• The third Baltimore Ceasefire weekend wrapped up last Sunday with no reported homicides. According to Baltimore City Police Spokesperson T.J. Smith, there were two non-fatal shootings during the ceasefire, but both victims are expected to survive. Erricka Bridgeford, one of the event’s most visible organizers (we interviewed her for our inaugural issue), has always maintained that her focus is not so much on the number of deaths, but more on linking communities and getting people actively involved in changing the city—but after what seems like nonstop bad news about Baltimore, this feels like a win. We’ll take it.

• Acting Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa says he’s looking into a report from The Baltimore Sun that some of the police recruits who graduated this past Saturday aren’t prepared to hit the streets. “We’re giving them a badge and a gun tomorrow, the right to take someone’s liberty, ultimately the right to take someone’s life if it calls for it, and they have not demonstrated they can meet [basic] constitutional and legal standards,” Sgt. Josh Rosenblat told the paper. De Sousa has touted his efforts to get more officers on the streets, but this adds more credence to the argument that overpolicing isn’t the answer to the city’s problems.

• Speaking of De Sousa, he hasn’t even been sworn in yet and he’s already leaning on the tired (and incorrectly used) metaphor utilized by all police apologists. He said that the revelations of gross misconduct brought to light during the trial of members of the Gun Trace Task Force are the work of “very few bad apples that spoil the entire barrel.” But if the whole barrel is spoiled, what are we even doing here?

• Mayor Catherine Pugh announced last week that she’d be launching a new initiative focused on helping black men and boys in the city. The Office of African American Male Engagement is set to start work on Feb. 12, with Andrey Bundley, up until now a safety director for Baltimore City Public Schools, at the helm. The mayor hasn’t said how much Bundley will be paid or how much money the office will need to operate.

• The mayor also announced that she is looking into a form of predictive policing that utilizes technology and statistics to stop crimes before they happen—a move that drew immediate comparisons from some to the 2002 Tom Cruise film “Minority Report.” Proponents of the technique point to its success in places like Chicago, where the number of shootings went down significantly. However, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have pointed out that for this to work, it basically calls on police to swarm certain areas—and those areas largely tend to be poor and black. That’s a problem.

• Congratulations are in order for former Baltimore Raven Ray Lewis, who was selected for enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame just before the Super Bowl. The ceremony will be held Aug. 4 in Ohio. “I want to go fishing with a cigar now and just sit back. I don’t want to work out every day now,” Lewis said. He’s earned it.

• In a Twitter post on Feb. 1, Eric Allen Hatch confirmed he’d quit his position as director of programming at Maryland Film Festival and the Parkway Theatre. Since 2010 (after starting as an MdFF programmer in 2007), Hatch had overseen the film selections at the annual festival and year-round at the Parkway since it reopened last spring, and he along with his assembled team did that job exceedingly well, bringing to the big screen underappreciated gems unearthed from movie history, films by women and people of color rarely shown elsewhere, and special double features that really tapped into what this city needs (example: “Magic Mike” with “Magic Mike XXL”). On Twitter, Hatch said his decision to leave was “rooted in taking on an unsustainable work- and stress-load to ensure that the Parkway succeed that has proved very damaging to my physical and especially mental health, and simultaneously feeling drastically under-resourced and under-appreciated by other non-staff elements in the organization as I devoted my life to the Parkway project and trying to make it succeed on every level.” This is not an unfamiliar story for artists and folks in creative lines of work, which seems chronically undervalued. Here’s hoping Hatch keeps up his movie meme Twitter (@ericallenhatch), among the finest anywhere.

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-Baltimore native, comedian, and Oscar winner Mo’Nique issued a call via Instagram last week for her fans to boycott Netflix because the streaming content company offered her $500,000 to do a comedy special versus the $11 million they’ve paid Amy Schumer and $20 million she says they’ve paid Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. People, it seems, are mostly laughing off her request, but Mo’Nique has a point. She’s a fucking Oscar winner, after all. Mo’Nique accused them of colorism and gender bias and it’s worth noting: Another black comedian, Wanda Sykes, says Netflix also tried to lowball her but she instead opted to work with another company.

-Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, along with 21 other AGs from around the country, are fighting back after the FCC’s recent net neutrality repeal, filing a lawsuit to block the move. Opponents of the repeal say it favors big business and makes the web less accessible for regular citizens by allowing companies like AT&T and Comcast to manipulate download speeds and favor some sites over others. “The repeal of net neutrality would have dire consequences for consumers and businesses in Maryland and across the country that rely on a free and open internet,” Frosh said via a statement.

-Amazon released the list of cities in the running to be the site of their HQ2 headquarters, and Baltimore didn’t make the cut. That’s a good or bad thing, depending on who you ask. Mayor Catherine Pugh released a statement shortly after the announcement, saying that she was disappointed but that she’s not letting this stop her from pursuing a “strong growth agenda for Baltimore,” which means trying to lure other big businesses, like Apple, to the city. We just want to know: Is she ever going to tell us what she promised Amazon in the first place?

-We all got a shock last Friday morning when we learned that Mayor Pugh had axed now-former Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, and named 30-year veteran Darryl DeSousa as commissioner-designate. Pugh said that she made the move because she was “impatient.” Our beef: There were over 300 murders in this city last year. What made the mayor run out of patience now? Also, how is a 30-year veteran going to bring change to a department that desperately needs it?

