Raid

The way the attorney for the family suing Baltimore County describes it, heavily armed paramilitary police officers carrying ballistic shields and dressed in camouflage stormed a suburban Dundalk house over trace amounts of drugs without knocking and fatally shot a "devoted mother and wife" armed with a legally registered handgun to defend herself from intruders. The way the attorney defending the police officers and the county describes it, professionally trained members of the SWAT team raided a suspected narcotics den containing marijuana and cocaine that was occupied by a convicted murderer with access to weapons and a teenager who had just shot another youth in a fight, resulting in the shooting of a woman holding a gun who refused to comply with the cop's commands.

BAGHDAD -- Roadside bombs killed three American soldiers yesterday, while U.S. and Iraqi forces differed over their accounts of an overnight raid on a suspected hideout for Shiite Muslim militiamen. The U.S. military said American forces backed by attack aircraft killed 25 militiamen during the assault on the village of Jizan al-Imam, about 40 miles northwest of Baghdad. Some Iraqi officials, though, said most of the victims were civilians mistaken for hostile forces in the darkness. The troop deaths brought the number of American forces killed in Iraq to at least 3,813 since the war began in March 2003, according to the independent monitoring site icasualties.

A former state delegate with the assistance of his friend, the city liquor board's chief inspector, alerted the owners of a Frederick Avenue club to a police raid and then bragged to a former state senator about his actions, according to evidence in his trial.The warning and the boast were detailed in a series of wiretapped telephone conversations played to a Circuit Court jury yesterday in the corruption and bribery trial of former Del. William J. Madonna Jr. and Anthony J. Cianferano, the former chief inspector.

Police raided a Northwest Baltimore confectionery store yesterday and seized at least $200,000 worth of drug packaging materials and cutting agents.Sgt. Scott Rowe, a police spokesman, said officers served a search-and-seizure warrant at Sweet Land in the 5100 block of Park Heights Ave. about 2 p.m. and, in a rear storeroom, seized cutting agents for diluting drugs and thousands of plastic vials and small glassine bags."We believe the store owner supplied drug dealers throughout Pimlico and large sections of Northwest Baltimore," Rowe said.

Police raided two nightspots on Baltimore's Block last night in an attempt to round up the last of 42 dancers, doormen and other strip club workers indicted on drug charges.Officers swept into the Jewel Box and The Big Top about 8: 30 p.m. as part of Operation Block Bust and detained employees and customers out for a night of entertainment. They arrested 10 people, all employees of the two establishments.Over the past two months, undercover officers said they infiltrated the two bars in the 400 block of E. Baltimore St., befriended bartenders and dancers, and secretly tape-recorded suspected drug deals.

In the wake of a raid last weekend at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, state officials have fired four corrections officers who failed drug tests and another officer has quit after refusing to take the test.Three other officers, who failed preliminary tests during a raid at the prison Feb. 13, have been placed on administrative duty pending the results of follow-up urine tests, authorities said.Officials have also overhauled the prison administration, transferring the warden, Thomas R. Corcoran, and naming one warden to run the House of Correction and another to run the annex next door.

Eight adults and a juvenile were charged yesterday with animal cruelty and related offenses after Baltimore County police broke up what they said was an organized dogfight Saturday night in Lochearn.All were arrested in a raid on a dwelling in the 4000 block of Buckingham Road, police said. The adults were being held at the Garrison Precinct last night in lieu of bail, ranging from $25,000 to $150,000, police said. The juvenile was released to the custody of his parents.Police did not release the names of the suspects.

Drug enforcement officers from the Northeastern Police District raided a Belair Road apartment yesterday and arrested four people.The officers, acting on information from citizens concerned about drug trafficking along the Belair Road corridor, seized $28,000 worth of suspected cocaine, $35,000 cash in two gym bags and two firearms in the 4: 30 p.m. raid.Sgt. William Sekinger, head of the district's drug unit, said each of the four was charged with possession of narcotics with intent to distribute and illegal possession of firearms -- a .223 caliber rifle and a .22 caliber handgun.

Acting on neighborhood complaints, police raided a third-floor apartment in the 2100 block of St. Paul St. and arrested two people on drug charges Thursday night.Officers from the Northern District and members of the city's tactical squad served a search warrant about 10 p.m. and seized a .357-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun, $5,255 in cash and 148 plastic bags of crack cocaine, police said.Arrested were Keane McCollum, 29, of the 2200 block of Callow Ave. in Reservoir Hill and Hazel Thornton, 52, of the 300 block of E. 28th St.Pub Date: 1/09/99

Immigration and Naturalization Service agents arrested 54 suspected illegal immigrants from Central and South America during a raid yesterday at a Northwest Baltimore landscaping firm, said a spokesman for the federal agency.About 25 agents, serving an administrative search warrant, raided RAR Landscaping Co. in the 5900 block of Oakleaf Ave. about 7: 15 a.m. and detained the male immigrants, who range in age from 16 to 35, said Barry Tang, INS assistant director for investigations in Baltimore.

