Offender

A cabal of corrupt corrections officers and members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang enjoyed nearly free rein inside the Baltimore City Detention Center, federal authorities allege, smuggling drugs and cellphones into the jail and having sexual relationships that left four guards pregnant. An indictment unsealed Tuesday names 25 people - including 13 women working as corrections officers - who face racketeering and drug charges. Twenty of the accused also face money-laundering charges.

Lawmakers in Annapolis rejected a bill this year that would have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana, but prosecutors in Baltimore City are already ahead of the curve in treating the offense as a public health issue rather than as a crime. This is the beginning of a sane policy on marijuana that one can only hope city officials will seek to expand in coming years. When the idea of treating drug abuse as a medical problem rather than as a criminal justice issue was proposed in the late 1980s by former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, critics dismissed the suggestion as not only dangerously naive and impractical but as morally and ethically wrong.

A Baltimore jury convicted a 31-year-old man Wednesday of child sexual abuse for "repeatedly attacking" a 10-year-old girl in 2010, the Baltimore State's Attorney's office announced. George H. Jones Jr., of the 4200 block of W. Rogers Ave., faces a maximum of 170 years in prison at his sentencing, set for April 16. tricia.bishop@baltsun.com Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

Bernard Pollard has a new team in the Tennessee Titans, but he is still talking about his exit from the Ravens. In a recent interview with Houston radio station KILT-AM , Pollard, who was cut by the Ravens a few weeks after he helped them win the Super Bowl, was asked about his surprising release a couple of days into free agency. The conversation shifted to that heated team meeting in October when he, fellow safety Ed Reed and other players voiced displeasure about practicing in pads two days after a blowout loss to the Houston Texans.

A registered sex offender who failed to report that he had moved out of his home, as required by law, was being sought by Baltimore County police. Police released a statement Thursday saying they are looking for Christopher Andrew Parkinson, 24, who they say did not make it known that he was no longer living in the 200 block of Caraway Road in Reisterstown. His previous address was in the 12300 block of Bonfire Drive, also in Reisterstown. Police said Parkinson was convicted in September 2009 of a third-degree sex offense against a juvenile in a crime that occurred in Baltimore County in 2008.

The General Assembly passed legislation in 2006 that requires the Maryland Parole Commission to enter into and sign extended sexual offender parole supervision agreements with sex offenders sentenced on or after August 1 of that year. The statute specifically states that this supervision starts once the term of confinement, parole supervision or mandatory supervision, whichever is latest, is completed. When an offender is determined to have violated the terms of their parole or mandatory release, the Parole Commission may revoke the supervision and require that person to serve the remaining portion of the sentence originally imposed by the court.

A convicted sex offender who was cleared by a jury of rape charges in September has been linked through DNA to two additional rapes, including a November rape of a woman in her Reservoir Hill home, court records show. Nelson Bernard Clifford, of the 800 block of Brooks Lane, was charged on Dec. 6 with raping a woman at knifepoint after breaking into her home while she was sleeping at about 9 p.m. on Nov. 12, according to charging documents. Police say he blindfolded her and bound her hands, and threatened to slash her face.

The Baltimore Sun The Harford County warrant apprehension unit arrested Anthony Eugene Robinson on Wednesday morning in connection with the rape of a 24-year-old Aberdeen woman July 11. Before being arrested, Robinson, 45, had three open District Court arrest warrants and one warrant for failure to appear in court. He had previous warrants for failing to register as a sex offender and for violating his parole. "He had two other open district court warrants, and we've been looking for him for some time.

A 36-year-old man from a tiny, unincorporated town in Western Maryland with two prior convictions for sexually abusing children has been sentenced to more than three decades in prison for advertising child pornography on the Internet. Matthew Sluss, of Rawlings, in Allegany County, will be on supervised release for the rest of his life once he serves his 33 year federal prison sentence, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office. "Two prior convictions for sexually abusing children did not deter Matthew Sluss from using the Internet to contact other pedophiles and produce child pornography," Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement.

