Handcuffs

IF THERE IS ONE thing policemen hate, it's an attitude. The display of a little deference can make all the difference between a hefty ticket and being sent on your way with the admonition to slow down from now on. In the case of David R. Lemmon, the Baltimore City firefighter arrested for speeding Mondaywhile trying to get his sick baby to the doctor, attitude accounts for why he ended up in handcuffs -- despite circumstances that cried out for leniency.This...

Baltimore police have released the identity of a suspect who died after he was incapacitated with a Taser during an incident in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood early Saturday morning. Police said Thomas Campbell, 50, of the 1000 block of McAleer Court was pronounced dead at Bon Secours Hospital shortly after he was subdued with a Taser, a device that delivers a 50,000-volt shock. Officers apprehended Campbell after receiving a report that a man was running amok in the 1000 block of N. Payson St. Police say they have used Tasers 14 times this year, and Campbell is the third fatality.

A Baltimore woman was sentenced to five years in prison yesterday for neglecting her 6-month-old son - who died dehydrated and weighing only 7 pounds. Shaunte C. Bomar, 19, of the 800 block of Evesham Ave. in North Baltimore had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for leaving her infant son alone for about 36 hours in November while she went to a party with her other two children. A medical report describes the baby, Carlos Leroy Brown Jr., as having protruding ribs and undersized organs from lack of nourishment.

The two of them, Scott and Yates, admit they stole the car in Woodlawn that night and, being highly brilliant thieves, managed to drive it around for an entire 80 minutes before the cops pulled them over and arrested them on Mosher Street in West Baltimore.No big deal: On the first working day of the brand new year, they're standing in Western District Court now, before Judge Alan Lipson.No big deal: It's precisely the 20th case of the morning on a day in which 43 criminal cases are to be heard in this courtroom and roughly 190 criminal cases are scheduled in four separate rooms at this Wabash Avenue courthouse.

THE DAY before the bloodshed at Columbine High School in Colorado, there was this schoolboy scene in Maryland: Carroll County deputy sheriffs arrested a diminutive fourth-grader and took him away in handcuffs and leg irons.We have learned to fear our children until further notice.Just hours before the shootings in Littleton, Colo., left 15 dead and 23 wounded Tuesday, there was the 10-year-old at the Carroll County Courthouse, waiting to see a juvenile court master, with his father, declaring, "When they arrested him, they put him in shackles, and he's crying, 'Please, Dad, help me, Dad,' and there's nothing I can do. He didn't kill nobody, he didn't rob nobody."

When David R. Lemmon discovered yesterday morning that his infant daughter's temperature had skyrocketed to 104.7 overnight, his instinct was to rush her to the nearby pediatrician's office in Reisterstown.Minutes later, Lemmon was being led from the office -- in $H handcuffs -- for failing to stop when a Baltimore County police officer tried to flag him down for allegedly speeding and running a stop sign."She was vomiting and choking on it, and all I was thinking was that I had to get her to the doctor," Lemmon, a 15-year city firefighter, said last night.

They planned to call a cab and visit some girls in Forest Hill. As they waited, the two teens bantered about rap songs they were writing. "Can I get on that?" one asked about a song the other had written. "You can get on two or three of them," his friend assured. The idle chatter was intended to change the subject from the dark task they had were about to carry out - to rob the cabdriver. Though one of the teens had a nickel-plated .38 caliber revolver tucked in his waistband, the two talked casually about music and CDs while they waited.

A running gun battle that broke out late Thursday night between Baltimore police and a suspect after a domestic incident in Canton left one man dead, two women shot and a quiet Southeast Baltimore street rattled. Police worked Friday to unravel the circumstances surrounding the overnight incident. It was the year's eighth officer-involved shooting and the second in which a suspect died. Officers responded to call about a disturbance at a house in the 3400 block of Foster Ave. just before midnight.

The inner workings of at least one piece of the criminal justice system can be viewed on the Internet 24 hours a day, courtesy of Web cams in the Maricopa County jail in south-central Arizona. Four cameras make up the Jail Cam (www.crime.com), which lets visitors view detainees being led into the jail in handcuffs, being fingerprinted and booked and being taken to holding cells. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, said he had installed the Web cams as a deterrent because he figured that viewing a holding cell on the Web would convince some people that they never wanted to wind up in one. Arpaio said he had also set up the Web cams as a response to critics who accused his officers of mistreating inmates.

AS A POLITICAL novice, Andrey Bundley has been having a rough time garnering publicity for his uphill challenge to Mayor Martin O'Malley. Thus, the 42-year-old high school principal is making the most of his brief handcuffing over the weekend. He's hoping to extend his 15 minutes of fame all the way to the Sept. 9 primary. Campaign theatrics aside, though, this does seem to be a case of a well-meaning but silly ordinance overzealously enforced. The incident took place Sunday night as Mr. Bundley was leafleting cars parked near a downtown nightclub.