Police Car

Two men posing as police officers pulled over a driver and carjacked his vehicle early yesterday in Laurel, Anne Arundel County police said. The 31-year-old man from Washington was driving on Route 198 near Watts Avenue shortly after midnight when he was stopped by a dark-colored vehicle with a flashing blue and red light on the dash, police said. According to police, a man wearing a black uniform-style jacket and blue jeans approached the driver and asked for his license. As the driver handed his license over, a second man got into the car through the passenger door, displayed a handgun and ordered the driver out. This man drove off in the victim's car, police said.

A Howard County man arrested this month after fighting with Maryland state troopers at a Westminster house has died at a hospital, authorities said. Anthony M. Casarella, 34, of Glenelg was pronounced dead at 5:30 a.m. Thursday at Frederick Memorial Hospital, state police said. A cause of death has not been determined. State troopers encountered Casarella on Dec. 7 at the house on Plain View Drive in Mount Airy after occupants called to report a disorderly man at their front door. Police said Casarella had asked the occupants, whom he did not know, if he could use their telephone because his truck had broken down.

In Baltimore CountyEssex woman charged in hit-and-run death on Eastern BoulevardESSEX -- A 35-year-old Essex woman has been charged in a hit-and-run accident that killed a pedestrian during the weekend.Sunta Dorothy Dickerson of the first block of Yew Road was arrested yesterday and charged with failure to stop and failure to remain at an accident scene with death, failure to render aid and failure to report death in an accident, county police said.The charges stem from the death of Larry Earl Jones, 21, who was found dead beside Eastern Boulevard near Wilson Point Road early Sunday by a motorist.

A Glen Burnie man grieving the deaths of his wife and young daughter after a collision Friday evening with an Anne Arundel County police cruiser was making funeral arrangements yesterday and has consulted a lawyer.The accident in Millersville killed Brandi Lynn Forney, 20, and 19-month-old Kelsi, whom Forney had picked up minutes earlier from her mother-in-law's home.It occurred a few blocks from Old Mill High School, which Forney and her husband, Eric, 22, had attended. They began their relationship there as high school sweethearts, a relative said yesterday.

FROM BUGS to beads, cars to corn shellers, folks are creating whimsy, humor and elegantly functional pieces out of metal and glass.The Howard County Center for the Arts sponsored a tour of 15 local galleries this month, "Road to the Arts," to kick off the exhibition season.The brochure for the event -- shaped like a Maryland license plate -- sported "RD2ARTS" on its front cover."People think of art in Baltimore or Washington," said show coordinator Christina Manucy. "We wanted to do something to highlight art in Howard County."

In the wake of rampant drug activity on Westminster's west side, residents, police, prosecutors and politicians have taken up a united fight to rid the area of dealers and addicts -- one street at a time.A check of police reports, court files and recent indictments by a Carroll County grand jury showed the same streets and, in some instances, the same addresses keep appearing in drug activity: Sullivan, Pennsylvania, Kemper and Wimert avenues, and Union, West Main, Green, Liberty and Carroll streets.

Traffic along Reisterstown Road came to a halt yesterday morning after a Baltimore County police car flipped onto its roof, creating a barricade at Slade Avenue in Pikesville.Cpl. Vicki Warehime, spokeswoman for the county Police Department, said Officer Michael L. Bortner was responding to a nearby accident when his car collided with another about 10 a.m.Bortner had a red traffic signal but had his "full lights and siren" on when his car collided with a 1995 maroon Toyota Camry driven by Shirley Cohen, 82, of the 3600 block of Clarks Lane in Northwest Baltimore, Warehime said.

A Baltimore police officer and two civilians were injured yesterday when officers tried to stop a man in a stolen car and were led on a pursuit that ended after a series of crashes.Police said the incident began shortly after noon when members of the Regional Auto Theft Team staked out a 1999 Oldsmobile Alero parked at West Cold Spring Lane and Park Heights Avenue. The car was reported stolen July 5 from National Rental Car Co. at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.When a man tried to drive off, police quickly surrounded the car.Agent Ragina L. Cooper, a police spokeswoman, said the man drove forward and hit a Chevrolet Cavalier, then backed into and rammed the front of a marked police Jeep several times.

A city police officer shot and killed a 21-year-old Baltimore County man sought in an earlier shooting, minutes after the man opened fire on the officer in West Baltimore late Saturday, police reported.After a high-speed chase that ended in a vacant lot in the 900 block of N. Gilmor St., Officer Raymond Cook, 30, of the Southwestern District shot Vincent Dobson of the 2200 block of Harmony Woods Road "several times" in the upper torso, police said. Dobson was pronounced dead at the scene about 11 p.m., they said.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton and federal lawmakers kowtow to political pressure and ignore the plight of Americans victimized by police racism and abuse of power, civil rights activists said in a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday.The comments came during the first in a series of Congressional Black Caucus hearings planned across the nation."This administration has tried to out-Republican the Republicans on criminal justice issues," said Laura Murphy, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

An Anne Arundel County police officer fatally shot a bank robbery suspect Monday night after the man tried to run him over in the parking lot of a Brooklyn Park liquor store, police said Tuesday. Police believe the same man, Brian Keith Doukas, 47, might be tied to as many as four robberies in Anne Arundel County in the past week, and police in Howard County said he might have been involved in recent robberies there as well. About 6:30 p.m. Monday, officers spotted a pickup truck in front of Murph's liquor store in the 6000 block of Ritchie Highway in Brooklyn Park.