-City officials announced last week that they’d be forcing the people experiencing homelessness out of the makeshift encampment set up under Interstate 83. They said the move is driven by safety concerns, including the recent cold weather and the use of open flames. The city will provide up to 40 beds for anyone who wants them. However, according to advocates who spoke to The Baltimore Sun, the move is potentially traumatizing for many of the people who live there, noting that some places meant to be havens for people instead offer a whole host of other problems. Similar concerns were voiced during Mayor Pugh’s interaction with the protesters who set up tents on the lawn in front of City Hall this summer. There’s still much to be done to solve the city’s problem with homelessness.

-Thousands turned out in Baltimore last Saturday to mark the one year anniversary of the Women’s March. There were lots of signs and some dancing and words from Mayor Catherine Pugh, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, and City Health Commissioner Leana Wen, among others. Ava Pipitone, executive director of the Baltimore Transgender Alliance noted that even among members of the #resistance, there is still much work to be done—noting that we “not anchor our womenhood to the genitals of cis women,” and adding, “we need to upgrade our language from reaction to collective action.”

-The primaries are in June and candidates were required to file their latest fundraising stats last week. We learned that Republican Governor Larry Hogan has the most cash on hand—more than $9 million—and that he’s received donations from the Koch brothers. Among the Democrats, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz has received $2 million, Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker has $1.05 million, and Ben Jealous has received $1.5 million in donations.

-Between Jan. 15 (when the previous issue of the Beat went to press) and Jan. 22 (when this issue of the Beat went to press) there were two homicides in Baltimore: A not yet identified man on Jan. 20 and Darone Johnson on Jan. 21. On Jan. 21, the Baltimore Police also mentioned “26 year-old Marco Byrd, murdered on January 19, 2018 in the 600 block of Duncan Street,” though this has not been determined to be a homicide. There have been 13 homicides in Baltimore this year.

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-Target announced it would close its Mondawmin location in February because it was underperforming. Crucial to the redesign of Mondawmin Mall, the Target was a badly needed resource for many who didn’t have access to lots of shopping options in an area that had been neglected for years. Maybe we should consider investing locally and stop trying so hard to court giant corporate structures who will pull out the moment things don’t benefit them.

-In response to the alarming homicide rate and attacks by teens in neighborhoods that don’t usually see that sort of thing, Mayor Catherine Pugh decided that the heads of more than half of city agencies must meet up at police headquarters every morning to better combat crime—which pretty much means everybody answers to the police now? Crime is a symptom, not the disease, and it might help us all if we thought about it that way. Our other complaint? The mayor called for the private sector to help finance a $10 million expansion of the highly effective Safe Streets program while continuing to find more and more public funding for police and private developers.

-In response to attacks by teens in neighborhoods that don’t usually see that sort of thing, Commissioner Kevin Davis has announced a number of hasty crime prevention plans including one where young-looking undercover cops go to the neighborhoods to catch the bad kids, “21 Jump Street” style. Davis’ other big plan? Throw more teens in jail and charge 16-year-olds as adults—something the law demands for violent crime but a policy that has been shown not to work.

-With over a dozen allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against Kevin Spacey, Netflix has fired their leading man from “House of Cards”—and good riddance. Production has been put on hold while writers on show, which is filmed in Baltimore and other parts of Maryland, are scrambling to rewrite the final season. Locally, groups like Hollaback Baltimore have been putting together discussions and workshops as the #metoo movement pushes on and more stories come out. It’s time to reevaluate how we respond to abuse.

-Governor Larry Hogan condemned Roy Moore after the Alabama maniac was accused of propositioning a 14-year-old 40 years ago. While some have doubled down in support of Moore, Hogan at least said Moore has got to go, declaring him “unfit for office” and asking if Republicans “would be so quick to excuse him if the victim was their daughter or if the offender was a Democrat.” The bar for Republicans to do the right thing is so low.

-The Baltimore Museum of Art announced that in conjunction with a solo exhibition by famed artist Mark Bradford, whom BMA Director Christopher Bedford has called “the greatest living abstract painter,” Bradford will start a partnership with Greenmount West Community Center, providing training and equipment for a silk-screening project for kids. At a public talk hosted at Union Baptist Church over the weekend, Bradford and the BMA team emphasized the importance of strengthening community-driven projects that already exist and work, rightly echoing the sentiments of local organizers.

-Where there is black pain, there will always be white people looking to profit. Over on Twitter, one-time-officer-turned-police-brutality-pundit Michael Wood claimed that race was just “a social construct,” identified himself as “anti-identity politics,” and said that black women were falsely claiming “special exemption.” The internet—in particular Morgan University’s Dr. Lawrence Brown—came for him, much to the delight of many in Baltimore who are sick of Wood’s white-centered wokeness.

-A 2014 incident involving Baltimore resident Jamal Kennedy and Baltimore City Police outside Melba’s Place in Waverly has resulted in a $135,000 settlement with the city, the Baltimore Brew reported last week. Kennedy sued the city, claiming officers acted inappropriately when they tasered and beat him (the officers were cleared in court of all wrongdoing). The money, like all police settlements, comes with a gag order silencing Kennedy from talking about the specifics of his case.

-There were four homicides in Baltimore over the past week (Nov. 6-13, the week before the Beat to press), with two on Nov. 6 (Latasha Walls, Winfield Parker) and two on Nov. 12 (Dashon Griffin, Gerald Gardner). It follows the second ceasefire weekend where there was one homicide on Nov. 4 (Tony Mason Jr.) and a brief burst of hope where residents saw no homicides for most of last week. As of Nov. 13, day 316 of 2017, Baltimore has had 305 homicides.

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