Police Headquarters

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke is about to make a far-reaching decision about relocating Baltimore City's police headquarters.Optimally, this decision should enable the city to locate not only the communications facilities but also the administrative functions of both the police and fire departments in one location, as several consultants have recommended.Yet Mr. Schmoke is thinking of moving police headquarters to the old Hecht's department store, at Howard and Lexington streets, which is not big enough to house a combined police and fire bureaucracy.

Baltimore police called in extra officers and arrested at least 10 juveniles Saturday night as a crowd that witnesses described as rowdy and numbering in the hundreds walked around Downtown. The arrests ranged from curfew violations to disorderly conduct and assault, said Detective Donny Moses, a police spokesman. The youth massed on downtown streets, from 1st Mariner Arena on the west side to "The Block" on East Baltimore Street, and south through Baltimore's Inner Harbor, Moses said.

THE PROBLEM -- Cars parked illegally along Fayette Street in front of city police headquarters. THE BACKSTORY -- Even the city's most prolific and daring scofflaws would probably think twice about parking in a clearly marked no-parking zone in front of a police station. Try doing it in front of the Bishop L. Robinson Sr. Police Administration Building at 601 E. Fayette St. Most people would expect a ticket. Or worse. But one recent day, not just one person but several people decided that it was OK to park in front of the police headquarters.

Six people were shot, two fatally, in a spate of violence in several neighborhoods in Baltimore on Wednesday. Most of the gunfire erupted in a four-hour span starting Wednesday evening and into the night. In the latest shooting, about 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, two men were shot in the 5700 block of Nasco Place, a small street near Loch Raven Boulevard, north of Good Samaritan Hospital in Northeast Baltimore, police said. Police said a 31-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the right side of his face walked into a hospital emergency room for treatment.

R ay Lewis paid a visit to Baltimore police headquarters recently, but it's not what you're thinking. The Ravens linebacker, who beat a double-murder rap a few years back but pleaded guilty to obstructing justice, wants to be on the right side of the law. He showed up at HQ a few weeks ago - during the season - and asked what he could do to help the city fight gang violence. "Ray Lewis was in here ... asking, 'What can I do to help?' Police Commish Fred Bealefeld told The Baltimore Sun's Justin Fenton.

Baltimore officials have chosen a possible site to which to move the city's police headquarters and are hiring a space-planning consultant to determine whether it is feasible.In a breakfast meeting with reporters yesterday, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said he has "all but decided" that renovating the headquarters building at 601 E. Fayette St., which has air-conditioning and asbestos problems, "is not the way to go."Mr. Schmoke said he has a first choice for a new site for the headquarters from a field of three but is not ready to identify it at this time.

The Board of Estimates approved yesterday the hiring of a local architectural firm to determine whether the former Hecht Co. department store on Howard Street is suitable for a headquarters for the Baltimore Police Department.At the suggestion of City Comptroller Jacqueline F. McLean, the board agreed to allocate up to $187,000 for feasibility studies and preliminary design work by a team headed by Ayers Saint Gross of Baltimore.Also on the team is Carter and Goble Associates, a South Carolina firm that specializes in planning law enforcement facilities.

The vacant Hecht Co. store at Howard and Lexington streets will be the next headquarters for Baltimore's Police Department.In announcing the decision yesterday, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said he was guided by the Police Department's needs, cost factors and the city's economic development agenda."

A man arrested in four bank holdups escaped custody yesterday when he slipped out of handcuffs and walked out of an interview room at downtown police headquarters.Police said Thomas Y. Hooper, 45, of the 2900 block of Goodnow Road managed to get by two city detectives and two FBI agents who were talking about the case in an outside hallway. The suspect was being sought last night.A second suspect arrested in the robberies, William Arthur Bailey 3rd, 47, of the 5700 block of Winthrop Ave. remains in police custody.

The 11-story police department headquarters that Baltimore built downtown in the early 1970s has been notorious for its mechanical defects, but that is not the only area where it failed.As seen from the skyline on the edge of the municipal district, the building at 601 E. Fayette St. looks more like a commercial office tower than the command center for the department whose officers are sworn to protect the citizens of Baltimore.With its reflective glass windows and polished granite surface, it is also an austere fortress that appears cut off from the city.