Anne Arundel County police on Tuesday afternoon named the officers involved in two of the three recent shootings, one of them fatal, by county police. In a brief statement, police identified Lt. Harry Peterson, a 20-year veteran, and Officer Walter Sweeney, who has four years with the department, as the officers who were involved in the June 29 fatal shooting of Imani Rashad Lee, 30, of Baltimore. Wielding a box cutter about 2:25 p.m., Lee was threatening people at Trojan Alarm Solutions, a business at the BWI Commerce Park in Severn, police said.

State police continue their investigation into the deaths of two people and the critical injuries to two others who had gathered for a drag race on Interstate 70 near the Baltimore County-Baltimore City line in Woodlawn early Sunday. Pronounced dead at the scene were Mary-Kathryn Michele Abernathy, 21, of the 8600 block of Hayshed Lane in Columbia, and Jonathan Robert Henderson, 20, of the 1400 block of Redwood Circle in La Plata, Charles County. Injured and reported in critical condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center were Donneil Raeburn, 26, of the 4500 block of Dresden Road in Pikesville, and Paul Alan Duffy, 22, of the 8100 block of Sunrise Lane in Elkridge, Howard County.

Tracy Wheeler had never asked her husband the question before, but on the morning of June 16, a Saturday, she asked him what he'd be doing during his overtime shift with the Howard County Police Department that day. "Step-outs," Scott Wheeler said, and she cringed. She didn't like step-outs. They require an officer to step into the highway and wave over speeding cars so the drivers can be ticketed. She told him to crawl back in bed with her instead. "They'll never miss you at work," she told her husband of just 10 months, but they both knew she wasn't serious.

A flurry of shootings and killings over the weekend capped Baltimore's deadliest month of 2008, prompting city officials and police to consider new tactics to curtail a spike of violence that threatens to undermine gains they have been publicizing all year. With 31 homicides, the city experienced the most killings in the month of November in nine years. The violence came in bunches - a quadruple shooting in Northwest Baltimore that killed three; a triple shooting in Irvington; another triple shooting outside a downtown restaurant.

Laurel authorities are searching for a driver who hit a police car and fled. Jim Collins, Laurel police spokesman, said the vehicle struck a patrol car from behind after running a red light at U.S. 1 and Route 198 about 11 p.m. Sunday. The officer driving the police car, Imtiaz Alli, was taken to the hospital with a fractured neck. His cruiser was destroyed. Collins said police are looking for a tan vehicle in connection with the incident. Associated Press

The teenager who drove a stolen minivan that crashed into an unmarked police car during a high-speed chase in Annapolis entered the equivalent of a guilty plea during a juvenile court hearing yesterday. The 16-year-old boy, who was 15 at the time of the incident May 21, entered an admission before Anne Arundel County Master John F. Gunning to charges of second-degree assault, felony theft and fleeing in order to evade police. Gunning ordered the youth committed to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Services.

Baltimore North side Three officers hurt in collision with car Three city police officers responding to a fellow officer's call for assistance and the driver of a Chevrolet compact car were injured yesterday when their vehicles collided near the former site of Memorial Stadium, police said. The officers were taken by city Fire Department ambulances to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, were they were treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, said Major Dennis Smith, deputy commander of the Northern District.

Baltimore police released new details yesterday about last week's fatal police-involved shooting, including the name of the officer who shot a 21-year-old developmentally disabled man who police said had a gun. The officer was identified as Evert A. Lufadeju, a nine-year veteran assigned to the Southwestern police district. The victim's family said that a group of neighborhood men stormed into their home on Robinson Street about 2:40 a.m. June 17 and beat Bryant Worrell, 21, a recent graduate of the Central Career Center at Briscoe, a special-education facility in West Baltimore.

Anne Arundel County's police union is questioning the suspension of three officers' police powers as the department reviews a high-speed chase of a stolen minivan allegedly driven by a 15-year-old boy who crashed into an unmarked police car in an Annapolis neighborhood. Sgt. John Gilmer, a county police spokesman, said it is routine for the department to conduct a review after a chase. But the county union president said that the "emergency suspension" of two officers and a supervisor, ordered two days after a county councilman inquired about the circumstances leading up to the chase, was unusual and unnecessary.