Are business owners to blame for street crime?
September 25, 2008
For more than a week now, the owners and family of Chang Yim’s now-padlocked Linden Bar and Liquors on North Avenue in Baltimore have been staging a silent protest in front of City Hall over the closing of their family-run business.
The store has been the site of frequent drug-related activity, according to newspaper reports and liquor board officials, and on July 20, the day after a fatal shooting in the store that was said by some to be drug-related, the Liquor Board used emergency powers to shut the store down.
City police officials contend that Yim refused to hire an armed security guard to curb drug activity at the shop after he was asked to do so in January, but in a three-page statement being distributed by Yim and his family last week, he wrote that he “did not feel comfortable introducing deadly force to our establishment.”
The statement goes on to portray Yim and his family as law-abiding small business owners who are victims of the ills of a drug-plagued neighborhood, and attacks the practice of padlocking problematic liquor stores as unconstitutional:
“First, the padlock law blames us for conduct that is not our fault…Second, the padlock law includes within the definition of nuisances, conduct that is purely legal. For example, it is legal to sell Maryland State Lottery from our store…Additionally, the padlock law makes possession of unregistered firearms a nuisance. Under Maryland Law only handguns and assault rifles are required to be registered. Shotguns and non-automatic rifles are not require to be registered, and in fact are owned by many law abiding citizens to protect their homes and businesses. Third, the police commissioner was never given the legal authority by the State of Maryland to hear and decide padlock cases.”
In a violent, often dangerous city where small business owners take risks doing business in some neighborhoods, sometimes even ones that are thought of as safe or middle class, who do you think is to blame for encouraging drug activity and shooting deaths? Should problem bars and liquor stores be punished for being the site of unfortunate incidents?
What sort of message do you think this sends to criminals? How about small business owners?
ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentThe Sun, WJZ buddy up
September 25, 2008
The Baltimore Sun certainly does get around. In the last six years it’s made three content- or staff-sharing deals with two local stations (twice with ABC affiliate WMAR-TV and once with NBC affiliate WBAL-TV and radio) and Tuesday announced yet another deal — this time with CBS affiliate WJZ –TV.
(The Sun is just one local news station short of hitting for the cycle…has someone notified the Fox affiliate WBFF-TV to stand by?)
Touted as a “content-sharing partnership,” The Sun will air WJZ’s local news videos and the two outlets will share story leads and partner on major journalistic projects, according to a station press release.
The Sun’s past collaborations with television stations have included journalists being featured or interviewed on WMAR’s evening news, and WBAL-TV’s chief meteorologist, Tom Tasselmyer, on the back page of the Maryland section and answering weather questions on The Sun’s Web site.
According to the release, WJZ’s sales team will be responsible for selling advertising inventory within WJZ video content on baltimoresun.com, and the station’s regional news coverage will include stories provided by The Sun’s four county bureaus, and WJZ will promote the newspaper’s top stories in its newscasts.
Content sharing between the organizations is expected to begin by the end of the month, and WJZ news video is expected to be available at The Sun’s Web site by mid-October.
Tim Franklin, editor and senior vice president of The Sun, said in the release that the move benefits readers because combining the two outlets’ resources provides “an even more comprehensive news report.”
But are some news readers concerned that “combining resources” really means that the same news will be rehashed on both outlets, effectively reducing the variety of news reported? What do you think?
LIZ FARMER, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentTattoos make the news
September 23, 2008
A news release from Loyola College in Maryland announces that English professor Juniper Ellis’ “Tattooing the World: Pacific Designs in Print and Skin” has been named 2008’s “Best New Book by a Local Author” by Baltimore’s City Paper. (Ellis shared the honor with best-selling mystery author Laura Lippman’s “What the Dead Know.”)
According to the release, Ellis’ book, published by Columbia University Press in March 2008, traces the origins and significance of modern tattoo in the works of 19th- and 20th-century artists, travelers, missionaries, scientists and famous writers including Herman Melville, Margaret Mead, Albert Wendt and Sia Figiel. Hers is the first book to specifically consider the role of tattoo in literature and culture.
“Thirty-six percent of young Americans are tattooed,” the release quotes Ellis, a member of the Loyola faculty since 1997. “Clearly the designs are a flashpoint in our culture and a visible way people create meaning and identity. I’m happy City Paper thinks the book contributes to the conversation about a living art form.”
