Baltimore's Finest

Jesse Walker | May 19, 2006

Mobtown Cops are the best in the world.

Comments

|5.19.06 @ 8:55AM|#

Charm City indeed.

Pointless lyric that makes use of a Baltimore colloquism:

They say this year rock is coming back, Jack.
White gnashing teeth like wolves in a pack.
Carnivorous; no mercy hon.
There's plenty here for everyone so come get you some!

|5.19.06 @ 8:58AM|#

I'm sure Officer Natalie Preston had a perfectly good reason for being so bitchy.

Sandy|5.19.06 @ 9:13AM|#

Don't you understand? Terrorists did just this sort of thing before bombing the World Trade Center. If we give directions, the terrorists won't have to buy maps.

If some tourists happen to be inconvenienced, that's just the price we pay for freedom. Brook should be glad she's not in a Burka. Why does she hate our freedom?

|5.19.06 @ 9:23AM|#

I'd love to know how pulling over with your blinkers on constitutes trespassing on a public street. The whole concept just screams "statute specifically written for the drug war". It's give police an excuse to arrest and search people for no other reason than being pulled over on the side of the road. Then, if they happen to find drugs in the car, they can add charges. If not, their asses are covered because the arrestee were "trespassing" at the time.

A law like that wouldn't lend itself to petty abuses and power trips, would it? If there were any justice in this system, Officer Preston would be immediately terminated and charged with false imprisonment.

Jesse Walker|5.19.06 @ 9:25AM|#

People in Baltimore love to park in the middle of the street with their blinkers on. Sometimes overnight. So if the law really exists, I think I understand why it was passed.

This is, however, the first time I've ever heard of anyone actually enforcing it. The joke around here is that if you don't have money for a meter, the way to avoid a ticket is to leave your car in the road instead.

|5.19.06 @ 9:58AM|#

People in Baltimore love to park in the middle of the street with their blinkers on. Sometimes overnight. So if the law really exists, I think I understand why it was passed.

That seems like it would be a different law. Vehicle abandonment, or illegal parking, or whatever you'd call it when the car is where it shouldn't be and there's no driver to move it. I suppose trespassing on a public street could make sense to prevent a person from deliberately obstructing traffic or something.

I can remember the streets around the Webster Theater in Hartford, CT being labeled with signs that read something like "Warning: Prostitution Enforcement Zone" where simply appearing to be trolling for hookers (i.e. driving slowly and looking out the windows) would get you a trip downtown. Not good if you were looking for parking.

Timothy|5.19.06 @ 10:02AM|#

And people wonder why I hate cops. Shouldn't be such a big damn surprise, really. I doubt they even ran the stop sign they are alleged to have run.

|5.19.06 @ 10:05AM|#

Man I really do hope the city and the individual cop pays for this.

I mentioned it on another thread, but I just finnished watching the 3rd season of 'The Wire'. Great show, great third season. By the end of the show I ended up hating the Irish cop that I liked so much in the beginning. And everybody exept the one cop that tried to make selling drugs legal.

Good damned show. Fucked up city.

Jesse Walker|5.19.06 @ 10:07AM|#

That seems like it would be a different law.

You could be right. I'm just guessing here.

|5.19.06 @ 11:11AM|#

Oh, don't worry, Jesse. I'm sure that Baltimore (and everywhere else) has MANY overlapping laws so that the cops always have an excuse to stop you. Isn't it nice that they usually don't?

|5.19.06 @ 11:18AM|#

This is another consequence of the Drug War.

Cherry Hill is a quaint urban wasteland and two "lost" white burbians are just looking for a way to the interstate. Cop thinks "Trolling for recreational substances" and hassles them to get them out of the neighborhood before they end up as causualties of said Drug War.

|5.19.06 @ 11:43AM|#

Dr. Zaius, wouldn't burbians trolling for drugs avoid cops, not run to them for help?

Maybe you have different kind of cops in your city or something.

|5.19.06 @ 11:51AM|#

Dr. Zaius, wouldn't burbians trolling for drugs avoid cops, not run to them for help?

Not if they wanted a good cover story. At least that how I imagine a cop might view it. That's the by-product of assuming the all "civilians" are criminals.

|5.19.06 @ 12:01PM|#

Not if they wanted a good cover story.

And not if they wanted the really good stuff, either.

|5.19.06 @ 12:09PM|#

If you are the only white folks in a mile radius and a cop is eyeballing you, you might think that asking for directions will make you look like a lost burbian. Of course the cop will not be bullshitted and will think you want some crack for the drive back to Virginia (it can be a boring drive).

The way I read this, the burbians are looking for some drugs, eyeballed by a cop they try to BS her, she tells them to get the hell out, they don't leave fast enough for her and she busts them on a bogus charge.

|5.19.06 @ 12:10PM|#

What the hell? And cops have the nerve to wonder why people don't like the police.

|5.19.06 @ 12:12PM|#

A few years ago, as a young white boy from the B-more burbs, I was working as secret shopper for the state lottery, making sure the quickie mart clerks were giving the right pitch whenever someone purchased a Pick 3 ticket. Because most of the lottery tickets are sold in neighborhoods like Cherry Hill, I got a lot of funny looks from customers and clerks at the stores, most of whom could tell who I was and duly followed the script when I came in.

One more than one occasion, while trying to find some hole in the wall liquor store, I was accosted by the cops, often loitering on the side of the road in groups of five or more. I'm guessing they assumed I was there to buy drugs. After several minutes of interrogation and inspecting the various lottery commission forms I had, they would let me go with the warning that I wasn't to linger long in this part of town.

