Blogs: Author Archive

When news broke in February that two Maryland men, including the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club (OMC), had been indicted in a methamphetamine conspiracy after the FBI had infiltrated the club, one knowledgeable observer, who writes a blog called “Aging Rebel,” predicted there may be other shoes yet to...
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City Paper’s 2003 Sizzlin’ Summer issue features an introduction, Emily Flake on Pimlico racetrack, Mark Fatla on minor-league baseball parks, Erin Sullivan on the “Painting Lady” of Canton, Tim Hill on the 12 O’Clock Boyz, Van Smith on the Eastern Shore’s Mason-Dixon markers, Blake de Pastino on Vera’s White Sands, the I-Team on Baltimore’s...
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After complaining in court about the conditions of his confinement in Maryland’s prison system, Tavon White, the lead defendant in the high-profile racketeering case against alleged members of the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang, today was granted his request to be transferred to federal custody by U.S. District judge Ellen Hollander. The reasons cited...
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Just before Christmas 2007, Baltimore deputy mayor for community and economic development Salima Siler Marriott (D), a former long-time state delegate, had to deal with the news that her son, Patrice Marriott, then 40 years old, had been indicted in federal court for being a felon in possession of a firearm. It was no...
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Not like it really needs saying, but: Don’t take pills and drive, especially if you’re traveling with heroin and lots of cash and don’t have a job. To drive the point home, consider the case of 49-year-old Sandra Diane Rust and 50-year-old Samuel Cornelius Rust, III, a married couple from Pennsylvania. They were driving...
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Maryland U.S. District judge Ellen Hollander today issued a scheduling and discovery order in the Black Guerrilla Family prison-gang racketeering case that has caused a national sensation since the indictment was unsealed on Apr. 23, exposing anew Maryland’s longstanding problem of correctional corruption. The two-month jury trial, scheduled to start on June 9, 2014,...
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Tavon White (pictured), the alleged Black Guerrilla Family leader charged in a racketeering indictment stemming from correctional corruption at the Baltimore City Detention Center, is currently being held at North Branch Correctional Facility (NBCI) in Cumberland – and he’s not happy about his conditions of confinement there, according to a motion for a hearing...
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Fox News show The O’Reilly Factor yesterday aired a new segment about Maryland’s correctional corruption scandal (watch it below), with correspondent Jesse Watters interviewing an anonymous former Baltimore City Detention Center detainee who described a free-for-all party scene for inmates and confronting Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services...
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Tom Chalkley’s feature profiles expatriate Iraqis in Baltimore. In Mobtown Beat, David Morley airs concerns about drug-treatment providers in Hollins Market; Van Smith covers the election season’s first candidate forum; and Alejandro Danois remembers Sam Lacy. The Nose sorts through Baltimore’s ongoing police-prosecutor spats. Michael Yockel’s Charmed Life gives props to The Sun’s crime-blotter...
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Back when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was building its blockbuster 2009/2010 racketeering case against the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang – the one that had many of the same elements, including correctional corruption, as the current FBI-investigated racketeering case against the BGF – agents identified Austin Roberts (pictured), who goes by...
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Though Somali piracy on the high seas is on the wane, it’s been making for news and entertainment recently, with a World Bank report on its $18-billion-a-year cost to the global economy and the impending release of a new Tom Hanks movie, Captain Phillips, that retells one of the problem’s more chilling episodes. While...
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As of this morning, six of the 25 defendants have entered not-guilty pleas in the federal racketeering case unsealed April 23 against Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang conspirators who, with the help of corrupt correctional officers (COs), allegedly  gained operational control of the Baltimore City Detention Center, which is run by Maryland’s embattled...
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