Police Headquarters

The Baltimore Police Department Youth Choir, under the direction of Officer Roderick Dotson, will perform a program of Christmas music and dance at 11 a.m. today in the fifth-floor auditorium at police headquarters, 601 E. Fayette St.At 10 a.m., the choir will sing carols throughout the headquarters building.Police spokeswoman Angelique Cook-Hayes said the program is open to the public.Pub Date: 12/23/97

One of three people stabbed early yesterday at a Halethorpe restaurant has died, Baltimore County police said. Police responded to a report of a fight about 1 a.m. yesterday at Lecompte's restaurant at 4015 Annapolis Road. The man died about 2:45 a.m., Baltimore County police said. Information about the other two victims was unavailable last night. Two suspects were being held at police headquarters, officials said.

A South Baltimore man has been arrested and charged in the death Friday of William "Baldy" Cudnick III, 17, who died while trying to flee a burning house in the 1600 block of Marshall St., police said.Anthony Novak, 26, of the 1600 block of Elkins Lane, directly behind Marshall Street, was charged with arson and first-degree murder after being questioned at police headquarters Tuesday, police said.Pub Date: 11/07/96

Westminster Mayor W. Benjamin Brown and City Council President William F. Haifley say they have dropped the brick issue for the new police headquarters and don't plan to raise it again.The two elected officials have opposed a March 8 council decision to overlay the new Westminster police headquarters with white brick rather than red.Staff research ordered by Mr. Haifley and Mr. Brown showed that white brick would cost about $150 more than comparable red brick, a difference of $5 per 1,000 bricks.

A Mount Vernon-area man was shot to death early today during an attempted robbery in the 1500 block of Park Ave. in Bolton Hill, police said.Police arrested two teen-age suspects in nearby Reservoir Hill shortly after the 2:15 a.m. incident and were holding them at police headquarters pending charges.The victim, a 42-year-old man whose name was not released pending notification of relatives, and another man, a resident of an apartment building in the 1500 block of Park Ave., had just arrived at the apartment building when two youths approached on bicycles, police said.

The saga of Baltimore's ill-fated police headquarters -- built two decades ago at the cost of $13.6 million and now unusable because of asbestos and ventilation problems -- continues.Nearly a year ago, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke announced that the police department would abandon the costly white elephant near City Hall. Out of a half-dozen alternatives, the mayor selected the old Hecht Co. building as the preferred site for the new headquarters. Under the mayor's plan, the Howard Street department store landmark was to be recycled and renovated at a cost of $26 million and would pump new life into an area that once was Baltimore's merchandising hub.It did not take long for the mayor's plan to run into trouble.

The saga of Baltimore City's police headquarters continues. At its meeting yesterday, the Board of Estimates -- over strenuous objections from City Council President Mary Pat Clarke -- voted to spend nearly $2.6 million on a detailed architectural and engineering study of how to renovate the problem-plagued high-rise structure at Fayette Street and Fallsway."

The matriarch of a powerful Gypsy family was found decapitated in her East Baltimore home yesterday morning, jolting a clan that traces its Baltimore heritage to the turn of the century.Deborah Stevens, 62, who had worked as a palm reader and fortune teller out of her Pulaski Highway house for three decades, was a revered and respected member of what once was the most powerful Gypsy band in the nation.Known to give refuge to caravans of Gypsies who follow carnivals up and down the East Coast, Ms. Stevens was related to King Dick Stevens, a national Gypsy leader who operated a Cherry Hill coppersmith shop from the 1920s until his death in 1959.

If they could do it for the new ballpark, why not the police headquarters, too?That was part of the rationale articulated yesterday by members of Baltimore's Architectural and Engineering Awards Commission as they announced their first choice for a design team to take charge of a $32 million renovation and expansion of the city police headquarters.Their choice: a joint venture of RCG Inc. of Baltimore and Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum (HOK) of Washington, a division of the firm that designed Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

In May, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke announced that the city would move its police headquarters from the fringes of City Hall Square to the former Hecht Co. building on Howard Street. Now the plan is running into trouble.This became evident when persistent questioning by Jacqueline McLean, the new city comptroller, and City Council President Mary Pat Clarke first led to a postponement and then to the downsizing of a $625,425 architectural contract for the new facility. Yesterday, that contract was pared down to a $180,000 assessment of the police department's space requirements that will also analyze how a police headquarters would affect traffic and parking in the Howard Street corridor.