Cedar Knoll

Area law enforcement agencies met with Cedar Knoll officials Wednesday to begin hammering out a plan to handle future escapes from the Washington-owned facility in Laurel."

In a 6-to-4 vote, the Baltimore County Landmarks Preservation Commission declined last night to save a 1920s cottage in Cockeysville from demolition. Neighbors had petitioned to have the home at Sherwood and Cedar Knoll roads placed on a preliminary preservation list. That action would preclude any action on the building until a review by county officials and a public hearing. Commission members said that two additions to the home compromised its historic and architectural integrity. They said the house did not meet strict preservation guidelines, despite its association with Cockeysville's founding families.

The District of Columbia's chief of Human Services said that more guards, new campus patrols and new door locks will help end an era of continuous escapes from the Cedar Knoll youth detention center in western Anne Arundel County."

I realized I was getting older," said Ellicott City's Jean Testerman. "I wanted to leave something behind - something a little more personal," she said. Life Lines, published last month, is the 83-year-old Testerman's intensely personal collection of 35 original poems. "I went though boxes of poems, picked some, laid some aside - they had to have meaning for me and the reader," Testerman said. "They are my personal description of a significant experience." Many of these experiences spring from her longtime correspondence with prison inmates - something she began more than 40 years ago when she was an English teacher at a facility where juvenile offenders were housed.

The troubled Cedar Knoll youth detention center in Laurel is a breath away from being ordered to close, just as the District of Columbia was making a last-gasp effort to improve the minimum-security facility.U.S. House and Senate negotiators agreed yesterday on a spending package for the District of Columbia that eliminates money for Cedar Knoll.The House is expected to vote on the bill today, and the Senate is to take up the matter tomorrow. Sara Broadwater, a spokeswoman for Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, D-5th, said the bill is assured of passing.

Three youths marked their transfer from the D.C.-run Cedar Knoll Youth Detention Center in Laurel by escaping Sunday, less than 24 hours before the facility was closed under a mandate from Congress.The three boys, ranging in age from 15 to 17, walked away Sunday night from the Forest Haven complex, a defunct mental institution used for for an alcoholic rehabilitation program. The three were still missing yesterday.Larry Brown, a spokesman for the D.C. Department of Human Services, said the youths are not considered dangerous.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment Wednesday night that would shut down the troubled D.C.-owned Cedar Knoll youth detention center near Laurel by next June.The measure, included in the district's $3.9 billion spending plan, goes to the Senate, which is expected to take up the package in the next couple months.Cedar Knoll, a minimum-security detention center near Route 32 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that has no fences, has been plagued by escapes.Since January 1990, 43 youths have escaped, 49 have fled while on outside job or school assignments and 85 more have failed to return from unsupervised home visits or special leave.

An 18-year-old escapee from a juvenile detention facility in Jessup pleaded guilty to robbery yesterday for his involvement in a carjacking last February in Jessup.Steven R. Berry of Washington was part of a group of seven residents of Cedar Knoll who escaped from the school at about 7:30 p.m. Feb. 8.The facility is operated by the District of Columbia. Congress this year deleted money for its operation from the federal budget, leaving the facility's future in doubt.After escaping, the group made its way to a grove of trees near the Jessup post office, at 2851 Jessup Road, where one of the youths approached Jean Grant of Jessup as she was walking back to her car after mailing a letter.

Seven years ago, a federal judge ordered the District of Columbia to close its Cedar Knoll Youth Detention Center in Laurel. On Monday, that order finally will be carried out.Just two months ago, more than 150 juvenile offenders were still housed in the facility, which has been criticized as a dumping ground for wayward teen-agers and for repeated escapes that frightened surrounding neighborhoods.Judges were still sentencing youths to the medium-security facility near Route 32 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway as recently as March, leading district officials to wonder if they could meet a deadline mandated by Congress.

County police are again complaining that Washington youth services officials failed to notify them promptly of the Monday night escape ofsix teen-agers from the Cedar Knoll youth detention center near Laurel.As of last night, the youths, who were serving time on narcotics and car theft charges, were still at large. Since January 1990, 43youths have escaped from the facility, which is owned and operated by Washington's Department of Human Services, 49 others have fled while at outside jobs or school assignments, and 85 more failed to returnfrom unsupervised home visits or special leave, officials said.

