Dealers

Here we go again! In Peter Hermann 's article on theft of gutters ("Homeowners aggravated as thieves target copper gutters," Dec. 5), once again the scrap metal industry is blamed for the problem of stolen metal. As the owner of a scrap metal company that has been in business since 1917, I am sick and tired of my industry being unfairly blamed for metal thefts. To be clear, my business only buys metal from business, industry and government, so we have zero exposure to stolen metal.

Two 44-year-old city men were sentenced to federal prison Friday for taking part in a heroin conspiracy that spread into Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced. William Larry Diggs Jr. was sentenced 14 years, and his co-defendant Darrin William Scott, received a five-year term. The men were part of a vast drug ring run by Christian Gettis, who previously described himself in court as a family man living a double life: secretly dealing drugs while holding down a job in retail.

The Anne Arundel County Council on Monday night soundly defeated a measure that would have exempted dealers in secondhand firearms from registering gun acquisitions with county police. Councilman Jerry Walker, a Republican from southern Anne Arundel, sponsored the legislation and was the lone supporter. Walker was seeking to amend a law passed last summer requiring retailers selling secondhand merchandise, including guns, to report information about sellers and merchandise to a computerized police database within 24 hours.

Six weeks after Scott M. Greenberg was found shot to death in his parents' house in Owings Mills in August, 2009, police arrested Gerald E. Sears and charged him with murder, robbery and drug-dealing. Police never found the murder weapon, or the wallet, bank card and cell phone they claim Sears took from Greenberg. Nor did they find Sears' fingerprints or DNA in the house. What they did get were cell phone records, Sears' admission that he'd been in the house to sell crack cocaine, and no sign the house on Velvet Valley Way had been ransacked by a burglar.

Joseph B. Aiello, president of J.B.A. Chevrolet on Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie, says he never expected to be named the 1994 Time Magazine Quality Dealer.Sure, he has been among Chevrolet's top 10 dealers in the country in recent years. But the 55-year-old Severna Park resident said he was "really surprised" when he received the award at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in San Francisco last month."I feel really honored that I was chosen to be the recipient of the award," he said yesterday.

DETROIT -- With auto sales stuck in the cellar, new-car dealers nationwide are marketing their service departments to bolster their bottom lines.The battle for the service dollar is creating some rifts within the LTC industry. For years, the corner garage was the primary supplier of car service, until dealers began to chip away at its business. That has caused some neighborhood spitting matches."Garages and dealers are competing for a smaller and smaller business base," said David Cole, director of the Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation at the University of Michigan.

Police promised residents yesterday that they would "make i hot" for drug dealers at Northeast Baltimore's Claremont public housing complex in the wake of Monday's fatal shooting of a 25-year-old man there.Police believe an unknown gunman shot Damon A. Toodle of the 4100 block of Coleman Ave. in the head in retaliation for the victim's having shot at him. The shooting occurred outside the 152-apartment Claremont Towers high-rise for the elderly.Police had made no arrest in the murder last night.

Times are tough in Chrome City. But the folks who sell cars on auto alley, the three-mile stretch of Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie, are a resilient lot.Their livelihoods can rise and fall on a fickle economy, gas crunches, recessions, soaring in-terest rates and labor discord among auto workers.The men and women who work a dozen lots along the well established strip say the years have taught them this: Bad times inevitably follow good.After several boom years, some longtime auto dealers say they've never seen times as hard as now. The U.S. auto industry has emerged from its worst year since 1983; locally, sales dropped by as -much as a third in the last quarter.

DEAR Baltimore drug dealers: I promise this will be the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard. Here goes: How about taking the summer off to see what it might be like around here without all the shooting and killing? Serious. How about a cease-fire? A little break could save lives, maybe even your own. I know this is crazy, the idea of drug dealers just shutting down the factory for a few months - too much money to be made, and too many customers to serve. And if you back off, even for a little while, some other guy in a long white T-shirt will take your place, and you'll have to find new work.

