroit Medical Center complex of hospitals in Midtown, where condos are sprouting up. The Woodward corridor also features something else coveted by many small businesses located apart from the main thoroughfare: people and police. Owners and managers of shops elsewhere in the city say too few police officers and an inability to stem citywide crime have placed the small business community in jeopardy. The killings of two store owners and shooting of a clothing shop worker have added to the worry.
Read full entry »President Obama and Vice President Biden honored 34 law enforcement officers chosen as the year’s "Top Cops" over the weekend in the White House Rose Garden. "Some of them will tell you they don’t deserve to be called heroes. They’re entitled to their opinion. I disagree with them," the President said, according to the New York Times.
By Graham Kates
Romance scams and other online frauds swindled Americans out of nearly $500 million in 2011.
Read full entry »A surge in the value of copper, iron, and other metals has fueled a wave of thefts from sidewalks, roadways, and rail yards in the last few months, says the New York Times. On Wednesday alone, New York police arrested three men for stealing hunks of cast iron — grates made to protect tree roots and manhole covers weighing as much as 300 pounds.
The arrests followed reports of the disappearance of dozens of the grates and covers across the city and came on top of a spree of thefts of copper wire from utility cables. “It’s about money,” said Kevin Rafferty, president of Dublin Scrap Metal in Newark. “The economy’s tough, and people are looking to sell whatever they can find to sell.” Rafferty said his company would not buy manhole covers or pieces of train rail that people showed up with. He said stealing a manhole cover from a city street is a true sign of desperation. Iron is worth only about 15 cents a pound, compared with about $3 a pound for copper.
Read full entry »It isn't enough these days for certain state lawmakers to defend their voting records at election time. Some also have to explain arrest records, reports the Los Angeles Times. Within the last 20 months, five state legislators and a former state senator with active campaigns have been arrested on suspicion of crimes including drunk driving, perjury, voter fraud, shopliftin.g and trying to carry a loaded gun through airport security.
Not since a 1990s FBI sting known as Shrimpscam, which targeted influence peddling in the Capitol, have so many state lawmakers posed for booking photos in such a short time. "The people responsible for passing our laws should feel themselves under a special obligation to comply with those laws," said Tracy Westen of the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonprofit group promoting open government. "Apparently, a number do not.'' The handcuffs have come as the legislature has struggled to improve its reputation with a skeptical public.
Manhole cover thefts are rising in New York City, says the New York Times. The utility Con Ed says more than 30 of its manhole covers — some weighing 300 pounds and all bearing the utility’s distinctive markings — have disappeared since March. In a normal year, no more than two or three covers go missing. “There seems to be a trend or a spate of incidents that seems to be happening at an alarming rate now,” said Con Ed's Michael Clendenin. He assumes the covers were being sold to scrap metal dealers but doesn't know where or for how much. “I can’t imagine people are decorating their living rooms with them.”
Besides the cost and hassle of replacing the missing covers, Con Ed officials are concerned about the hazards that gaping holes in city streets could pose to pedestrians and drivers. Based on current commodity prices for iron, a stolen manhole cover might fetch more than $30. It costs Con Ed about $200 to replace each one, not counting the labor involved. A team of 12 investigators is canvassing neighborhoods, talking to scrap dealers around the city and sharing information with the police. There appears to be a black market for the covers, which is troubling to a company that has more than 200,000 manholes in its network that distributes electricity, gas, and steam throughout the city and the northern suburbs.
Read full entry »When he was running for re-election a month ago, Mayor Buddy Dyer said crime in Orlando was falling. New state statistics show Orlando's crime rate actually went up in 2011, and Orlando continues to hold the dubious distinction of having the highest crime rate among Florida's 10 biggest cities, says the Orlando Sentinel. Police Chief Paul Rooney contends that Orlando is much safer than the statistics indicate.
U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch is ramping up the drug war in South Boston, bringing in the feds to rescue the opiate-ravaged neighborhood from a worsening...
Read full entry »Police in Newark and Camden, N.J., made nearly 7,700 fewer arrests last year than in 2010 as violent crime rose during the same period in the wake of some of the largest police layoffs in New Jersey history, reports the Newark Star-Ledger. While many had suggested the layoffs would result in surges in violent crime, the trend actually began at least a year before the first officers were handed pink slips.
After looming budget deficits forced the two cities to lay off more than 160 cops each, the combined number of arrests fell to 25,012 last year from 32,703 in 2010. Camden’s arrest rate dropped 43 percent last year from 2010, while Newark’s dropped by 16 percent. The arrest rate has fallen for the past three years in Newark and for the past two in Camden. At the same time, the number of shootings, homicides, and robberies rose over the same period in both cities. Prof. Wayne Fisher of the Rutgers Police Institute said it is clear that reductions in police manpower will have consequences. "These numbers are evidence that those consequences have in fact taken place," he said.
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By Ted Gest
Eight of America's leading criminal justice scholars look back over four decades of analysis--and draw lessons for future policy and research.
Read full entry »The Boston Globe says 10 days of bloodshed in New Hampshire during April have left residents on edge in a state that prides itself on its low homicide rate. Ten violent deaths spanned the state geographically and occurred without discernible pattern.
Jane Young, the senior assistant state attorney general, called the violence "unprecedented." The most prominent killing was that of Greenland Police Chief Michael Maloney, shot to death April 12 while serving a search warrant in a drug case.
Four other officers serving the warrant were wounded. Inside the home, the shooter, Cullen Mutrie, apparently killed his former girlfriend, Brittany Tibbetts, before killing himself. The first violent death occurred on April 7, when one man ran over another in Claremont. Five days later, on the same day as the Greenland tragedy, a shooting in Dalton left two dead and one wounded. On April 14, a man was fatally shot on a rural road in Chesterfield and on April 17 officials opened another homicide investigation into three more deaths in Lancaster. The deaths have left residents wondering what has happened to their quiet state.
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By Ted Gest
Despite progress, solid evidence of success still lacking, DC panel is told
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