Supervision

CHICAGO -- Columnist Mike Royko pleaded guilty yesterday to a drunken-driving charge in connection with an automobile accident last December in Winnetka, and he was sentenced to two years' supervision.After listening to a victim-impact statement from the other motorist, who asked the court to permanently revoke Mr. Royko's driving privileges, Judge Daniel Gillespie extended an automatic six-month suspension of Mr. Royko's driver's license by 4 1/2 months until mid-December.Judge Gillespie, who said before sentencing that he has thought about the misdemeanor case each day, also imposed a $1,000 fine and sentenced the 63-year-old columnist to perform 80 hours of community service by reading to the blind.

A former Glen Burnie man who went on an interstate bank-robbing spree last year was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison by a U.S. District Court on Monday. Allen Densmore, 56, robbed the Severn Savings Bank on Crain Highway in Glen Burnie of $2,300 on Feb. 3, 2011, after providing the teller a demand note and a bag, federal prosecutors said. After fleeing Maryland in a stolen vehicle, Densmore went on to rob banks in Wisconsin, South Dakota and Iowa, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

An Aberdeen man who pleaded guilty last year to possessing child pornography will spend 64 months in prison and then will be supervised for the rest of his life by federal agents, a U.S. District Court judge ruled yesterday. The strict sentence was hailed by prosecutors, who said it was the first time in Maryland that a federal judge had imposed life supervision in a child pornography case. Most people are supervised after their prison time for a few years. But concerns about recidivism among pedophiles has prompted prosecutors and child welfare advocates to push for tougher post-prison sanctions.

An independent commission reviewing January's fatal police shooting outside the Select Lounge found that supervisors failed to take control of a chaotic scene, with Officer William H. Torbit Jr. making a series of missteps that exacerbated the situation and contributed to his own death. Those conclusions were among 33 sweeping recommendations made by the panel, appointed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to examine the circumstances surrounding a shooting that left two dead and four wounded - the Baltimore Police Department's first incident of on-duty, fatal friendly fire in 80 years.

Lapses of supervision and missing information taint a series of cases in the city's drug treatment court, one of the state's model criminal justice programs, an internal audit has found.The Aug. 20 audit, reviewed this week by The Sun, is the latest examination of the Alternative Sentencing Unit, a Baltimore community supervision program that handles about a third of the drug treatment court cases.Problems uncovered in the reviews have led to the reassignment of Thomas E. Kirk, administrator of the 8-year-old Alternative Sentencing Unit.

MY SON, NOW 13, believes he has outgrown the need for afterschool supervision while his father and I work. And apparently the federal government agrees.Since he is no longer 12, he is no longer eligible under the Dependent Care Tax Credit, so his father and I no longer qualify for the modest tax break we received for the huge checks we have been writing for day-care services and camps all these years.This tax credit never amounted to more than a few hundred dollars a year, and it was not the reason we provided for his care after school, but it was an endorsement for our thinking that 6 was not the right age for a child to come home to an empty house.

When juvenile offenders under the supervision of the state show up dead in Baltimore or are charged with murder, something's got to give. Somebody has to start asking questions about the teenagers, their daily lives and the system overseeing them. Those questions have been asked and provoked a more comprehensive review of hundreds of Baltimore cases, and the results so far are damning. A lax system of supervision, overwhelmed caseworkers and poor administrative oversight, all of which suggest a system that needs a comprehensive overhaul.

The Maryland Real Estate Commission voted yesterday to tighten supervision of sales agents by their brokers.The 7-0 vote, with one absention, came after a 10-month study by a committee of commissioners and industry professionals. It followed assurances from the attorney general's office that closer supervision would not change agents' status as independent contractors.Most sales agents operate as independent contractors and not as employees.Brokers, however, are required by law to "exercise reasonable and adequate supervision" of its sales agents.

As President Bush maneuvers to strengthen ties with the Teamsters, the union has mounted an intensive campaign to persuade the administration to end 12 years of federal supervision of the union, once considered the United States' most corrupt. The Teamsters' campaign comes at the same time that the union's president, James P. Hoffa, has indicated that his union might support Republicans if they back the Teamsters on several crucial issues. The Teamsters have been lobbying the White House, the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney in New York City for an end to supervision, and Hoffa has made clear that it is his No. 1 wish from the Bush administration.