While it’s nice that Ellis’ book has been singled out for praise, I’m at a loss to understand the appeal of tattoos, or why more than a third of young Americans, or Americans of any age, are willing to spend money to despoil their bodies. It’s not that I have anything against tattoo studios, many of whose employees are talented artists.
But if people need to “create meaning and identity” for themselves, permanently disfiguring their bodies seems a bizarre way to do it. Why not volunteer at a local soup kitchen, or tutor low-income kids, or do something that helps other people while building your self-esteem?
Can anyone enlighten me?
PAUL SAMUEL, Associate Editor
Sphere: Related ContentLaw blog round-up
September 22, 2008
Boy, I hope your weekend was more relaxing than mine was. Here are a few law links for your Monday:
- UM Law celebrated Thurgood Marshall this weekend. (As my colleague Danny Jacobs reported last week, it was part of the law school’s second Black Alumni Reunion.)
- Baltimore City schools are doing a good job improving their special education programs, the school system says in a federal court filing in a case where a consent decree was reached. Superintendent Andres Alonso wants to know how good the situation has to get and how long it has to stay that way before the court will ease up on its oversight of the district’s progress. This link is a few years out of date but gives a nice sum-up of the case.
- I’ve never heard of doing your divorce online, but the Maryland Divorce Legal Crier links to this story about the state of Washington forbidding an online divorce company from offering its services in the state.
- “‘We the people’ has transformed to ‘We the politically connected Corporations,’” says consumer lawyer Scott Borison.
- Sometimes litigation is the way to go in family law, says the Maryland Father’s Rights Blog. For more on this general topic, check out this story of mine from last year.
CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer
Is the advantage of UnderArmour undeniable?
September 19, 2008
I came across an op-ed piece today in the University of Maryland’s Diamondback student newspaper that makes an interesting accusation about the school’s defense of Under Armour becoming the official outfitter of its 27 varsity sports teams in a $17.5 million deal.
The author, Malcolm Harris, says a letter to the editor that was written by the university’s basketball and football coaches and the director of athletics in response to a former student’s letter wasn’t as much a defense of the Baltimore-based sports apparel company as it was a press release for Under Armour.
Sphere: Related ContentGun owners beware
September 15, 2008
As I was reading a brief in today’s Maryland Lawyer on a Baltimore ordinance that would require a gun owner to report its theft or loss within two days of discovery, I began thinking about the unintended (perhaps?) consequences of the ordinance — besides the civil citation or misdemeanor charge against the violator.
For instance, in law school we learned that there are two ways to sue someone on a theory of negligence. To be successful, a plaintiff must prove duty, breach of duty, proximate causation and injury. Yet there is also negligence per se, which arises out of the violation of a law that was enacted to protect people like the plaintiff. In a proper case, the violation establishes (or at least creates a presumption of) both the duty and breach.
Certainly, it is conceivable that someone injured or killed by a stolen gun is within the class of persons the ordinance intends to protect. What do you think: could this ordinance be used by an assault victim or a decedent’s family to go after the gun owner who didn’t report it stolen or missing?
CHRISTINA DORAN, Assistant Legal Editor
Sphere: Related ContentAnte upped for Baltimore Running Festival
September 11, 2008
The ante is upped this year for the Under Armour Baltimore Running Festival, which is scheduled for Oct. 11. With $125,000 in prize money (a $10,000 boost from last year), more than 15,000 runners are competing for a piece of the purse — the most ever registered for the festival, which began in 2002.
The event’s coordinator, Corrigan Sports Enterprises, attributes the festival’s growing popularity to word-of-mouth advertising and predicts more than 17,000 will eventually register to compete.
So far, the CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield Half-Marathon sold out for the sixth straight year while the Under Armour Baltimore Marathon has fewer than 100 spots left (the race has a limit of 4,000) and the Legg Mason Team Relay has room for 25 more teams (out of a 750 limit), according to Corrigan Sports.
While the numbers pale slightly compared to the 22,000 who ran last year’s Washington’s Marine Corps Marathon and the 37,000–runner limit in the New York City Marathon, it’s not bad for a city of Baltimore’s size and a festival that’s less than 10 years old. To put it in perspective, in 1976, the New York City Marathon’s sixth year, it drew a little more than 2,000 runners. (Baltimore’s men and women’s full marathon is also in its sixth year.)
