Police

Baltimore County Police on Thursday released surveillance photos of three men who they said tied up victims in a Catonsville home last month, before taking bank cards and other valuables. Police said the three armed men entered a home in the 300 block of Stratford Road on May 12, where they tied up the victims and took cell phones, electronics, money, bank and credit cards. The three men fled on foot and later attempted to use the stolen cards at different locations. Anyone with information on the suspects is asked to call detectives at 410-307-2020 or Metro Crime Stoppers 1-866-756-2587.

Police departments around the country are collecting DNA in largely unregulated databases, The New York Times reported today, providing a broader look at a practice The Baltimore Sun revealed in Maryland earlier this year. The largest collections of DNA records are held at the state and federal levels, but local agencies are also free to collect their own samples and keep their own records, which are not always subject to the same rules. New York City, for example, has a database of 11,000 suspects and Orange County, Calif., has 90,000 records on file, according to the Times . Baltimore police had samples from more than 2,000 suspects and more than 3,000 homicide victims, The Sun reported in February .  The state's DNA law, which allows the collection of DNA from people arrested in connection with serious crimes and was recently upheld by the Supreme Court , makes no reference to the local databases.

Baltimore police said Wednesday that detectives believe a suspect in the fatal shooting of 1-year-old Carter Scott last month has fled to New York City. Police have identified Rashid Mayo, 22, as a suspect in the May 24 shooting that left Carter dead and his father, Rashaw Scott, 22, seriously wounded. Two other alleged gunmen have also been charged - Eddie Tarver, 20, whom they said they caught in a pursuit after the shooting, and Cornell Harvey, 26, whom Rashaw Scott allegedly identified as one of the gunmen.

Baltimore Police have been able to present some impressive - sometimes maybe even hard to believe for some - crime statistics in the past decade, but a figure put forward last night was beyond head-scratching. In preparation of a walk through downtown to the Inner Harbor with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, police sent a reporter a data sheet showing that crime was down substantially in the downtown neighborhood and Seton Hill.  Down so much, the data showed, that it had declined 525 percent.

A 21-year-old man has been charged with killing a 2-year-old in West Baltimore, and detectives were investigating a fatal shooting of a 27-year-old man and two nonfatal shootings elsewhere in the city. Police said Damond Stansbury has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of the child, Marlo McFadden, who was found unresponsive Monday morning in his grandmother's home in the 1600 block of Mountmor Court in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. Officers were initially told that the child appeared to have fallen from a bunk bed, and Marlo's grandmother said she had frantically splashed water onto his face in a futile attempt to revive him, charging documents show.

Maryland State Police and Sheriff's Office reports: Aberdeen Eric Christopher Briggs, 36, of the first block of Valley Bottom Road, was charged Friday with possessing a drug other than marijuana and possessing drugs with intent to distribute. Heather Merann Carlton, 32, of the 1800 block of Mitchell Drive, was charged Saturday with first- and second-degree assault. Kimberly Reed, 39, of the 100 block of Osborne Road, was charged Saturday with obstructing and hindering police.

A 15-year-old boy suffered a non-life threatening injury after he was shot during an argument in Edgewood on Monday night, the Harford County Sheriff's Office said. Deputies were dispatched to the 1800 block of Grempler Way in the Edgewater Village neighborhood at 8:05 p.m. Monday for a report of a shooting with one victim, the Sheriff's Office said in a news release. When they arrived, deputies spoke with the 15-year-old victim, who had been grazed in the abdomen by a bullet, according to a Sheriff's Office news release issued Tuesday.

The National Park Service has announced that it no longer needs to furlough U.S. Park Police. The announcement came after Park Police officers — who patrol the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and several sites in Maryland — had served three of 14 planned furlough days. The National Park Service said savings from those three unpaid days off, combined with other cost-cutting measures and a thorough review of the budget, have "significantly improved" the agency's financial situation and made it possible to end the furloughs for the rest of the fiscal year.

An attorney for a teenager who said his jaw was broken in an encounter with Baltimore police dismissed the city's civilian review board as a "proxy" for police after nearly three years have passed without a ruling on the case. In July 2010, Yardell Henderson, then 16, filed a complaint with internal affairs in which he said he was beaten by police in Northwest Baltimore during an incident that did not result in his arrest or criminal charges. He also contacted the civilian review board, a volunteer panel formed to great fanfare in the late 1990s, to provide a check on police.

Baltimore police are investigating the death of a young child in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. Police spokeswoman Detective Angela Carter-Watson said police responded to the 1600 block of Mountmor Court at 10:01 a.m. to investigate the death. She said she didn't know the age of the child or any details about the death. Police will release more details as they become available. jgeorge@baltsun.com Twitter.com/justingeorge