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- DaimlerChrysler AG says it will use its purchasing power to help dealers cut costs, and unveiled an advertising campaign touting its "Five Star" outlets, which meet standards the No. 3 automaker in the United States set for customer service and facilities. DaimlerChrysler plans to start in Indianapolis late this year a program that would let its dealers use the automaker's leverage in buying such things as health care, telephone and financial services and supplies.

Anne Arundel County police said Wednesday they've charged five people after investigating alleged drug dealing at the Cromwell Light Rail Station in Glen Burnie. Detectives performed a two-day undercover investigation last week at the station along with Maryland Transit Administration officers. The detectives charged three people with selling drugs to the officers, a fourth person with drug possession and a fifth person with violating probation. During the investigation, the officers seized 15 suspected Xanax pills, 7.62 grams of suspected marijuana, 21 suspected Promethazine pills and $340.

For Gary "Pappy" Boward, the prospect of the tread stripping off an aging tire on his van or car is scary enough. The possibility of it happening on his motorcycle is downright terrifying. Boward, chairman of the motorcycle rights group ABATE, came to Annapolis Tuesday to call on the General Assembly to pass a bill that would require tire dealers in Maryland to inform consumers of research showing that tires deteriorate with age and that a federal agency recommends they be replaced after six years even if the tread depth is adequate.

Christian Gettis says he doesn't know why men rushed into his Northeast Baltimore home in late 2010, tied up his wife and shot him multiple times. Federal prosecutors said Friday they suspect it probably had something to do with his heroin ring. According to his attorney, Gettis, 39, was mentoring young people and working at the West Baltimore clothing store Samos while shielding those close to him — including his wife and a son in college — from the knowledge that he was dealing drugs.

A 21-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced to 55 years in prison — with another 30 years suspended — for shooting a convicted drug dealer and terrorizing the man's family in 2010 during an armed robbery in a Park Heights home, the Baltimore state's attorney's office said Thursday. Donte Gladden was convicted of attempted murder, assault, robbery, false imprisonment and gun crimes in October. He and at least one accomplice forced their way into Kevin Hall's home in the 3200 block of Spaulding Ave. in April 2010, looking for drugs and money, according to police records.

Anne Arundel County police arrested and charged one man in a Christmas morning break-in at an Annapolis automobile dealership. A video security service notified police shortly before 5 a.m. Sunday of two people on the lot of Fitzgerald Oldsmobile Cadillac. Officers saw two men running, and arrested one when he tried to climb over a fence, said Lt. Doyle Batten. Police found bolt cutters and other tools on the lot that they suspect were used to cut catalytic converters from two vehicles there.

Here we go again! In Peter Hermann 's article on theft of gutters ("Homeowners aggravated as thieves target copper gutters," Dec. 5), once again the scrap metal industry is blamed for the problem of stolen metal. As the owner of a scrap metal company that has been in business since 1917, I am sick and tired of my industry being unfairly blamed for metal thefts. To be clear, my business only buys metal from business, industry and government, so we have zero exposure to stolen metal.

Several dozen Chevron dealers in the mid-Atlantic region have organized and are considering a legal challenge to the oil company's plans to leave the market, their attorney said yesterday.Gerald M. Bowen, a lawyer in McLean, Va., said a group of Chevron dealers have retained him to protect their interests in the wake of Chevron's decision, announced in December, to turn over 63 stations to Exxon Corp. and sell or close another 30.Mr. Bowen said his "preliminary determination" was that the conduct of Exxon and Chevron was "legally insufficient" under the federal law governing an oil company's withdrawal from a market.

Open a newspaper anywhere in the country and you're likely to find advertisements for antiques and collectibles shows. Go to one, such as the Labor Day weekend antiques fair at Baltimore's Convention Center, and you'll find more than 400 dealers who have traveled from all parts of the country for the opportunity to sell you something.Labor Day weekend traditionally is no holiday for dealers or antiquers. That is particularly true this year as shows proliferate, dealers compete for customers' disposable income in tough economic times, and an increasing number of collectors search for the best buys (often in collecting fields virtually unheard of a decade ago)