Doggett

On Friday, January 30, 2009, BERNICE N. DOGGETT, of Gettysburg, PA, at the Gettysburg Hospital. Born July 25, 1923. Daughter of the late Alan and Millicent (Day) Bridge; wife of the late John F. Doggett (died in 1993). Survived by a son and his wife Norman and Deborah Doggett of Westminster, MD; three daughters and their husbands, Denise and Peter Storey of Gladstone, Australia, Deborah and Mark Lawver of Gettysburg and Mary and Charles Glover of Westminster, MD. Memorial services will be held on Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 11 A.M. at The Monahan Funeral Home in Gettysburg.

On Friday, January 30, 2009, BERNICE N. DOGGETT, of Gettysburg, PA, at the Gettysburg Hospital. Born July 25, 1923. Daughter of the late Alan and Millicent (Day) Bridge; wife of the late John F. Doggett (died in 1993). Survived by a son and his wife Norman and Deborah Doggett of Westminster, MD; three daughters and their husbands, Denise and Peter Storey of Gladstone, Australia, Deborah and Mark Lawver of Gettysburg and Mary and Charles Glover of Westminster, MD. Memorial services will be held on Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 11 A.M. at The Monahan Funeral Home in Gettysburg.

Dr. Charles Clifford Doggett, a clinical psychologist who specialized in neuropsychology, psychodiagnostics and developmental disabilities, died of colon cancer Friday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson. He was 51 and lived in Randallstown. Dr. Doggett was chief psychologist and an expert on behavior-management for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Office of Health Care Quality. "I've never worked with anyone more professional and confident," said William Dorrill, deputy director of the health care quality office.

Here's what has to be some bad news for the folks at Maryland's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services: Priscilla Doggett is sticking to her guns. Last week, I wrote about all those questions still unanswered in the death of corrections Officer David McGuinn, who was fatally stabbed in July of 2006 at the Maryland House of Correction. The House of Correction has since been shut down and its staff and inmates dispersed throughout the system. The prison is gone, but allegations that McGuinn was on an inmate hit list, had been threatened and reassigned off the housing units and then put back in the housing units, remain.

Thirty local business leaders signed up on the spot yesterday to be ambassadors for Baltimore after the head of the city's convention bureau appealed to them to help bring meetings and conventions here. Leslie R. Doggett, president and chief executive of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, said the new initiative is aimed at overcoming a recently identified weakness in booking convention business - selling the city's assets at the board of directors level, where decisions about meeting destinations are made.

Leslie R. Doggett, who took the helm of Baltimore's embattled convention and visitors agency not quite three years ago, resigned yesterday, just weeks before the launch of a major tourism campaign and as a city-financed convention center hotel rises downtown hungry for bookings. Doggett pointed to "health and family reasons" for her departure. She has not been to work since Feb. 10, officials said. Though Doggett had apparently been sick for the better part of this year - and rumors of her absence have swirled around town for weeks - her decision to leave took officials by surprise, with Mayor Martin O'Malley still talking late yesterday morning as if she were staying.

Leslie R. Doggett plans to do something this year that the city's convention bureau has never done before. She will sit down with officials at the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts and create a "Top 10" list - a wish list of events and groups that the city would like to entertain over the next five years. "I'd like to see us come up with some signature events to really brand the city," said Doggett, who became president and chief executive of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association last summer.

Leslie R. Doggett, a senior tourism official in the Clinton administration and an industry veteran, has been picked as the new chief of Baltimore's beleaguered convention bureau, city officials confirmed yesterday. The announcement of Doggett's appointment as president and chief executive officer of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association is expected at a news conference this morning with Mayor Martin O'Malley and other senior city officials. The appointment ends a five-month search for what is seen as a critically important leadership role in the city's lagging effort to build convention and tourism business.

Given intense competition in the meetings industry, the head of the city's convention bureau is looking to leisure travel as Baltimore's ticket to growth in the hospitality sector. Leslie R. Doggett, president and chief executive of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, plans to focus on converting the city's many day-trippers into overnight guests. "I can assure you I will fight for our share [of conventions]," Doggett said yesterday during two town hall forums at the Pier Five Hotel, which attracted nearly 150 people.

Mayor Martin O'Malley placed the future of Baltimore's battered convention and tourism industry in the hands of a veteran saleswoman yesterday - one who plans to find a new brand for the city and to employ her extensive Rolodex to boost visits in an increasingly competitive tourism environment. Leslie R. Doggett, a former Clinton administration official and tourism consultant, will start next month as president and chief executive of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, a troubled agency that has been without a permanent leader for more than five months.

