Law Enforcement

Maryland's second-highest court upheld the constitutionality of Baltimore's gun offender registry, a signature effort to curb gun violence that a city judge had called into question two years ago. The registry requires people convicted of gun crimes to provide addresses and other information to the city every six months for three years, and was modeled after a similar program in New York City. Circuit Judge Alfred Nance ruled in 2011 that the city's law was "unconstitutionally vague and awfully broad," among other concerns.

I read the article about the Oliver neighborhood with great hope and jubilation ("Blitz of help set in Oliver," March 13). I applaud Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and her team for their efforts in trying to resuscitate this community by using a holistic approach. I particularly like the integration of law enforcement and drug treatment but with some words of caution. National statistics tell us there is very high prevalence of co-occurring substance use and mental disorders specifically among minorities.

Maj. Phillip Kasten has been appointed to the position of chief deputy in the Carroll County Sheriff's Office as Sheriff Kenneth Tregoning announced an internal reorganization in the office last week. Sheriff Tregoning also consolidated the Investigative and Field Services bureaus and appointed Maj. Thomas Long as Bureau Chief. Kasten fills a position that has been vacant since the retirement of Col. Robert Keefer on July 9, 2008. The chief deputy will oversee the daily operational and administrative responsibilities for the Departments' of Sheriff Services and Corrections.

Several hundred Baltimore and state police officers will be saturating the city's bar districts this St. Patrick's Day weekend, looking for drunken drivers and people drinking in the streets, law enforcement officials announced Thursday. "Roadways in and around Baltimore will be heavily patrolled," Baltimore police patrol commander Col. Garnell Green said. "Plan ahead. Have a designated driver. Know where you're going to park and expect large crowds. " Maryland Transportation Administration Police and Maryland State Police are teaming with city officers on a crackdown of rowdy behavior that plagued Canton Square last year, when residents complained of scores of people drinking openly outside bars, breaking glass and leaving trash strewn all around.

 Editor: Witnessing six Maryland sheriffs speaking in support of the Second Amendment at the Gun Rally with more than a thousand people in attendance in Annapolis on March 5 accentuates a legitimate need to protect our rights. These career law enforcement officers spoke against the infringement of our civil rights because once these rights begin to erode, an emboldened legislature will continue to take more of our rights away. The Governors' proposed gun bills in Annapolis do nothing to stop crime; they only target law-abiding citizens.  The criminal will not abide by any new law and the criminal already ignores the old laws.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul got a lot of attention Wednesday for mounting an honest-to-God filibuster of President Barack Obama's nominee for CIA director, John Brennan. The nation's political class marveled at his real-life Mr. Smith act, the funny stuff his fellow senators said as they took their turns in support - Sen. Marco Rubio, for example, referenced Jay-Z, Wiz Khalifa and "The Godfather" - and the reason he stopped 11 hours short of Strom Thurmond's filibuster record (it seems the late South Carolina senator was, if not stronger in his convictions, at least stronger in his bladder)

Even as the U.S Supreme Court reviews Maryland's law on police collection of DNA samples, many law enforcement agencies in the state are collecting and holding genetic material from murder victims and people never convicted of crimes. The practices have raised concerns among some legislators and the public defender's office, who fought for privacy protections and other restrictions in a 2009 state law that allows DNA collection from people arrested on suspicion of serious crimes.

Maryland's practice of collecting genetic information from people arrested — but not convicted — on serious charges took the national stage Tuesday, as the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on what Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. called "perhaps the most important criminal procedure case" in decades. The four-year-old DNA collection law, overturned by Maryland's top court last year and appealed to the highest level of the federal justice system, drew questions from the justices about where to draw the line on police powers.

Gay Lynn Diffenderffer had no idea that her husband was growing marijuana at their Baltimore County home, her attorney says, until state police investigating his mysterious disappearance discovered about 100 plants in a locked basement. Two weeks later, investigators found Michael Diffenderffer, 52, dead in his car - an apparent suicide that meant he would never face the drug charges brought against him when the marijuana was found. But that didn't close the book on his 2011 case.

The director of Baltimore's police training academy didn't know that instructors were holding exercises at an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Owings Mills. There were no supervisors on site. A police service weapon somehow got mixed up with a practice paint-cartridge pistol. The gun was pointed at a trainee. Many of the missteps surrounding the exercise at which a University of Maryland police recruit was critically wounded last week ran afoul of nationally recognized training safety standards, according to law enforcement experts and a review of past incidents from around the country.