How hypocritical of editorialists at The Sun — whose "Light For All" could easily be swapped for "If It Bleeds, It Leads" — for excoriating its audience in its editorial regarding public reaction to the July 4 t h violent incidents at the Inner Harbor ("Inner Harbor fireworks," July 6). A newspaper that pays its reporters to tweet in near real-time any and all crime they can uncover in Baltimore, and that allows, if not encourages, inflammatory and often bigoted commentary in its reader forums, and that periodically takes to publishing a body count box, has a sudden and newly-found perspective to admonish readers that things are not nearly as bad as they once were?

Dr. Benjamin Carson, the famed Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon , apologized Friday for his "choice of words" and use of examples in discussing gay marriage on Fox News earlier in the week. During Sean Hannity's show on Tuesday, when asked about the matter before the Supreme Court, Carson said, "Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn't matter what they are. They don't get to change the definition.

Baltimore City Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts is still relatively new on his job, so it's probably unfair to make too much of his unfortunate response to a question last week about the recent spate of gun violence that left nine people dead on the city's west side. "Though we're having a spike in homicides," Mr. Batts said, "our organization is working better, faster and smoother, and you can see it in the overall stats. " There was nothing factually wrong in Mr. Batts' answer; department statistics show an 8 percent drop in crimes of all types over this time last year.

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.

Every week, dozens of parents, guardians and leaders at youth-serving organizations tell me that they want to do whatever they can do to keep their children safe from abuse. One such tool is the state's sex offender registry. Accessible by the Internet, sex offender registries provide a simple map and list of people who have committed sexual crimes against children, or sexually violent crimes against adults. There are even apps for viewing the registry on mobile devices. One need only to do a routine check every so often in order to be reminded that the threat of child sex abuse impacts every neighborhood and that every community has its share of offenders.

The first caller told Norman Breidenbaugh he had won $2.5 million in a foreign sweepstakes, but there was a catch: Breidenbaugh needed to send $2,000 in fees before collecting his earnings. Other calls followed, promising Breidenbaugh millions more - even a Mercedes Benz - as long as he would wire some money to pay taxes on the prizes. He obliged, sending more than $400,000 over about six years, hoping the promised winnings would cover his wife's medical expenses. The prizes never came.

Victims' advocates are concerned that a Maryland Court of Appeals decision this week will allow some sex offenders to have their names removed from the statewide sex offender registry, but it's still unclear exactly how the ruling could affect the database. "I do expect that other sex offenders will petition to have their names removed," said Lisae Jordan, executive director and counsel for the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault. In a ruling that was not unanimous, the appeals court said Monday that a man identified as John Doe should have his name taken off the registry because the requirement to do so violates the state constitution's restrictions on retroactive punishment.

A convicted sex offender who was cleared by a jury of rape charges in September has been linked through DNA to two other rapes, including a November attack on a woman in her Reservoir Hill home, court records show. Nelson Bernard Clifford of the 800 block of Brooks Lane was charged Dec. 6 with raping a woman at knifepoint after breaking into her home while she was sleeping about 9 p.m. Nov. 12, according to charging documents. Police say he blindfolded her, bound her hands and threatened to slash her face.

The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a man convicted of child sex abuse did not have to register as a sex offender because it would violate the state constitution's provisions against retroactive punishments. The ruling was split, with a plurality of three of the court's seven judges agreeing on one interpretation of the law, while others had different opinions and one dissented from the opinion. The man, identified only as John Doe in his appeal, was convicted in 2006 of child sex abuse stemming from an incident in the early 1980s when he was a middle school teacher in Washington County and the 13-year-old child was his student, according to the ruling.

Regarding your editorial on President Obama's State of the Union plea for Congress to act on gun control, Marylander's deserve much more than a vote, they deserve true representation ("We deserve a vote," Feb. 17). The editorial highlighted the president's call for the voices of the victims of gun violence be heard, and it denounced the NRA, Republicans and certain Democrats for opposing legislation that would ban military-style assault rifles and large-capacity ammunition magazines.