Showing posts with label Baltimore MD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baltimore MD. Show all posts

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Thug Fuss and Twisted Attention

After Baltimore riots, some leaders slam 'thug' as the new n-word
By Josh Levs, CNN, April 29, 2015
(CNN)A term used by President Barack Obama and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to characterize rioters has given new life to a debate over the word "thug."

"Of course it's not the right word, to call our children 'thugs,'" Baltimore City Councilman Carl Stokes told CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront." "These are children who have been set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us. No, we don't have to call them thugs."

"Just call them n-----s. Just call them n-----s," he said. "No, we don't have to call them by names such as that."

The Rev. Jamal Bryant drew the same comparison Wednesday morning on CNN. The President and the mayor are wrong, he said. "These are not thugs, these are upset and frustrated children."

This is what the word actually means.
Thug
noun
1. a cruel or vicious ruffian, robber, or murderer.
2.(sometimes initial capital letter) one of a former group of professional robbers and murderers in India who strangled their victims.

Give me a break! If Stokes is offended by this word, then he needs to actually take a step back and consider who it was being directed at.

The right to peacefully protest has been defend across the country over and over again but what people take issue with is when those protests are used to commit criminal acts, like robbery and setting fires topped off with attacking police officers.

Destroying businesses and private property is not part of what most folks were trying to do, yet to others it was an opportunity to act like a bunch of thugs. The word is not used to describe color or even as an insult to the protestors. Deal with it!

If Strokes believes children were being called thugs, then he should think about what some of them were doing at the time then rethink how all the rioters actually did more damage to those children than this word ever could.

What kind of a message does committing crimes send? What kind of a message does it send when only some lives matter?

This isn't about all police officers committing crimes, but has always been about a few doing unspeakable acts. No one seems to want to talk about the 100 good cops being injured just doing their jobs, showing up for work.
Nearly 100 Officers Injured Since Monday: Baltimore Police
Nearly 100 officers have been hurt since violence broke out in the city on Monday, Baltimore Police said.

Capt. Eric Kowalczyk said Thursday afternoon that more than 40 officers required some sort of treatment at the hospital.

Protesters have been throwing bricks, bottles and other items at officers trying to contain demonstrations after the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who suffered critical injuries while he was in police custody.

But why talk about the fact that most of those officers are good and ashamed of the few bad ones giving all of them a bad reputation?

That article had "protestors" instead of thugs. Most of the people protesting should take offense with that because most of them were there to publicly show their outrage peacefully. That word should have been replaced with "thugs" or criminals.

Folks can twist and manipulate whatever they want and they seem to get all the attention of the reporters on TV yet there is so much more going on in this country not getting any attention at all.

Does Strokes know about veterans with PTSD in crisis being killed by police officers and SWAT Teams all over the country because they are not getting the help they need? These are some of their stories.
U.S. Air Force dress blue uniform, Francis “Frank” Lamantia Spivey stood with an assault rifle pushed up to his chin just after midnight Feb. 25.

Glendale police fatally shot Joe Tassinari in March 2015, Vietnam veteran.

William Dean Poole, GASTON COUNTY — A veteran was shot and killed by police Monday after he fired his weapon at them, Gaston County authorities said.

Brandon Lawrence, "as observed by officers just inside his residence holding a 23-inch machete"

Brian Babb, a 49-year-old former captain in the Oregon Army National Guard

There was only one protest.
Anthony Hill, a 27-year-old US air force veteran, was shot dead on 9 March at his apartment complex outside Atlanta.

The stories above are only a few of the reports from across the country that I found. How many more are there? Do they merit protests? Why not? They were in crisis because of PTSD and where they were sent!

They risked their lives serving this country but over and over again they didn't get the help the rest of us thought they would get.

The politicians got to say whatever they wanted over and over again yet over and over again we bury veterans. For Heaven's sake! They survived combat but couldn't survived home?

These veterans knew how to use weapons yet a tiny fraction of officers are hit by them before they fired the fatal shot. Depending on what part of the country the story ends differently a lot of the time. 

Some of them are taken to get help after facing off with SWAT Teams and sometimes their bodies are put into bags. Why does this happen? It isn't about good cops vs bad ones but more about how they were trained and it is circumstance by circumstance. We may never know because it seems no one cares to find out what makes the difference.

No one care because we have to spend time on folks like Strokes trying to cause outrage over something that isn't even relevant to what happened.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Vietnam Veteran Took Stand Against Baltimore Rioters

Vietnam Veteran took stand against Baltimore rioters and bravo for him. When he said why he did it, he was expressing what a lot of other people feel.

