gang activity

After serving nearly 50 years for a Baltimore murder, Charles A. Scott's conviction was vacated. But the he will not be free.

Uniformed Baltimore police officers and cadets filed into an auditorium at the Maryland Historical Society Tuesday for a history lesson in unrest in Baltimore.

David Brian Evans was so elusive that a Pennsylvania probate judge declared him dead as of New Year's Eve 1997. Now Harford County authorities are trying to understand how Evans reappeared nearly 20 years later and shot and killed Deputies Patrick Dailey and Mark Logsdon at a busy shopping center and nearby apartment complex in Abingdon before being killed by deputies who returned gunfire.

Baltimore jurors convicted three men Wednesday in the fatal shooting of a 16-month-old boy in Cherry Hill in 2013.

Sheriff's deputy Patrick Dailey helped to pull a 17-year-old boy from a burning sports utility vehicle seconds before it exploded on Christmas Eve 2002. Deputy Mark Logsdon convinced an armed man not to kill himself and hand over his loaded shotgun in 2005. Both died Wednesday after a confrontation with a man in a busy shopping center.

Two Harford County sheriff¿s deputies have died after a shooting both inside and near a restaurant in Abingdon late Wednesday morning, the head of the department said.

Two new reports covering crime and Baltimore Police Department data from 2015 provide the most detailed statistical snapshots to-date of the key players in Baltimore's gruesome year in crime: the alleged killers, their victims, and the cops tasked with stopping them.

Looking back at the unrest that followed Freddy Gray's death, Baltimore voters see events differently than do voters statewide, a new poll shows.

With Saturday's fatal stabbing of a 27-year-old man in West Baltimore and fatal shooting of a 22-year-old in Westport, the city's annual homicide count passed 300 for the first time since 1999, pushing the city across a deadly threshold once considered a relic of the past.

There are few places more dangerous for black children than Chicago, says Leonard Pitts Jr.

At home in Pakistan, Ammar Zafarullah works with the organization Pakistan Youth Change Advocates to prevent "well-to-do educated youth" from being recruited as the future financiers and social media gurus of extremist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State. On Wednesday, he listened intently as Munir Bahar talked about his own 300 Men March organization in Baltimore, and how it does similar work keeping at-risk youth out of the city's street gangs and gun violence.

The deadliest year

HYATTSVILLE -- A group of prominent Hispanic elected leaders, including state Sen. Victor R. Ramirez, announced Tuesday they are backing former Prince George's County State's Attorney Glenn Ivey's run Congress, representing one of the first efforts by any candidate in Maryland to publicly court the constituency.

Arrests of two anti-violence workers are unfortunate but don't diminish the importance of an effective strategy to reduce homicides and shootings.

City leaders questioned Thursday why the Baltimore Police Department issued a public warning, on the morning of Freddie Gray's funeral, that gang members had teamed up to "take out" police officers.

Their task: Rebuild the morale of officers inside the police station while repairing relationships with distrustful residents on the outside. And stanch the blood-letting on West Baltimore's streets.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said the spike in killings in the city in recent weeks is "backlogging" investigatory efforts, resulting in a drop in his department's homicide clearance rate.

As Baltimore reels from its most violent month in 40 years, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake remains upbeat about the city's efforts to fight crime, pointing to the success of an anti-violence program and the retraining of police officers by the U.S. Justice Department.

Here's an idea: Let's have Baltimore City Council President Bernard "Jack" Young call on those gang members who helped quell violence on Riot Monday to help quell violence the other 364 days of the year.

There are reasons for anger in Baltimore: racism, poverty, targeted policing, poor education, few recreational opportunities, drug-ravaged neighborhoods. And while none of them justify the violence, we suspect some of those caught up in the fervor Monday night woke up with regret and shame the next morning. To brand them thugs is to dismiss them based on circumstance without any context — much like police are accused of doing to Freddie Gray, who died in their custody, sparking the unrest.

Baltimore prosecutors dropped murder charges Thursday against two men accused of killing a Maryland Shock Trauma Center technician who police say was used as a human shield during a gang shootout.

After Walter Scott, something has to change.

A 21-year-old gang member was sentenced to life plus 50 years for executing a man on a playground, while another man was sentenced to 50 years in prison for what prosecutors described as a gang-initiation slaying.

Tavon White, described by authorities as a calculating gang leader who essentially took over the Baltimore jail to smuggle drugs in cahoots with corrections officers, drew compliments from a federal judge and prosecutor at his sentencing Monday.

It has been almost two years since federal authorities unveiled charges at the Baltimore Detention Center, drawing international attention amid revelations that Black Guerrilla Family leader Tavon White had impregnated four corrections officers who were supposed to be guarding him. But officials say that even with 40 guilty verdicts, including two dozen against corrections workers, there is more work to be done.

The spike in homicides in Baltimore's Northeast district resembles the spread of an infectious disease; is there an effective 'vaccine' to fight the epidemic?

Five people were convicted Thursday in a massive Baltimore jailhouse corruption scheme, federal prosecutors said.

The alleged leader of a Howard County branch of the Bloods street gang was sentenced to seven years and eight months in federal prison Wednesday for his role in operating a gang out of the county, according to a U.S. District Court news release.

BGF leader White quickly turned informant, testimony shows

As was the case four years ago, voters in Harford County have two solid choices in the race to be sheriff, leader of the county's main law enforcement agency.

The two men accused by police of killing a rival gang member and a bystander in downtown Baltimore were ordered held without bond.

The family of a man fatally shot by FBI agents conducing a surveillance earlier this year on Reisterstown Road is questioning police tactics and the finding by prosecutors that the use of deadly force during a car stop was justified.

Baltimore's nearly $2.2 million proposal to reduce violent crime received preliminary approval from the City Council Monday, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.

Baltimore prosecutors have rounded up nearly 50 alleged Black Guerrilla Family gang members who are accused of crimes ranging from murder to drug dealing. The strategy — using conspiracy and gang laws to draw together eight years of criminal activity — is extraordinary for its breadth of charges and for the level of violence cited.

Asylum requests by former gang members are now working their way up to appeals courts — forcing judges to better define the sometimes murky requirements that spell out which immigrants may be granted haven here.

Baltimore County police solved 79 percent of last year's cases while the city made arrests in half. While urban and suburban homicide units face dramatically different realities and challenges, Baltimore County stands out even among its suburban peers. Across Maryland, the homicide clearance rate is 61 percent.

Two men were convicted Friday of randomly firing into a group of young people, killing a 12-year-old boy and wounding three others in an attempt to "send a message" to their East Baltimore neighbors.

Twelve-year-old Sean Johnson and his friends had noticed men pass by the house on Cliftview Avenue as they watched a basketball game on a TV outside on the porch.