About 150 people gathered Sunday night to begin planning Occupy Baltimore, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that started in New York two weeks ago and have now spread to other cities. Meeting at the 2640 Space on St. Paul Street in Charles Village, people there talked about logistics for an event - visibility and social significance among them. When a Baltimore Sun reporter told organizers she was there, the group asked that she leave. The planning meeting came a day after 700 protesters in New York were arrested for marching in the car lanes of theBrooklyn Bridge.

Two groups have joined together to host the Family to Family Community Thrift Store, which will offer gently used, donated items for sale this weekend, all priced at $10 or less. The thrift store will be held Saturday, Aug. 20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Prince George's County Police Headquarters, 7600 Barlowe Road, Landover, and is a joint effort of the Police Department's Community Services Division and local nonprofit Community Outreach and Development Inc., an organization that works to provide services that help individuals and families become self-sufficient.

Howard County police are reviewing how they disseminate information on their community notification system after residents complained about early-morning calls they received July 23. An automated call went out about 5 a.m. after an autistic teen visiting from New Jersey left a Columbia house about 3:15 a.m. and couldn't be found despite a search that included the use of policedogs and a helicopter. "We typically don't have alerts go out until 6 a.m. but we were very concerned about waiting because of the high temperatures and the fact that he couldn't provide his name if anyone found him," said police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn.

At Shaffer's Lounge and Sports Bar, a small bar on the fringes of Pigtown with one pool table and a sign above the cash register that reads "Sarcasm: One of the free services I offer," the lone employee heard the gunshots and hit the deck. Outside, a man lay bleeding. The employee's pickup truck parked outside the door was riddled with bullets. Later, one of the detectives asking her questions broke away to take a phone call — "I'm at the OK Corral," he told the person on the other end, she said.

As the desperate search for missing honors student Phylicia Barnes came to a heartbreaking end Thursday, police said the discovery of her body in the Susquehanna River could be "instrumental" in hunting down new leads in a 4-month-old case that has yielded painfully few clues. "We're at stage one of a new phase of the investigation," said Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. "Finding her body is really going to be instrumental in giving us an opportunity to bring closure to the family.

Baltimore police have identified one of the victims of the multiple stabbings that occurred early Saturday inside the downtown nightclub Bourbon Street. Charles Johnson , 24, died of his injuries. The three other victims were transported to local hospitals and are expected to survive, according to spokesman Detective Jeremy Silbert. Police responded at 1 a.m. to Bourbon Street, on the 300 block of Guilford Avenue, to find four men stabbed inside the club, Silbert said.

The city of Baltimore is seeking "submissions" from developers or property owners who are able to provide between 296,000 and 433,000 square feet of office space within the city limits.John Hentschel, real estate officer for the city, said his office is seeking space where it would be possible to move the city police headquarters, which needs about 296,000 square feet, and possibly other city offices, which he did not want to specify.Mr. Hentschel said city officials have already considered several sites for the police department -- including the former Hecht Co. department store at Howard and Lexington streets and the former Montgomery Ward distribution center on Monroe Street -- and hasn't ruled them out.But before making a final decision, he said, the city wants to see what else is available.

Every month since her brother was shot and killed by police last year, Priscilla Johnson has gone back to the Northwest Baltimore neighborhood where he died to hand out fliers, begging for anyone who saw something to come forward. What the family knows, gleaned largely from news reports, is that Dennis Gregory was a bystander who was shot by detectives who were aiming for his friend, Glenn Brooks. And they know from the autopsy that Gregory was hit four times in the back. What they didn't know is that Gregory was acting as a confidential informant that night and that it was his call to police to report that Brooks had a handgun that summoned officers to the scene in the first place.

A Baltimore City homicide detective was shot in the leg about a block from police headquarters Tuesday night. The plainclothes detective was shot a little after 9 p.m. in a parking garage in the unit block of South Frederick Street, Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said. The unidentified 13-year police department veteran was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center with a graze wound to his left thigh, an injury not considered life-threatening, he said. The detective was in the garage to get something out of his car when a man approached with a small-caliber revolver, Bealefeld said.