At least Maryland is not New Jersey. The recent federal indictment of politicians across that state shows that government contracts there are up for sale to the highest bidder. They hobnob with purveyors of illegal organs. Another bonus: Taxes there are even higher than in the Old Line State. Also, Maryland's landscape is beautiful. But politicians here still behave as if the rules of law and economics do not apply to them. Case one: the betrothal stunt pulled by Del. Jon Cardin, a Baltimore County Democrat and nephew of Democratic U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin.

Baltimore Co. man found not criminally responsible in death A Circuit Court judge found a 23-year-old Baltimore County man not criminally responsible Monday in the fatal stabbing last year of a woman who was paying for her purchases at a Catonsville liquor store. David A. Briggs, who was arrested in November and charged with first-degree murder in the death of Aysha D. Ring, 24, was committed to the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup, according to Baltimore County prosecutors.

Baltimore County police and federal immigration agents raided a Fells Point bar July 8 searching for four high-powered handguns that authorities said had been purchased by the club owner with the help of a foreign national visiting from the Philippines, according to reports filed Friday with the city's liquor board. The guns, which each cost about $1,200, are described in the reports as FN 5.7 mm pistols manufactured by FN Herstal in Belgium that fire military-style rounds at high velocity, capable of piercing ballistic body armor.

Peter Hermann's "Crime Scenes" is a reported feature that provides context about many of the incidents that take place on the streets of Baltimore and beyond. Trouble for Cheerleader's in Fells Point began back in March 2008 when a female college student was beaten inside the bar and her friends complained that the bouncers did nothing to help. Then, in April of this year, angry patrons spilled out of the Broadway club and, on Lancaster Street, one fired up to 10 shots from a handgun.

The way the attorney for the family suing Baltimore County describes it, heavily armed paramilitary police officers carrying ballistic shields and dressed in camouflage stormed a suburban Dundalk house over trace amounts of drugs without knocking and fatally shot a "devoted mother and wife" armed with a legally registered handgun to defend herself from intruders. The way the attorney defending the police officers and the county describes it, professionally trained members of the SWAT team raided a suspected narcotics den containing marijuana and cocaine that was occupied by a convicted murderer with access to weapons and a teenager who had just shot another youth in a fight, resulting in the shooting of a woman holding a gun who refused to comply with the cop's commands.

Karen Thomas says she remembers the smallest of details about a Howard County SWAT team raid on her Ellicott City home in 2007, down to the time displayed on a clock as she heard her 10-year-old dog start barking. In testimony yesterday before the state Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, Thomas told how six masked men with guns had crashed into her home. Thomas was forced to the ground, handcuffed and heard a gunshot from the family room where her younger son was sleeping. "You can't imagine, an unfathomable mother's nightmare had become my ordinary Friday-morning reality," Thomas told the panel in Annapolis.

On a January morning, Howard County police learned that two of their cruisers had been broken into while parked in an Elkridge neighborhood. Someone stole penlights, a Police Department baseball cap, citation books - and a high-powered rifle and nearly 150 rounds of ammunition. The next day, a SWAT team raided Mike Hasenei's nearby mobile home. Hasenei says an officer hit him in the face with a shield, knocked him to the ground and handcuffed him and his wife. Police shot one of the family dogs.

The state's largest immigration advocacy group filed suit yesterday against Anne Arundel County officials for failing to release documents related to a federal raid targeting alleged undocumented workers, though officials said they had just put those documents in the mail yesterday. CASA de Maryland filed suit against the office of the Anne Arundel county executive and the county Police Department in Montgomery County Circuit Court alleging that the government agencies failed to comply with the Maryland Public Information Act. CASA is asking the court to order the county to disclose the records and make copies available and to pay its attorneys' fees.

Regents wrong to take a position on slots It was very disappointing to see officials from the University System of Maryland come out in support of slots gambling because the Board of Regents doesn't see how the university can do without the money slots would generate ("UM Board of Regents endorses state plan for slots," Sept. 6). As a beacon of enlightenment, the university system should articulate a higher ethical standard than other bodies. While Maryland families are having to cut back and struggling, in some cases, to keep their homes in this difficult economy, the university system is sending the wrong message by endorsing gambling as a necessary evil.

BAGHDAD - Predawn raids by elite Iraqi forces yesterday resulted in the fatal shooting of a government employee and the arrest of two prominent Sunni Arabs, according to witnesses and officials. The troops were from the central government's counter-terrorism units, said Gov. Raad Rashid al-Tamimi of Diyala province, where the raid took place. They had stormed the governorate building in the city of Baqouba and arrested Sunni provincial council member Hussein al-Zubaidi, who belongs to the Iraqi Islamic Party.