Racial profiling, indeed.

|5.19.06 @ 12:43PM|#

I think this is all a misunderstanding. The kids didn't realize that the gratuity is expected before service in Baltimore.

|5.19.06 @ 12:45PM|#

I got lost in Cherry Hill shortly after I moved to Baltimore. Pulled over and looking at my map, I was asked by a group of four kids if i was the pizza man (white guy in a little red car stopped in the middle of a black housing project, seemed a reasonable assessment). When I told them no, they started throwing rocks. I left and continued to read the map while driving. I saw no cops, to my benefit or detriment, but I made it out okay.

As an addition to the info in the article, the police report states that when the car was originally pulled over for running the stop sign, the driver argued with the officer and tried to rip the citation she was writing out of her book. Also, the trespass charge came from a refusal to leave a public housing project.

The driver has now adjusted his story and says that while he did question how the cop was in position to see his car run the stop sign, he didn't argue, and that his movements were misinterpreted by the officer.

I'm not saying it's still not a shitty incident that should be checked out, but first reports came solely from the couple. And now their story is changing a bit as more info comes out. I'd like to get more details before chalking this one up as all the cops fault.

Jesse,

As Baltimore law enforcement abuse stories go, I thing this one pales in comparison to the stripper one

Jesse Walker|5.19.06 @ 1:14PM|#

Thanks for the Sun link, Chthus. You'll note that even with the extra details, it says the couple was released without charges (after eight hours in jail) and quotes a police spokesperson saying the arrests shouldn't have happened.

The funniest part of the story is this:

Paul M. Blair Jr., the city Fraternal Order of Police union president, said he could not understand how the couple got lost leaving Camden Yards and ended up in the heart of Cherry Hill.

He can't understand? C'mon. What newcomer to Baltimore has not gotten lost in the ghetto?

|5.19.06 @ 1:17PM|#

I got hopelessly lost in Baltimore last summer. I came up from DC to see an Aquabats concert, it ended up pissing rain while I rolled slowly through the ghetto. Then the concert got cancelled because the power crapped out at the goddamn Ottobar. In summation, Baltimore sucks.

|5.19.06 @ 1:38PM|#

Maps, people. They're called maps. Try them sometime.

This case would prove very intersting were it to ever reach a jury. The jurors would be asked to decide who they hate more: cops or white people.

|5.19.06 @ 2:07PM|#

Totally a drug war casualty, here.

And when I made a comment some time ago about cops assuming everyone is a piece of shit (ie criminal), someone took exception to it.

Cops who go on power trips should be publicly flogged.

|5.19.06 @ 3:12PM|#

Hate to pick on the victims here, but does anybody else think that the husband and wife in the picture, look, err, closely related?

|5.19.06 @ 3:43PM|#

I thought they were brother and sister when I saw the picture. I listened to the interview and they even have the same voice. Creepy.

|5.19.06 @ 6:43PM|#

Actually, I have had to work occasionally with law enforcement personnel on frequent occasions, but not really enough to be absorbed into their subculture. Yes, Cops DO think every "civilian" is a contmeptible piece of crap, a criminal who has not been convicted yet. They are also generally very contemptuous of firemen, EMT's, and Emergency managers, though they often suck it up and don't let on. Good cops, well, I can count them on one hand, and they are usually oldtimers or retirees who regret the passing of the days when cops were serious public servants.
The advocacy of the FOP, lucrative federal grants for things like seat belt enforcement and sobriety checkpoints, and the prevalence of cop-worshipping politicians(mostly Republican) who want to trade liberty for security, are mostly the problem. And couple all that with the near- universal adoption of the Incident Command System(ICS, or more commonly now, IMS)which has allowed command to worship at the altar of safety and force protection("Never trade live rescuers for "dead" victims"), we have law enforcement personnel who are little more than sandbagging hall monitors with shitty attitudes.
In my experience, people who always wantr to give the cops the benefit of the doubt have never spent any time around them, or they are so close(dispatchers, family)that they are a part of the subculture. Cops in particular seem to get pissed off when asked for directions. One girl who was meeting me a job interview got lost and asked a cop how to get to her destination. His reply was: "do I look like a street sign, you stupid bitch". I think this is the kind of behavior most cops will revert to when questioned or misunderstood. They are usually polite but firm when they first speak, but if confronted with a response that confounds them, they become hostile and abusive. This is generally how they are with family, too. They will often intentionally give confusing or imprecise commands as an excuse to to get someone to screw up, so they can arrest them. Cops have told me this, in fact. So lose the hero myths abouot cops already, okay?

|5.19.06 @ 6:55PM|#

Note the Baltimore Sun article clarifies that these were housing cops. I'm guessing she was trying to prove she's as much of asshole as any real cop.

|5.20.06 @ 12:37AM|#

Thanks for that info, Jillsy. I wonder, too, if woman cops act tougher to prove they can cut it with the guys.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.20.06 @ 9:59AM|#

Anon, I have always thought it odd that a certain percentage of married couples look suspiciously like brother and sister.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.20.06 @ 10:02AM|#

The first paragraph of the story made me LOL. Then I realized it wasn't a Monty Python routine.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.20.06 @ 10:12AM|#

Jesse won't have any problems. He's a fine, upstanding citizen of Baltimore and a card carrying manly man. He ain't going to ask nobody for directions. Never.

|5.20.06 @ 4:55PM|#

I understand that when General Ross set off to lead the ground assault on Baltimore (while the British fleet was shelling Fort McHenry) he said, "I shall be in Baltimore tonight, or hell!"

Now I've only driven through on I-95 a few times but everything I've ever heard about Baltimore makes me wonder if there was any way for him to know the difference.