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.

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.

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.

Two Baltimore police officers were shot, one of them fatally, when gunfire erupted early Sunday outside a club near downtown. Six people in all were shot and two killed. The incident occurred at about 1:15 a.m. when police were called to break up fights and control a crowd outside the Select Lounge on North Paca Street near Franklin Street, said Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. "There was an altercation that took place very near the club and some officers worked to intercede in that fight, at which time some gunshots were discharged," Bealefeld said.