The truth is, the rioters respect nothing but use everything they can to pretend what they are doing has any value at all. It doesn't. They used the death of Freddie Gray to the point where I actually had to look up his name because I couldn't remember it.  It solved nothing when they became the story.

His family asked protestors to respect their grief just for one day, but they ignored it. No one knows what happened right now but the one thing everyone should know is the entire police force is not to blame even though it seems as if a few are responsible.

They attacked police officers even though what was done to Gray was not done by all of them, but that didn't matter. It didn't matter that they were destroying businesses and neighborhood property. Nothing mattered.

It never seems to matter that veterans are killed by police officers everyday all over the country because they do not get the help they need to come home and live in peace. Depending on where they live, some officers are trained properly and the veteran is taken to get help.  In other parts of the country, they are shot quickly. There are hardly no protests at all for them.

Well, one veteran decided he was going to do something about it and he took a stand against the corrupters of Gray's family in pain. Even London took notice.
Baltimore riots: Video shows 'hero' Vietnam vet who told looters to go home and study
London Evening Standard
RAMZY ALWAKEEL
Published: 28 April 2015

Veteran: Robert Valentine tells CNN's Joe Johns why he has confronted rioters
(Picture: CNN/YouTube)

A Vietnam veteran who stood up to rioters in Baltimore has been branded a hero.

Robert Valentine was interviewed by CNN after he was spotted confronting rioters in the street after a wave of violence broke out following the death of a black man who was in police custody in the US city.

The war veteran astonished news reporters when he delivered a poignant message on camera denouncing rioters.

Speaking to CNN reporter Joe Johns, he said: "I did 30 years, came out Master Sergeant. I've seen more than all this. I've been through the riots already."
read more here

Veteran stands up against rioters
Anderson Cooper 360 | Source: CNN
Added on 9:55 PM ET, Mon April 27, 2015
There was a lot of folks showing great courage and those were the folks showing up to do their jobs in spite of the criminals destroying their city instead of working to make it a better place to live. Protesting peacefully is one thing but this, this inflicted more pain on more people.

Friday, November 29, 2013

Airman of the Year AIr National Guardsman's body found

Body found in water is DC Air Guard's Airman of Year, cops say
The Associated Press
Published: November 28, 2013

BALTIMORE — The body found in the water near Fells Point is that of an airman with the D.C. Air National Guard who went missing last week, Baltimore police say.

Police said Thursday that divers with the department's marine unit removed the body of Airman 1st Class Evan Curbeam, 29, from the water at the Inner Harbor Wednesday afternoon.
read more here

Friday, June 28, 2013

Retired Marine Gen. Cartwright investigated in cyber leaks probe

Retired Marine Gen. Cartwright investigated in cyber leaks probe
By PETE YOST
Associated Press
Published: June 27, 2013

WASHINGTON -- A former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is under investigation for allegedly leaking classified information about a covert cyberattack on Iran's nuclear facilities, according to media reports.

Retired Marine Gen. James "Hoss" Cartwright has been told he is a target of the probe, NBC News and The Washington Post reported Thursday. A "target" is someone a prosecutor or grand jury has substantial evidence linking to a crime and who is likely to be charged.

The Justice Department referred questions to the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore, where a spokeswoman, Marcia Murphy, declined to comment.

The investigation of the leak about the Iran cyberattack is one of a number of national security leak investigations that have been started by the Obama administration, including ones involving The Associated Press and Fox News.

In June 2012, the New York Times reported that Cartwright was a crucial player in the cyber operation called Olympic Games, started under President George W. Bush.

Bush reportedly advised President Barack Obama to preserve Olympic Games.

According to the Times, Obama ordered the cyberattacks sped up, and in 2010 an attack using a computer virus called Stuxnet temporarily disabled 1,000 centrifuges that the Iranians were using to enrich uranium.
read more here

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Baltimore VA Among Worst In Nation

Baltimore VA Among Worst In Nation; Sen. Mikulski Works To Change That
CBS News
June 24, 2013

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The Veterans Administration offices here in Baltimore are among the worst in the nation in getting disability claims processed.

As Mike Schuh reports–it took over a year for a decision to come down. Now Senator Barbara Mikulski and others are using their power to get the VA to change how it does business.

They served their country, many are injured and now they want the VA to hold up their end of the bargain and provide the medical care they promised.

But here in Baltimore, the time between filing a benefits claim and getting an answer routinely ran over a year—and then 25% of those cases were mishandled. It’s the highest percentage of any VA office in the country.

