Police have charged three city men with attempted murder in the shooting Friday of an undercover officer outside a troubled housing complex in the Seton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore.
Officer Dante Arthur, an eight-year veteran of the city Police Department, remained in critical but stable condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center yesterday after the first of what Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said would likely be several reconstructive surgeries. Arthur, who was shot twice in the face Friday night after attempting to make an undercover drug purchase in the 400 block of Orchard St., is expected to make a full recovery.
Police arrested Sean Cox, 22, of the 1600 block of Alta St.; Antwan Cox, 19, of the 400 block of Orchard St.; and Sean Smith, 23, of the 400 block of Mount Holly St. Each was charged with attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault and other offenses. All have prior arrest records, police said.
Residents and neighbors of Orchard Mews, a complex of subsidized townhouses on Orchard Street, expressed frustration yesterday at what they described as a failure of both complex managers and city officials to respond to their complaints about drug sales, shootings and killings.
"We have spoken up," said one longtime resident, who did not give her name for fear of making herself a target. "We need Sheila Dixon, we need the federal government, we need someone to come in and clean this place up."
Asked about that frustration at a news conference yesterday, Dixon said the city needs the community's help.
"There has to be a zero tolerance from our community and what they're going to expect and not expect," she said. "We will do everything in our power to make it safe, but they have to be engaged as well."
Bealefeld said police are doing what they can.
"Our city employees risked their lives to try to make that block safer," he said, "and two of them almost lost their lives in doing it. You know what? My men, my women, they'll be back out there tonight. Now I don't know how much more a community can expect its civil servants to do."
Police say Arthur and his partner, Officer Daniel Harper, were working in plain clothes on the 500 block of Orchard St. about 8 p.m. Friday when Sean Cox approached and offered to sell them cocaine. When they moved to arrest him, police say, Cox became violent, attempted to take Arthur's weapon and eventually broke free and fled.
