Fire And Police

Baltimore City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake called Thursday for the city's fire and police pension board to sue to recover funds lost in the Bernard L. Madoff financial scandal. The pension fund lost about $3.1 million after a hedge fund in which it was invested, Union Bancaire Privee Asset Management, placed money in another fund that invested with Madoff. During a council meeting she called to discuss the matter, Rawlings-Blake pointed to a recent Wall Street Journal article that alleges UBP researchers warned its money managers not to do business with Madoff.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake took the stand in federal court Thursday, telling a judge that her administration's 2010 overhaul of the fire and police pension plan was necessary for the public good. Attorneys for the city and for the police and fire unions questioned Rawlings-Blake for more than three hours. A lawyer representing the unions drew sharp remarks from the mayor when he suggested that the city could have raised taxes or cut services to fund the pension. "You get to deal with math, and I have to deal with a struggling city," Rawlings-Blake told Charles O. Monk II of the Saul Ewing law firm.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon sent a clear message Wednesday to fire and police unions who have resisted her cost-saving furlough plan: We will go after your pay if talks on other concessions collapse. Led by Dixon, the city Board of Estimates authorized a reduction in police and fire salaries to save $8 million this year. The money is the final piece necessary to complete Dixon's $60.2 million midyear budget reduction plan, needed to close a hole left by state cuts and lower-than-expected revenue projections.

A 49-year-old homeless man who Howard County police say set his girlfriend on fire last October is trying to get statements he made to officers and emergency personnel suppressed at his trial, claiming he was not read his Miranda rights. During a motions hearing Tuesday in Circuit Court, the attorney for Richard Rodola questioned three officers and two EMTs about what Rodola told them as he was being treated for burns that police say he suffered while he was setting Pamela Myers, 37, on fire in a wooded area where they lived in Laurel.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake took the stand in federal court Thursday, telling a judge that her administration's 2010 overhaul of the fire and police pension plan was necessary for the public good. Attorneys for the city and for the police and fire unions questioned Rawlings-Blake for more than three hours. A lawyer representing the unions drew sharp remarks from the mayor when he suggested that the city could have raised taxes or cut services to fund the pension. "You get to deal with math, and I have to deal with a struggling city," Rawlings-Blake told Charles O. Monk II of the Saul Ewing law firm.

Isn't it about time that the Baltimore Sunpapers stop denigrating Baltimore City fire and police pension members and also state of Maryland employees? When I was a 12 year-old Sunpapers delivery boy (65 years ago), the Sunpapers were against firefighters getting a raise, and, in my own way, I opposed this by stuffing Local 734 American Federation of Labor pamphlets citing reasons for the raise into my 200 paper route newspapers. I might add that as a retired Maryland state employee, I do not receive anywhere near the $35,000 per year amount quoted in your recent articles for State Employees, and I know most retired Fire and Police pensioners do not receive the excessive $63,000 per year amounts as stated in recent issues either.

For the second time in less than a week, a suspicious fire broke out yesterday in an Upper Park Heights building used by an Orthodox Jewish congregation. Investigators from the city fire and police departments and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have not ruled on the cause of a fire early Saturday at the Etz Chaim Center for Jewish Studies in the 3700 block of Fords Lane. But the second fire, which started shortly before 7 a.m. yesterday at Machzikei Torah Congregation in the 6200 block of Biltmore Ave., about a block from Etz Chaim, has been ruled an arson, fire and police spokesmen said.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon has withdrawn a pension reform bill that would have stripped a lucrative post-retirement benefit from the financially troubled fire and police pension plan and was opposed by the city's public safety unions. "We're looking for a bigger fix for the system," Dixon's spokesman, Scott Peterson, said. The Administration plans to make more comprehensive changes to the $1.677 billion pension system. The bill's withdrawal was applauded by the city's police union chief, who said that the unions now can also "look at the bigger picture" and suggest broader reforms to the pension system.

Fire and police investigators are seeking information in Tuesday's arson fire in an abandoned house in Hampstead.Firefighters from Hampstead, Manchester, Lineboro and Arcadia were dispatched to the house, in the 1600 block of N. Main St., about 4 p.m. They discovered a fire in the living room.The fire, which was confined to that area, caused about $1,000 damage.Investigators said they are searching land records to determine the former owner of the house.No one was injured in the one alarm blaze.

A Mount Airy junkyard fire burned 150 vehicles yesterday and sent smoke billowing for miles from southwest Carroll County, fire officials said. Firefighters were dispatched to the 3900 block of Twin Arch Road at 6:46 p.m. A fire dispatcher said several surrounding fire and police departments assisted in putting out the blaze, which was under control by 11 p.m. Officials could not say if the fire caused any injuries and were assessing damages and trying...