Veterans at the hospital downtown were appalled.
read more here

Friday, May 3, 2013

Six veterans plead guilty to Agent Orange benefits fraud

Six veterans plead guilty to Agent Orange benefits fraud
Scheme allegedly run by former high-ranking state benefits claim officer
By Kevin Rector
The Baltimore Sun
May 2, 2013

Six military veterans from Maryland pleaded guilty to fraud charges this week in a scheme to obtain federal military benefits and state tax breaks with faked documentation claiming they were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office.

The veterans allegedly paid thousands of dollars in cash to David Clark, the former deputy chief of veterans claims in the state Department of Veterans Affairs Office, in exchange for $1.4 million in fraudulent benefits and tax breaks, prosecutors said.

The veterans, some of whom never even served in Vietnam, are from multiple branches of the military, the indictment says.

Clark and two others have also been indicted in the scheme, which allegedly dates back to 1995.

Agent Orange, the indictment says, "refers to a blend of tactical herbicides the U.S. military sprayed in the jungles of Vietnam to remove trees and dense tropical foliage that provided enemy cover" during the 1960s and 1970s.
read more here

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

VA won't say how many veterans die waiting for disability benefits

VA won't say how many veterans die waiting for disability benefits
By Yvonne Wenger
The Baltimore Sun
January 29, 2013

How many veterans die annually while they wait for the embattled U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to approve their claim for disability benefits? The answer: The VA won’t say.

In half a dozen calls and emails, The Baltimore Sun asked the VA over a period of about two weeks for information about its backlog to process disability claims for American veterans — and the consequences of the delays on servicemen and servicewomen.

The Sun’s report showed the Baltimore office, which handles claims for all of Maryland’s 450,000 veterans, is the worst performing in the country. The local office was the slowest and had the highest error rate in the U.S., according to latest information available.

The VA has made strides in improving transparency and access to information with an interactive online database of processing times and error rates called ASPIRE. The agency also created an online portal called eBenefits for veterans to learn the latest status on their claims, although many find it confusing and the information it provides not timely.

The ASPIRE Dashboard was integral in producing the Sun investigation. But it couldn’t answer all the questions, most notably, the number of veterans who die before the agency approves or denies their claim.

Nearly 19,500 veterans died from October 2011 to September 2012, the federal fiscal year, while they waited for benefits, according to an article published in San Francisco’s Bay Citizen. That figure is based on the $437 million in retroactive benefits paid to the survivors of the deceased veterans, according to the report. The number of veterans who died waiting during that period is likely higher.
read more here

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Gold Star Moms helping others Mother's Day and everyday

Gold Star Mothers continue the service of their fallen children
Maryland chapter, revived during decade of war, dedicate themselves to active duty personnel, veterans
By Matthew Hay Brown
The Baltimore Sun
May 12, 2012

BETHESDA — A mother arrives at the Red Cross office at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on a mission for her son, a 23-year-old soldier and double amputee. He needs a back scratcher.

With her bright eyes and wide smile, volunteer Janice Chance gives her that and more — a reassuring rub on the arm and an offer to do anything else she can for the soldier, who is visiting the hospital for tests.

In a sense, Chance is here for her own son, too.

Marine Capt. Jesse Melton III, the oldest of Chance's three children, was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2008. Soon after his death, the Owings Mills woman began volunteering with the Red Cross at Walter Reed and in the emergency room at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Chance is one of 50 Maryland mothers who are honoring the memory of their fallen sons and daughters by tending to the needs of those still fighting, the wounded and the veterans.

Together, they have revived the long-dormant state chapter of the American Gold Star Mothers, a service organization made up exclusively of women who have lost children in the military.

Founded after World War I and widely recognized during World War II, the American Gold Star Mothers had been dwindling for decades. Now the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have brought a new generation of women to the organization.

Maryland is one of several states seeing a revival. Nationally, the organization now counts 2,000 women as members.
read more here

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

City officer gets 15 years in fatal shooting of Marine veteran

City officer gets 15 years in fatal shooting of Marine veteran
Tshamba shot unarmed Brown 12 times outside Mount Vernon bar in '09

By Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun
8:19 p.m. EDT, August 16, 2011

A Baltimore judge had harsh words Tuesday for city police officer Gahiji Tshamba, calling his actions "repugnant" and sentencing him to 15 years in prison in the shooting death last year of an unarmed Marine veteran outside a Mount Vernon bar.

"None of this had to happen," Circuit Judge Edward R.K. Hargadon told Tshamba. "You seriously overreacted."

