Police Sergeant

Siblings get eight years in homebuilding scheme 3 Two business partners who misused money intended for building new homes in Baltimore County were sentenced Friday to eight years in prison, with five of those years suspended, the state attorney general's office said. Walter Osborne Ely Jr., 46, and sister Kimberly Zahrey, 44, were also ordered to pay $188,768 to 19 victims after they get out. The state is pursuing a separate civil case against the siblings to try to get more money back.

The 21-year-old son of a Baltimore police sergeant was arrested Thursday night after officers raided the family's rowhouse in the 1000 block of N. Luzerne Ave. and found a half-pound of marijuana, the department's chief spokesman said. The sergeant, who was not identified but is assigned to the Northern District, has been placed on desk duty. Spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said an internal investigation is being conducted to determine whether the officer knew about the drugs and whether drugs were being dealt from the house.

A woman appealed to a Baltimore police sergeant for help early yesterday with a written note in a 7-Eleven, which led to a confrontation in which the officer shot her male companion outside the store, authorities said. The incident is the first police-involved shooting this year in Baltimore and the first under the department's new policy of withholding the names of officers who use deadly force in the line of duty. Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman, declined to release the sergeant's name, noting the new policy, which police say helps ensure officer safety.

A Baltimore police sergeant who told The Baltimore Sun that she was unfairly punished by the department last year was hit with new charges last week - this time for speaking to the news media. Sgt. Carrie Everett, who works out of the department's Southwestern District, received a letter from the internal investigations division informing her of the charges, which accuse her of improperly speaking to a reporter "on or about Sept. 25" for an Oct. 3 article without clearing it through the public affairs office.

City police investigators examined yesterday the computer hard drive used by a white commander accused of ordering a black sergeant to watch online Ku Klux Klan videos, according to three sources familiar with the investigation. Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the Police Department and the mayor's office, said that the police commissioner briefed Mayor Sheila Dixon on Monday night and yesterday morning on a federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint stemming from the alleged incident, but he declined to comment further on the matter.

Harry F. Bleakley Jr., a retired Baltimore County police sergeant and World War II combat veteran, died in his sleep of stroke complications Thursday at Stella Maris Hospice. The Glen Arm resident was 86. Born in Baltimore and raised in Parkville, he was a 1941 graduate of Eastern Technical High School. He enlisted in the Army during World War II and served in the 102nd Infantry Division, known as "The Ozarks." He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was wounded by shrapnel. Awarded the Purple Heart, he achieved the rank of staff sergeant and was recalled to active duty as a master sergeant during the Korean War, family members said.

George W. Nitsch, a former Baltimore police sergeant and guard for the National Security Agency, died of heart failure Wednesday at Chester River Hospital Center in Chestertown. He was 87. Mr. Nitsch - known as Bill to family and friends - was born and raised in Southwest Baltimore. His early world was the neighborhood around his Ashton Street home. He went to grammar school at St. Benedict Church, and he ended up marrying a schoolmate, Rita M. Heaney, whom he met through her brother, who was his best friend.

Maryland's highest court yesterday demanded that police and prosecutors conduct thorough searches before declaring trial evidence to be permanently missing - checking storage rooms, offices and even judges' chambers if necessary. The unanimous ruling by the Court of Appeals involved a request for DNA testing of bloody clothing from a man convicted 33 years ago of killing his ex-boss in Baltimore, and it comes after the disclosure of other recent problems with the Police Department's storage of crime evidence.

Robert Coleman Dandridge, a retired Maryland State Police sergeant who spent his career at what is now Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, died of cancer Thursday at Northwest Hospital Center's hospice. The West Baltimore resident was 75. Born in Baltimore and raised on Mount Street, he sold the old Baltimore News-Post at the age of 8. At 10, he purchased bags for a penny each and sold them for 3 cents to Hollins Market customers. At age 14, he worked as a busboy at a West Baltimore hotel until it was discovered that he was too young to have a work permit.

In the first case to include a longtime ballistics expert's falsified credentials and perjurious testimony as part of a challenge to a defendant's conviction, a defense gun expert testified yesterday that Joseph Kopera incorrectly concluded that a former police sergeant's off-duty revolver could have been used to fire the bullet that killed the officer's mistress. The gun expert said he used Kopera's measurements from 1993 of the bullet fragments - as well as those of a Baltimore County police firearms examiner who recently re-analyzed the evidence for prosecutors - in determining that former Baltimore Police Sgt. James A. Kulbicki's .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver could not have been used in the killing.