Jessup Correctional Institution was locked down after an inmate stabbed an officer last night, a Maryland Department of Safety and Correctional Services spokeswoman said. The officer is hospitalized. A homemade knife thought to have been used in the stabbing was recovered, said Priscilla Doggett, the spokeswoman. About 5:15 p.m., the 40-year-old officer was escorting a 20-year-old inmate from his cell when the inmate failed to comply with an order, Doggett said. He stabbed the officer in the upper torso and face before other officers subdued him, she said.

The seven inmates who were stabbed in a fight Thursday night at the Metropolitan Transition Center were treated and returned to the facility yesterday, segregated from the rest of the inmate population, a state prison spokeswoman said. Maj. Priscilla Doggett said the prison's internal investigators are working to determine why the fight started shortly before 8 p.m. Doggett said the inmates who fought in the prison's outdoor recreation yard were all housed in the same cellblock. After the fight, correctional officers searched their cells and found five home-made knives, but none was believed to have been used in the fight.

Seven inmates at the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore were hospitalized last night with stab wounds after an exercise yard fight, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Division of Correction said. The stabbings come 2 1/2 months after 18 inmates there were taken to hospitals after a similar melee in the exercise yard. The nature of the injuries and the conditions of the men were not available. No correctional officers were hurt. The prison, in the 900 block of Forrest St., was put under lockdown, during which inmates are generally confined to their cells and denied visitation.

A Hagerstown prison was locked down after minor fights in two locations yesterday, a Division of Corrections spokeswoman said. Maj. Priscilla Doggett, the spokeswoman, said she was not aware of any injuries caused by the fights at the Maryland Correctional Training Center, a medium-security prison that houses 2,000 inmates. No one was taken to the hospital for treatment, she said. She declined to comment about whether tensions between gangs were a factor in yesterday's fight. The incident was under investigation, Doggett said.

All 18 men injured in the clash at the Metropolitan Transition Center last Friday have been released from the hospital and placed at other state prisons, according to Maj. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. With the proliferation of gangs in Maryland prisons, I'd have bet money that the fracas started as a beef between the gangs known as the Bloods and Crips. I'd have lost my money. But I'd have been half right. Sources say one of the groups involved was indeed the Bloods.

Mistakenly released, suspect back in custody A murder suspect who was mistakenly released from prison Tuesday was behind bars again last night arrested and charged with escape even though prison authorities acknowledge they had set him free.The escape charge was the only way tolegally return James C. Burton to custody because paperwork ordering his detention has disappeared or was never generated, said Maj. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Division of Correction. "This will afford us the opportunity to go ahead and try to find out what happened here," Doggett said last night of the "retake warrant" served to Burton after he surrendered to police.

The fate of Baltimore's ailing convention and tourism trade was entrusted last week to a woman with a scant history of promoting cities or landing conventions. She is a newcomer to Baltimore, a stranger to crab cakes and parking zones and sirens on Mondays. Yet, the selection of former U.S. Commerce Department official Leslie R. Doggett as the next president of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association was almost universally hailed as a strong step forward for the battered agency.

The seven inmates who were stabbed in a fight Thursday night at the Metropolitan Transition Center were treated and returned to the facility yesterday, segregated from the rest of the inmate population, a state prison spokeswoman said. Maj. Priscilla Doggett said the prison's internal investigators are working to determine why the fight started shortly before 8 p.m. Doggett said the inmates who fought in the prison's outdoor recreation yard were all housed in the same cellblock. After the fight, correctional officers searched their cells and found five home-made knives, but none was believed to have been used in the fight.

Leslie R. Doggett, who took the helm of Baltimore's embattled convention and visitors agency not quite three years ago, resigned yesterday, just weeks before the launch of a major tourism campaign and as a city-financed convention center hotel rises downtown hungry for bookings. Doggett pointed to "health and family reasons" for her departure. She has not been to work since Feb. 10, officials said. Though Doggett had apparently been sick for the better part of this year - and rumors of her absence have swirled around town for weeks - her decision to leave took officials by surprise, with Mayor Martin O'Malley still talking late yesterday morning as if she were staying.

Authorities were searching yesterday for a 20-year-old inmate who cut a hole through a fence to escape from a a minimum security prison in Jessup. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Division of Correction, said Morris Johnson was discovered missing during a routine count at the Jessup Pre-Release Unit about 9:30 p.m. Thursday. Johnson has been in jail since November 2004, when he received a seven-year sentence for unarmed robbery, she said. His last known address was in Berlin on the Eastern Shore, she said.