Heroin

The drug ring was taking in $14,000 a week selling cocaine and heroin in East Baltimore Street's strip club district, but court documents say Monica McCants, who ran the gang with her son, had grown concerned about one of the dancers in her network of dealers on The Block. Cherrie Gammon, who worked at Club Pussycat, owed money to gang members, and they suspected she was feeding information about the operation to police, according to prosecutors. Police found Gammon near Leakin Park on Dec. 12, 2010, suffering from five gunshot wounds.

Baltimore police officer Daniel Redd was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court to 20 years in federal prison for dealing drugs, bringing a close to a years-long probe into corruption accusations against the Northwest District veteran. Redd's sentence came as part of a plea deal on charges that stemmed from wiretapped phone conversations of drug transactions between February and May of 2011. Prosecutors alleged that Redd and a Ghanaian man named Tamim Mamah, also known as Abdul Zakaria, headed a drug organization that imported drugs from West Africa.

Responding to criticism, Baltimore State's Attorney Gregg Bernstein said prosecutors are often in favor of tougher penalties than those handed down by city judges, who have the final say.  Bernstein's comment came after a "court watcher" from North Baltimore, Stephen Gewirtz, sent an e-mail blast to residents describing sentencing of a 54-year-old man named Lonnie Butler, who pleaded guilty Monday to selling heroin in Better Waverly. He received a sentence of seven years, but Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams suspended all but two years and gave Butler credit for time served.  Resident Andrew Timleck sent a reply to the e-mail recipient criticizing the sentence, saying Butler had a lengthy record of charges stretching back 22 years.

A 41-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced to 12 years in prison Friday for his role in a heroin conspiracy that spread through three Maryland counties, federal prosecutors announced. Alvin Williams Jr., who used his home to process the drug which was distributed throughout the city as well as Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties, pleaded guilty in April, after two days of trial. To date, more than two dozen of the roughly 30 people indicted in the case have pleaded guilty. The drug ring was run by Christian Gettis, who described himself during a February sentencing hearing as a family man living a double life: secretly dealing drugs while holding down a job in retail.

Amber Brown, 24, was complaining of chest pains the night police say she and her girlfriend drank alcohol and injected each other with heroin in their Northeast Baltimore apartment. Brown passed out and never woke up; her companion could face criminal charges. Brown's death was not unlike hundreds of others each year in Maryland from drug overdoses, but it is the only one in recent memory to be ruled a homicide. Because authorities rarely find witnesses, the medical examiner frequently labels such deaths "undetermined," a distinction that has led to debate over whether deaths in Maryland, including homicides, are being counted accurately.

An Anne Arundel County police surveillance team has charged two men with drug possession in a Brooklyn Park neighborhood. Kevin Charles Brown, 32, of the 6000 block of Amberwood Court in the city's Frankford neighborhood, faces two counts of heroin possession and one count of intent to distribute. Dale Charles Edge, 30, of the 100 block of Lincoln Ave. in Glen Burnie, was charged with possession of heroin. Officers, responding to numerous residents' complaints of drug activity, set up surveillance Tuesday in the area near First Avenue and Ritchie Highway.

City police said they have busted a large scale drug and gun operation in Northwest Baltimore, seizing weapons and cash and arresting a convicted gun offender. Officers raided a house in the 5300 block of Liberty Heights Ave. on Tuesday afternoon. The target, Roger Dyer, was inside, police said, and was charged with gun and drug offenses. "Investigators believe Dyer was a supplier to Northwest Baltimore's drug supply and contributed to violence in the community," Police said in a statement.

A 53-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison Tuesday for conspiracy to distribute heroin, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced. Kevin Hently led the organization, according to prosecutors, securing a drug supply from New York and selling up to three kilograms of it in Baltimore city and county in 2009 and 2010. Three conspirators, ages 44 to 52, have also pleaded guilty in the case and been sentenced to terms ranging from four to 10 years, prosecutors said.

The state medical examiner's office has taken the rare step of classifying a 24-year-old woman's recent drug overdose death as a homicide, one of several recent killings being investigated by Baltimore detectives. Though there are hundreds of drug overdoses each year in Baltimore, investigators typically have little insight into the circumstances surrounding such cases. As such, the medical examiner's office declines to assign a manner of death, leading the state to have a high rate of deaths deemed “undetermined.” “If someone injects a toxic substance into somebody and kills them, everybody would call that a homicide,” said David Fowler, the state's chief medical examiner.

Want to express yourself on a license plate? Go ahead. The state will gladly take your $50 per year. You can't say any old thing, though. The Motor Vehicle Administration has cataloged more than 4,000 words, phrases and letter-number combinations it won't put on a tag. The agency's Objectionable Plate List, as it's called, is a compendium of vulgarities, obscenities and other no-no's aimed at keeping tags out of the gutter. The Baltimore Sun requested the information last week, hoping to share what the MVA doesn't want you to see on the road.