Central Booking

A Baltimore police officer spent Monday night at the Central Booking and Intake Center after a Circuit Court judge issued a "material witness" warrant against the woman -- at the request of the city's State's Attorney's Office -- when she didn't appear for a gun trial that afternoon. "This is an important prosecution, this is a necessary prosecution, and this particular police officer was a necessary witness," said Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office.

Lawmakers in Annapolis rejected a bill this year that would have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana, but prosecutors in Baltimore City are already ahead of the curve in treating the offense as a public health issue rather than as a crime. This is the beginning of a sane policy on marijuana that one can only hope city officials will seek to expand in coming years. When the idea of treating drug abuse as a medical problem rather than as a criminal justice issue was proposed in the late 1980s by former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, critics dismissed the suggestion as not only dangerously naive and impractical but as morally and ethically wrong.

Maryland Public Safety Secretary Mary Ann Saar yesterday named Howard Ray Jr. acting commissioner for the Division of Pretrial Detention and Services. Ray, the former deputy of the division, succeeds William J. Smith, who resigned in August. He will oversee daily operations at the Baltimore City Detention Center and Central Booking and Intake Center.

A Big Boyz bail bondsman has been banned from Central Booking after an exchange with jail staff, a move his attorney says was unnecessary. According to the City Paper, which first reported the ban, Ethan Nochumowitz was barred from entering the booking facility effective Oct. 5 because security officials said they were conducting an internal investigation into an incident that had occurred involving him and staff. Big Boyz is one of the biggest bond companies in the area, and perhaps best known for flooding the region with its pink and yellow pens.

Four men housed in Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center were hospitalized late Friday night after a fight that resulted in several stab wounds that were not life-threatening. The fight occurred a few minutes before midnight in an area of the facility where pretrial detainees are housed, according to Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Two of the men were taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center. The other two were treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

A 35-year-old inmate at Baltimore's downtown Central Booking and Intake Center was found dead in his bed yesterday morning, officials said. Correctional officers found Clinton Edward Williams, a Baltimore resident, about 7:40 a.m. while conducting routine checks, said Barbara Cooper, a spokeswoman for the Division of Pretrial Detention and Services. He was transported to Mercy Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 8:19 a.m., she said. Williams had been held at Central Booking on assault and weapons charges since May 8 and was awaiting trial, Cooper said.

IT'S AMAZING, what good newspaper reporting can accomplish. Last summer, Ryan Davis, The Sun's police reporter, began hearing complaints from Baltimore police about how their time was being wasted by the chaos that reigned at the city's state-run booking center. He started asking questions and, after months of digging, put together the pieces of a story that raised fundamental questions about violations of basic human rights at the center, where people arrested on minor charges loitering and disorderly conduct were forced to linger behind bars for hours and days without seeing a court commissioner or even being formally charged.

A surge in arrests and a computer crash led to such crowded conditions at Baltimore's central booking facility last weekend that cells were crammed far beyond capacity and police trying to bring in more arrestees were turned away, officials said yesterday. Five people had to share cells built for one, bullpens designed for 20 held twice that number, and hundreds of arrestees were shackled in corridors late Friday and Saturday as officials at Central Booking and Intake Center struggled to handle arrestees without benefit of computers, said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., a spokesman for Public Safety and Correctional Services.

WITH the approval of 29 new positions for the prosecutor's office, Baltimore City is finally getting serious about attacking its tremendous homicide and violent crime rates. Prosecutors will now be able to review all charges against criminals in advance, which should eliminate many trivial cases. If those matters no longer needlessly clog dockets, prosecutors have time to pay more attention to cases that involve killers and other dangerous criminals. One impediment to a rational use of public resources remains, though: The judiciary continues to fight attempts to post a full-time judge at the Central Booking and Intake Center.

With nearly $145,000 in grants and local money, Carroll will buy a computer, fingerprinting equipment and a digital camera to streamline the processing of suspects at the county's central booking unit. The new equipment will enable Carroll County to participate in the state's automated Arrest Booking System, which allows authorities to quickly identify suspects as computers search five national and state databases, said Col. Robert Keefer, the sheriff's chief deputy. Sheriff's deputies now fingerprint suspects manually, using the outmoded, messy inking process.