Do you think there’s a limit to how big the marathon race here can get before it becomes detrimental to the race? The runner limit now stands at just 4,000 — should that be increased to get even more exposure?
LIZ FARMER, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentIt’s not The Wire, but…
September 9, 2008
I’ll admit I was a little nervous when the first line of an e-mail I received read, in part, “I’m with the TV show America’s Most Wanted.”
But I was more than happy to help when I read on, and was asked to pass along word that Saturday night’s episode features the capture of Kevin “Muggsy” Armstead, a Baltimore drug dealer who was apprehended after his story first aired on AMW in March, making him the show’s 986th “direct capture.”
Armstead was wanted for the murder of Ricardo Paige, a Baltimore handyman who renovated row houses in the city, removing the drugs he found along the way. Police said Armstead believed some of his cocaine was thrown away by Paige during a renovation job. Armstead and two friends allegedly confronted Paige in a row house undergoing renovation on March 20, 2007, and shot him to death.
Once Armstead’s story aired a year later, tips came pouring in, according to AMW. The most reliable ones said Armstead was just outside Atlanta which is where police found him after a short stakeout at a car wash.
Armstead, according to police descriptions to AMW, was “totally overwhelmed and surprised” when he was captured.
His jury trial for first-degree murder is scheduled for Oct. 14 in Baltimore City Circuit Court, court records show. America’s Most Wanted airs 9 p.m. Saturday.
DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer
Sphere: Related ContentWound up about design
September 4, 2008
Last night, the Wind-Up Space, a bar on North Avenue in central Baltimore, hosted the city’s first “Design Conversation”—a meeting of architects, artists, planners, designers and all sorts of like-minded folk to discuss issues pertinent to the “built and visual environment of cities in general and Baltimore in particular,” according to Elizabeth Evitts-Dickinson, one of the event’s organizers. The ultimate goal of these meetings, which will occur every month, is to foster a community of creative people who might contribute to a dialogue about “design with a capital D — everything from architecture and buildings, to street signs and sidewalks.”
I showed up about 45 minutes late, but the crowd of about 50-60, mostly in their early-to-mid 30s, by my estimate, were sipping beers and listening to Evitts, the former executive editor of Urbanite magazine and current blogger for Metropolis magazine’s website, talk about a recent trip to the west coast and some lessons she gleaned about open space planning in San Francisco.
Other topics discussed were the rising popularity of “green” building practices, the city’s newly-established office of sustainability, a “green map” of Baltimore and affordable green design in Baltimore neighborhoods. William Evitts, a history professor and father of Elizabeth, decried class inequalities among the city’s well-designed vs. poorly-designed neighborhoods, saying, “The areas [of Baltimore] that we want to hide are generally where poor people live.”
Brad Rogers, a principal with Baltimore Green Construction, expressed frustration at builders of pre-fab housing, which he equated with vinyl-sided, “crappy, nonsense houses in Harford County.” Many such builders, he said, are unwilling to enter the 21st century in terms of architectural design: “If you talk to them about anything like advanced framing techniques…they get this deer-in-the-headlights look and say, ‘Tell us what you want, and we’ll price it.’”
The question is, where is all this leading?
Reached via e-mail after the event, Evitts wrote:
“My hope is that we can move these beyond just a networking opportunity to become a place of focused and creative design exchange. It’ll be tricky figuring out how to keep all of these disparate areas of design engaged in one overall conversation, but I think the very fact that we had such a diversity of professions in one room — all interested and passionate about the design of Baltimore’s built and visual environment — is a hell of a good start.”
For more info on the Baltimore Design Conversation, check out its Facebook page.
ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentDoe’nt Go There!
August 27, 2008
The Baltimore City Department of Public Works issued a news release that took me by surprise, at least through my cursory glance at the headline, which said “COMMUNITY DEER MEETING.”
I’ve heard rumors that deer sometimes wander into the wooded areas of the city (one report of a deer in Guilford, which I frankly don’t believe). But are there enough deer in the city to merit a community deer meeting?
No.
This meeting, though put on by the city DPW, is actually regarding the Loch Raven Reservoir in Baltimore County. The reservoir is part of Baltimore’s water supply, so the city and county are working together on plans to control deer. The deer are eating too much of the new growth in the Loch Raven watershed, according to the release.
So has anybody ever seen a deer in Baltimore City?
ANDY ROSEN, Business Writer
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