While crime rates fall in every Baltimore jurisdiction and almost every neighborhood, the city's been facing what looks like a crime wave among Baltimore Police officers. In June of 2010, Officer Gahiji Tshamba shot a former Marine named Tyrone Brown to death just outside Mount Vernon's Red Maple, allegedly because Brown grabbed a woman's ass. Turned out he had shot two guys before and was disciplined for being intoxicated after one of the shootings. This time he got 15 years in prison. In February 2011, more than 30 cops were taken down in an alleged kickback racket involving a towing company and then in July, Officer Daniel G. Redd was arrested and his police locker searched-for allegedly selling heroin while in uniform and on BPD property. Federal prosecutors say Redd was a ringleader in a "significant drug trafficking" organization that imported heroin from Africa. Like Tshamba, Redd has a history of brushes with the law. Redd's criminal record includes a 1996 second-degree assault charge, which was not prosecuted. In 1997 he was issued a summons for allegedly having an item from which the serial number had been removed. He was found not guilty of that misdemeanor charge. In 2002 he was cited for confining an unattended child under 8 years old in a locked vehicle. That charge was placed on the stet docket. With Baltimore's criminals statistically less active, it seems only right that its cops should fill in the gap.