Howard County police took over supervision of the county's 911 communications center this week after the resignation of the center's civilian director and two publicized complaints over the past year. John A. Hampton, the county government's chief of communications for nearly eight years, worked his last day Friday and has refused to discuss his departure or the center's operation. County officials were cautious in comments about the reason for the change, which puts 55 employees under the control of Lt. Lee Lachman and removes more than half the employees from the supervision of the information systems services department.

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A Baltimore man was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison for armed bank robbery, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland said Friday. Randolph Burke Wells, 46, signed a plea agreement with the government for the armed robbery last October of the Harbor Bank of Maryland on W. Fayette Street. Wells was given more than $3,500 in cash after pointing a gun at a teller, the government said. Wells was on supervised release for a previous federal bank robbery conviction when he was arrested last fall.

Little-noticed in the slew of bills approved by the General Assembly in the waning hours of its 90-day session last week was a measure requiring new parolees to be told about how they can apply for an exemption from the state's monthly supervision fee. That will no doubt prove helpful — but the fact that the state charges a supervision fee at all is maddeningly shortsighted. Here's the problem. Back in 1991 — when the state was, like now, hard-pressed for funds due to a downturn in the economy — lawmakers approved a monthly fee for parole and probation.

William E. Wentworth, a retired W.R. Grace project engineer who survived the sinking of a Liberty Ship in a World War II kamikaze attack, died of cancer Jan. 22 at his Timonium home. He was 87. Born in Detroit, he moved with his parents to Carroll County and was a 1940 graduate of Hampstead High School. He later resided on Belleville Avenue and became an apprentice machinist with the old Bartlett-Hayward Co. in Southwest Baltimore before World War II. In an autobiographical sketch, Mr. Wentworth wrote that he joined the Navy as a machinist.

Federal investigators have ordered St. Joseph Medical Center to conduct annual, random audits of its cardiac care practice to verify that the procedures performed there are necessary, in the wake of allegations that Dr. Mark G. Midei placed heart stents in hundreds of patients who didn't need them. The requirement, part of a far-reaching "corporate integrity agreement" imposing greater government oversight of the Towson hospital, also requires St. Joseph to follow strict rules designed to discourage — or catch — kickbacks to doctors and fraudulent treatment and billing.

A nonprofit group has won the rights to oversee development in the Park Heights area, but it must meet benchmarks to prove it is making progress in the troubled area under an agreement approved Wednesday by the city's spending board. Park Heights Renaissance Inc. will develop or seek developers for the bulk of the 1,500-acre Park Heights Master Plan area under a memorandum of understanding approved by the five-member Board of Estimates. The core of the blighted neighborhood, a 62-acre tract designated as the "Major Redevelopment Area," will be subject to a separate agreement that has not been finalized, city housing department spokeswoman Cheron Porter said.

NEW YORK - Wall Street chief executives, including Citigroup Inc.'s Sanford I. Weill and Morgan Stanley's Philip J. Purcell, have been asked by U.S. regulators to produce e-mail and other documents about their supervision of research analysts two months after the $1.4 billion conflicts settlement. Citigroup, Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and at least nine other brokerages accused of producing biased stock research were issued subpoenas by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is investigating whether the firms' executives failed to supervise their analysts, people familiar with the matter said yesterday.

An 18-year-old resident of the Charles H. Hickey School has been charged with committing a "perverted sexual practice" with his younger roommate at the facility, and the incident is being investigated by the Maryland State Police and the Department of Juvenile Justice.The charges stem from an incident Aug. 19 in Douglas Hall on the Cub Hill campus, according to officials at the school and documents filed in Baltimore County's district court. Jesse Allen Adkins, 18, and his 15-year-old roommate were locked in their room and began playing a kind of "truth or dare" game that turned sexual, according to charging documents.

An administrative law judge has dismissed allegations that the former general counsel of Ferris, Baker Watts Inc., Theodore W. Urban, failed in his supervision of a broker who was subsequently convicted in a fraud that cost clients millions of dollars. The judge's opinion, filed this week, could mark the end of the last federal prosecution into the trading scandal that revealed a lack of leadership, an unclear chain of command and missed opportunities to stop the scheme at the former Baltimore brokerage firm.