A word of advice to Mayor Sheila Dixon: Next time "motherly compassion" strikes, reach for a bottle of "mayoral common sense." Try measuring the interests of one person against the interests of thousands of other inhabitants of Baltimore -- the vast majority of your constituents -- and maybe you won't have to apologize for a mistake such as the one you and your chief of staff made in the matter of Charles Murel.
You tried to get this 20-year-old convicted carjacker, awaiting trial on a handgun charge, out of jail to attend his 3-year-old son's funeral.
Your chief of staff called a judge and a corrections official to try and make it happen -- even after the judge ruled that Charles Murel was "too dangerous" to be released, in handcuffs and shackles, for the funeral.
That the mayor would waste time and even consider expending valuable law enforcement resources on such a matter leaves me -- and apparently many others -- wondering about her fitness to continue to be chief executive of one of the most violent cities in the country.
Hey, we're all for compassion in public office -- for those who deserve it.
Certainly, the family of 3-year-old Charles Murel III deserves our compassion.
The little boy was killed in a motor vehicle accident in West Baltimore on June 30. It is impressive and commendable that the mayor of Baltimore would take time out of her schedule to call the boy's mother and extend sympathies.
But when the mother asked the mayor to spring the boy's father for the funeral -- that's when motherly compassion should have been balanced with mayoral common sense. In this case, there was more of one than the other, and it made the Dixon administration look ridiculous.
At a time when Baltimore citizens and police are in pitched battle against a rise in violent crime, it is stunning that Dixon and Otis Rolley III, her chief of staff, would even think twice about doing this.
What city are they living in?
Do they even read their own press releases?
It's almost hard to believe.
There's a mayoral election coming up in a couple of months.
In the last two mayoral campaigns -- in 1999 and in 2003 -- crime was the No. 1 issue for voters, across all class and racial lines. It's the prime issue again, particularly with shootings and homicides on the increase, and yet here's Dixon, getting caught trying to get a carjacker a break.
Years ago, a convicted killer, serving life in Maryland's Division of Correction, told me about getting released from prison to attend his father's funeral in Anne Arundel County. Armed correctional officers escorted him and kept him in handcuffs during the service -- and the inmate had the gall to complain about the cuffs.
At the time, I thought it was incredible that the state made any such accommodation for a convicted murderer.
Two decades later, it doesn't surprise me to hear that, at Central Booking in Baltimore, the practice of allowing detainees to attend funerals was abandoned out of safety concerns and because of the costs of providing security details. (I assume the same goes for weddings and high school graduation ceremonies.)
This didn't seem to stop Rolley from pressing Murel's case with Central Booking. Nor did it discourage a discussion of having members of Dixon's security detail act as Murel's escort to the funeral.
If you go by Dixon's explanations, having Murel attend his son's funeral would make the boy's mother feel better. I guess I could believe that on its face -- if it were also possible to believe that Charles Murel was a devoted family man.
But, given Murel's behavior in recent years, I would say he's been otherwise engaged.
In July 2003, he was charged with illegally carrying a gun, and the case was remanded to the juvenile court.
His son was born March 22, 2004. At the time, Charles Murel would have been 17 years old, still a juvenile.
In September 2004, with his child about 6 months old, Murel was charged with a carjacking. Fourteen months later, he was convicted (the more serious charge of armed carjacking was dropped) and he was sentenced to one year in prison -- essentially the time he already had served after his arrest.
One month after release, in December 2005, Murel was arrested again -- this time for carrying a Glock 9 mm in a supermarket in West Baltimore. That case has had numerous postponements, and Murel has been held all these months on $150,000 bail. He is supposed to have a trial July 23.
It is fair to say that Charles Murel has not spent a lot of time at home in recent years, and it appears that, in this case, Baltimore might have been the better for it. On paper, he seems to have the profile of the kind of young man the city police and federal authorities are after and exactly the kind of man we need off the streets.
Compassion?
In this tragic matter, sympathetic words from the mayor to the mother of Charles Murel III would have been sufficient. Having her chief of staff hit on a judge, then a Central Booking official to let the felon-father attend the funeral, at a time when Baltimore has become nationally notorious for violent crime, raises serious doubts about judgment and competence in City Hall.
dan.rodricks@baltsun.com