I have been reading with great interest the recent articles on the Baltimore City Detention Center and Central Booking ("City jail oversight said to be lacking," Aug. 6). Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the abhorrent conditions defense lawyers face when attempting to have meaningful interviews with clients. In the BCDC, we are forced to conduct interviews in filthy, cramped booths equipped with equally filthy backless iron stools. More often than not, there is no real privacy or ability to go over audio tapes, etc. These conditions are deplorable, along with the loud yelling of inmates as well as the officers.

City police charged a 37-year-old man Friday in a Pigtown killing that occurred in March. Detectives arrested Antwan Conley of the 3000 block of Gwynns Falls in the death of Darshewn Freeman, 44. Freeman was found by police in the rear of the 1200 block of W. Ostend St. bleeding from the head March 19. He later died from blunt force trauma to the head at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Police said the two men had been arguing before Conley killed Freeman. Conley is charged with first-degree murder and is being held at the Central Booking and Intake Center.

The man who escaped from a Baltimore jail last week has been captured in western Pennsylvania, a state official said. The U.S. Marshals Service took Maury Figueroa, 29, into custody without incident, said Mark A. Vernarelli, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, in a Friday statement. Figueroa escaped from Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center on Nov. 9. He escaped while working on a sanitation detail and climbed a fence in an employee parking lot, officials said.

An East Baltimore resident died Friday night while being held at the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center, a state corrections spokesman said. Keith Johnson, 50, was being held on $10,000 bail for drug charges, said the spokesman, Mark Vernarelli. He had seen by medical staff and had returned to a holding cell when he requested to see medical staff again, the spokesman said. Johnson then collapsed when he stepped into the hallway, according to Vernarelli. He was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital where he was pronounced dead before 8 p.m., the spokesman said.

The assistant principal of a Northeast Baltimore high school was arrested Tuesday and charged with stealing eight Apple iPads that the school was going to use in its graduation ceremony, according to court records. Leonard Sheppard Hart, 38, was arrested at the Antioch Diploma Plus High School on Harford Road and released from central booking on his own recognizance, facing one count of theft under $10,000. A system spokeswoman said he was placed on administrative leave. Charging documents filed by city school police Sgt. Akil L. Hamm allege that Hart stole the devices and chargers, with a total value of $3,992, from the school's main office on June.

The warden who oversees the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center and seven other corrections employees have been suspended because of the alleged use of excessive force that left a female detainee hospitalized, state corrections officials said. Officials said a 26-year-old woman, who faced minor charges and was detained at the facility Jan. 8, was taken to a local hospital for injuries not considered to be life-threatening after the alleged abuse, according to a release from the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

Carroll County Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning will seek a federal grant to buy computers to fully automate Carroll County's central booking unit, a move that could save countless hours in patrol officers' time while allowing for rapid identification and background checks on arrested suspects. Central booking, located at the county detention center in Westminster, is a one-stop process where arrested suspects are identified, charged and, if needed, incarcerated. Since Jan. 3, when Tregoning opened the central booking unit on a limited basis, more than 520 suspects have been booked.

A federal judge has granted class action status to two categories of people in a civil suit that claims officers at Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center regularly and illegally detained certain arrestees too long and strip-searched people without cause. The ruling, issued Thursday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, opens the door for tens of thousands of people processed from May 2002 through April 2008 to join the suit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages. Central booking processes everyone arrested within city limits.

They're Baltimore's lost citizens. Arrested, jailed, released. Arrested, jailed, released. Arrested, jailed released. Drugs. Theft. Drugs Loitering. Drugs. Breaking into cars. Drugs. An occasional assault, but usually nothing too violent. They cycle through Central Booking — the first stop in their familiar odyssey through the city's tortuous criminal justice system — as if the temporary holding cells were merely roadside motels that charge by the hour.

A 20-year-old Curtis Bay man charged with murder in the death of a man who was pushed into the Inner Harbor in 2008 was ordered held without bail Thursday morning. The decision means Wayne Black will spend the foreseeable future at Central Booking and Intake Center, and came a day after his initial bail review hearing had to be postponed when he appeared to go into shock and became unresponsive. Police say Black, whose criminal record consists of a marijuana conviction, confessed Tuesday to shoving 22-year-old Ankush Gupta into the water, and prosecutors noted at the hearing that he did not try to help rescue the victim.