Hargadon sentenced the officer to seven years for voluntary manslaughter and eight years for using a handgun in a crime of violence, with an additional two-year term held in suspension. He called the early morning incident between two intoxicated men — Tyrone Brown, who touched a woman inappropriately, and Tshamba, who pulled his service weapon to defend her honor — "truly tragic." And he chastised Tshamba for showing no apparent remorse after the shooting; instead, talking with a fellow officer about "hot chicks" that had been with him that night.

"You showed a serious lack of insight into what you had just done and a disturbing sense of detachment," Hargadon said.

He ordered Tshamba, 38, to undergo assessments for mental health and alcohol abuse upon release and to serve two years of probation.
read more here
original report
Former Marine killed by off duty officer

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Marine found way in foster family, death near home

Marine found way in foster family, death near home
Serviceman was killed at party; crashers charged

By Justin Fenton justin.fenton@baltsun.com

January 27, 2010



In Lennice Hudson's home, a refuge for foster children, Darius Ray found stability.

He became a track star at his Gaithersburg high school, graduated, flirted with college and ultimately joined the Marines. Between his foster brothers and sisters and Hudson's two biological children, he had a family, one he would join every week for dinner.

On Sunday, the family was planning to celebrate his 20th birthday.

"I love you and I want a red velvet cake," he texted Hudson in anticipation.

But Ray would not make it to his own celebration. He was fatally stabbed in Northeast Baltimore the day before at a party thrown by friends.

Three American service members or former service members have been slain in Baltimore since Dec. 20, more than the number of U.S. troops who have died in combat in Iraq during the same period.
read more here
Marine found way in foster family, death near home

Monday, July 27, 2009

16 Shot In Baltimore, Including 12 At Cookout

16 Shot In Baltimore, Including 12 At Cookout
Police Say 2 Killed In East Baltimore
POSTED: 7:30 am EDT July 27, 2009


BALTIMORE -- Sixteen people were shot, two of them fatally, in three separate incidents in a two-mile radius in east Baltimore Sunday night, police said.

Detectives were searching Monday morning for a gunman who opened fire at a backyard cookout, wounding 12 people, police department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

None of the dozen victims suffered life-threatening injuries. The victims were hit in the legs, arms, shoulders and backs, and the wounded included a 2-year-old girl and a pregnant 23-year-old woman, police said.
read more here
16 Shot In Baltimore, Including 12 At Cookout
linked from CNN

Monday, April 20, 2009

4 Bodies found in Baltimore Hotel

Police: 4 Dead In Towson Hotel
Bodies Found In 10th Floor Room
POSTED: 3:59 pm EDT April 20, 2009

BALTIMORE -- Baltimore County police told WBAL TV 11 News that four bodies were found in the Sheraton Baltimore North Hotel in Towson Monday afternoon.

Police spokesman Bill Toohey said they received a call at about 3 p.m. informing them the dead bodies were in a room on the 10th floor of the hotel along Dulaney Valley Road.

Toohey said the party in the room was supposed to check out Monday. He said a housekeeper tried to get in the room, but it was locked. The bodies were found once the door was opened.

Police say four bodies were found in a 10th floor room at the Sheraton in Towson.
go here for more
http://www.wbaltv.com/news/19232141/detail.html
linked from CNN

Friday, September 12, 2008

Man slain by officers had made threats, police say

Man slain by officers had made threats, police say
September 12, 2008
A man who was fatally shot Wednesday by Baltimore County police in Eastview had been threatening to kill people with a realistic replica of a rifle, police said yesterday. George James Waters, 26, of the 8000 block of Gough St. might have used firecrackers to simulate gunshots, they said. Walters' girlfriend told police about 4 p.m. Wednesday that he was smashing furniture with a baseball bat and throwing furniture out of windows. When officers arrived, Walters was in an upstairs bedroom and threatened to kill anyone who came near him, police said. Walters began pointing what appeared to be a rifle out of the bedroom window, shouting threats at two officers below. About 5:10 p.m., as he pointed the apparent weapon out of the window, the two officers fired at him. The officers, who were placed on routine administrative leave, were not identified by police.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Baltimore:Officer, 2 others hurt after car hits cruiser

Officer, 2 others hurt after car hits cruiser
August 21, 2008
An Anne Arundel County police officer and two others were injured when their car struck his cruiser as he responded to a call, police said yesterday.Officer Michael Cooper, a three-year member of the department, was heading west on Bestgate Road outside Annapolis about 11 a.m. Tuesday with his lights and sirens on when the driver of a 2002 Saturn sedan going east tried to turn left onto Research Drive in front of the cruiser.
click above for more