Residents of western Anne Arundel County have dark memories of the former detention center called Cedar Knolls, the longtime repository for convicted juveniles from Washington, which owned the center.Youths regularly escaped out the windows of the minimum-security center -- 132 during one particularly egregious four-month stretch -- and fled through the yards and streets of terrified neighbors.So last week's sale of the 106-acre property to a commercial real estate firm is being hailed by county officials and residents as outstanding news.

Constellation Energy Group's real estate subsidiary finalized an acquisition of a former youth detention center in Anne Arundel County yesterday, where it plans to develop as much as $100 million worth of space for offices and other uses.The $1.8 million purchase of the 106-acre Cedar Knolls detention center will allow Constellation to significantly expand the size of its National Business Park in Annapolis Junction, which contains six buildings totaling 560,000 square feet. Cedar Knolls is adjacent to the 175-acre park.

Last Friday morning, District of Columbia officials assured civic leaders from the Laurel area that youths at Forest Haven, a D.C. juvenile jail off Route 198 near Maryland City, pose no security threat.Several hours later, a 17-year-old fled the facility, Anne Arundel County police said. The next day, a 19-year-old absconded. And on Sunday, another 17-year-old escaped, according to U.S. Park Police.Ten youths have walked away or driven away from Forest Haven since Aug. 6, said Pat Belasco-Barr, the District's administrator of youth services.

WASHINGTON -- A lawyer representing inmates at the District of Columbia's maximum-security youth prison in Laurel yesterday condemned the prison's operation and asked a D.C. judge to increase fines the city has paid because of the prison's overcrowded conditions.The attorney, David Reiser, asked Superior Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina to increase the fine to $1,000 a day for each inmate that the Oak Hill Youth Detention Center is over capacity. The current fine is $1,000 for each day the prison is overcrowded.

Eight local and federal police agencies agreed yesterday to coordinate their resources to catch escapees from the D.C.-run Oak Hill Youth Detention Center in Laurel, thus easing fears in neighboring communities.The 18-point agreement worked out by U.S. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer marks the first time a written notification policy has been put in effect and ends what police officials described as a haphazard way of finding escaped youths."It is excellent," said U.S. Park Police Sgt. Gregory Brown, who was assigned in 1992 to the district that includes the maximum-security prison at Route 32 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

County agrees not to charge adult bookstore pending rulingCounty officials have agreed not to file criminal charges against an Odenton adult bookstore until a suit filed by the store is decided by a Circuit Court judge.Attorneys for the county and for Annapolis Road Ltd., which operates the store in the 1600 block of Annapolis Road, reached the agreement yesterday.Deputy County Attorney David Plymyer said he plans to file counter suits within days against Annapolis Road and another adult bookstore in the Parole area, 2020 C, in an attempt to enforce a two-year-old county law and shut down the operations.

A series of escapes from the Cedar Knoll juvenile detention center has prompted an Anne Arundel County lawmaker to propose closing the Maryland City facility.State Del. Tyras S. "Bunk" Athey, a Democratwho represents the community, said Washington Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly should close the facility if security cannot be improved dramatically and soon.Escapes have long plagued Cedar Knoll -- one of three juvenile detention centers operated by Washington's Department of Human Servicesin Maryland City -- and the community, Athey said.

The stranger pounding on Richard Harmon's back door in Jessup that Saturday evening cried and trembled. The young woman told Harmon how she'd been attacked at the post office right across the street by six youths who threw her on the ground and stole her car.Neither Harmon nor the woman knew that less than an hour earlier, police say, these young men forced open the door of a brick dormitory and fled the unfenced grounds of Cedar Knoll, a District of...

During the last election, Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-5th, took a lot of flak for being an ambitious, power-hungry politician. But there are benefits to having a congressman with clout, as western Anne Arundel County residents have discovered.Thanks in large part to Mr. Hoyer, the D.C.-run Cedar Knoll Youth Detention Center in Laurel has finally been closed. And land that had been earmarked for a homeless shelter in Maryland City -- which, surrounded by correctional institutions, already bears more than its share of society's ills -- has been given instead to the county for a park.