A friend pounded on the door of the second-floor apartment of the Guilford Avenue rowhouse, waiting for the family matriarch to emerge for their daily walk. It was 7:30 Tuesday morning, and when there was no answer, the friend gave up and went on her way. Hours later, police and firefighters responding to a call for people sick on the second and third floors of the three-story red brick house in the 1700 block of Guilford Ave. found two adults dead and three others, including a child, unconscious, apparently the Baltimore area's latest victims of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The city's adult strip known as The Block, as seedy as it is historic, is, if nothing else a survivor. Civic leaders long ago erased references to the entertainment zone from tour books and promotional pamphlets, yet visitors still come to gawk and to indulge. A hundred federal agents converged on the clubs in 1971. One mayor tried to buy the clubs out. His successor tried to move them to the city's industrial hinterlands. State police sent 500 troopers in on raids in 1994.

Three dwellings and several businesses were damaged in a Sunday morning fire at Montford Avenue and Boston Street in Canton, fire department officials said. Fire Department spokesman Roman Clark said that the three-alarm blaze was brought under control at about 7 a.m. A resident was transported to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center to be treated for burns. Several businesses, including a neighborhood bar and restaurant and a tanning salon were affected. The cause of the fire is being investigated.

A school bus caught fire in the Fort McHenry Tunnel Tuesday, closing six of its eight traffic lanes and causing significant traffic backups, but police said the blaze was extinguished without injuries. Sgt. Jonathan Green, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, said a school bus owned by Durham School Services occupied by a driver and an assistant caught fire about 4:30 p.m. in the left northbound bore of the four-bore tunnel. Two occupants escaped the bus without injury, Green said.

Surviving spouses of firefighters and police officers who served fewer than 20 years would receive a higher baseline pension under a bill introduced by two Baltimore City Council members Monday night. Under a major pension overhaul passed earlier this year, widows and widowers of those who served at least 20 years are paid at least $16,000 a year. The bill, which was introduced by Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke and Councilman James B. Kraft, at the request of the Fraternal Order of Police and the firefighters' unions, would extend that minimum to any current surviving spouse of a public safety office.

The owner of a deli at the Inner Harbor's Light Street Pavilion wishes there were "many more Officer Rivieris to deal with our problems. " A recreational boater from Fallston credits the officer with saving her daughter's dog. And a resident of a waterfront condo praises the officer for shooing away youngsters who damaged the monument at the Columbus Piazza and called the officer's firing Wednesday "a triumph for the skateboarders. " They're talking about Salvatore Rivieri, the 19-year police veteran who lost his job after getting caught on video berating and pushing a 14-year-old boy he was trying to stop from skateboarding at the harbor three years ago. "Obviously your parents don't put a foot in your butt quite enough because you don't understand the meaning of respect," Rivieri yelled during a long, incendiary rant at Eric Bush, who appeared indifferent and rude when he repeatedly called the officer "dude.

Baltimore City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake wants to tap a prominent business-group leader to head a commission examining the city's troubled fire and police pension system. Donald C. Fry, president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, has accepted an invitation from Rawlings-Blake and City Councilman William H. Cole IV to lead an effort to review a retirement program whose ballooning costs have created what both call a "fiscal crisis." "You want to make sure that these funds are sustainable and you do have enough money to support them," said Fry, a former Harford County state senator who is also heading a panel to award slot-machine licenses in Maryland.

When is a promise not a promise? People who loaned money to subprime homebuyers have one view. Those who bought stock in 1st Mariner Bank at $10 a share have another. (It's now $1.) So do those who expected long careers at Black & Decker and were laid off in a brutal recession. In an age of diminished resources, bad faith and dashed hopes, everybody's feeling jilted. But few groups sound as aggrieved as the government employees whose pensions are being cut by financially stressed states, cities and counties.

Isn't it about time that the Baltimore Sunpapers stop denigrating Baltimore City fire and police pension members and also state of Maryland employees? When I was a 12 year-old Sunpapers delivery boy (65 years ago), the Sunpapers were against firefighters getting a raise, and, in my own way, I opposed this by stuffing Local 734 American Federation of Labor pamphlets citing reasons for the raise into my 200 paper route newspapers. I might add that as a retired Maryland state employee, I do not receive anywhere near the $35,000 per year amount quoted in your recent articles for State Employees, and I know most retired Fire and Police pensioners do not receive the excessive $63,000 per year amounts as stated in recent issues either.

When is a promise not a promise? People who loaned money to subprime homebuyers have one view. Those who bought stock in 1st Mariner Bank at $10 a share have another. (It's now $1.) So do those who expected long careers at Black & Decker and were laid off in a brutal recession. In an age of diminished resources, bad faith and dashed hopes, everybody's feeling jilted. But few groups sound as aggrieved as the government employees whose pensions are being cut by financially stressed states, cities and counties.