Criminals

Maryland State Police have failed to make expedient background checks as far back as 1995, resulting in recalls of weapons accidentally sold to convicted criminals -- including, recently, an attempted rapist.A 1995 audit of the police agency's criminal background check system commissioned by Del. Cheryl C. Kagan, a Montgomery County Democrat, revealed delays of up to 97 days on some checks for potential gun owners."The state police are frantically trying to recover from an embarrassing mismanagement issue," Kagan said.

One recent hot afternoon, 85 convicts on parole and probation filed into courtroom No. 7 in the Eastern District courthouse on North Avenue, where law enforcement officials and community leaders spent nearly three hours telling them to stop behaving like criminals. As a cutting-edge crime-fighting strategy, the setup may sound like a joke. Certainly some of the criminals, grouchy and resentful at being summoned like so many naughty children, treated it as such. And there were comic moments, such as when one man, after signing in with authorities, loudly wished everyone a good meeting and attempted to leave.

WASHINGTON -- Congress is close to forcing a major expansion of economic sanctions against international drug traffickers and businesses that work with them.Legislation to impose such sanctions on narcotics criminals throughout the world passed the Senate easily last month.After initially opposing the measures on both practical and foreign policy grounds, administration officials have begun to work with legislators to fashion a bill both the House and President Clinton could support.But while such measures have some support among businesses and government officials in Colombia -- the only country where the United States has used them -- they are being strongly opposed by the government of Mexico and a few of that country's biggest companies.

GIVE THE police force and the police commissioner credit for Baltimore's dramatic decrease in crime so far this year. But also applaud the people of this city who have forged a new commitment to work with law enforcement and other agencies to rid their neighborhoods of both criminals and the environments that produce crime.Violent crime is down nearly 20 percent for the first three months of 1997, and property crime is 14 percent lower. Those numbers are significant. Part of the credit for the decline must go to neighborhood watch groups that make drug dealers know they are unwelcome, volunteers who run after-school programs that keep children out of trouble and citizens who clean up their blocks, get to know each other and send a message to criminals that people aren't going to stand idly by while crooks make their neighbors victims.

The police report that officially records the death of Kenneth Wayne Jones lays out a simple story: he was shot several times Monday night by two men as he stood on South Poppleton Street.But how Jones, a 50-year-old convicted drug dealer released from prison 10 months ago, became the city's 160th murder victim of 1999 is a complicated tale. It fits a standard story line of Baltimore violence -- a deadly pattern of multiple arrests, drug deals and guns."You die by the way you live," said Robert Lee Dunham, 73, who owns a rowhouse on the block where Jones was last arrested in May. "If you live by drugs, there are only two places you can end up: dead or in jail."

A group seen as Baltimore's next generation of hard-core criminals swaggered into a city elementary school rimmed with armed officers and quietly listened to an effort by police to use words to stop violence.The young men and handful of women, all convicted on drug and gun charges, went to the Wednesday night "gang call-in" because their parole terms required it. They sat in stoic silence, forbidden from talking or asking questions. They stared at mug shots of their friends.It was the third such session police have held since last year in different parts of the city -- one of several strategies they are trying to bring down a murder rate that made Baltimore one of the deadliest cities in the nation last year.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court blocked states yesterday from getting money for victims of crime by taking over the fees or royalties that criminals get for telling their stories in books, magazines, movies or broadcasts.In a unanimous ruling, the court struck down a New York law designed to stop criminals from making profits out of their crimes, saying the law violated the free speech rights of criminals whose storytelling itself is not a crime, and the rights of publishers and others who pay for criminals' stories.

Police in Carroll County are stepping up patrols of malls, major retailers and other business centers in an attempt to deter criminals targeting Christmas shoppers. "It's sad. There are people who buy for Christmas and people who steal for Christmas," said Carroll County Sheriff's Office spokesman Maj. Thomas Long. The high volume of Christmas shoppers presents plenty of opportunities for criminals, Long said. The bustle of the peak shopping season gives thieves a convenient cover for their criminal activities.

Baltimore Gunsmith has been an institution on Broadway since the turn of the century, when Fells Point was a rough-and-tumble hangout for longshoremen who crowded its cobblestone streets and rowdy pubs.The shop still beckons with a prominent sign in the shape of a Colt revolver. "Since 1904, taking care of all your shooting needs," its promotional literature reads.But federal authorities want to close the store. They accuse the owners of saturating city streets with weapons by selling to people they know will hand over the guns to criminals -- an illegal act called a "straw purchase."

IN JUST ITS FIRST year, Baltimore's Early Disposition Court has devolved into an embarrassing joke. Criminals thumb their noses at the low-ball sentences prosecutors offer in the court, knowing that postponements lead to even better deals - or outright acquittals. Meanwhile, Circuit Court judges are unwittingly helping criminals play the postponement game. In June, those judges undercut the prosecutors' sentencing recommendations in 92 percent of cases, according to data compiled by the state's attorney's office.