• Baltimore City Councilman Brandon Scott made a surprise entrance into the Maryland governor’s race—he announced last Thursday that he’d be running as James Shea’s lieutenant governor. The two say they plan on making Baltimore a top priority. Many have speculated that Scott, who serves as vice chair of the council’s public safety committee and has frequently clashed with Mayor Catherine Pugh, would eventually run for mayor. He doesn’t have to give up his council seat to run, so he doesn’t risk anything by giving this a try.

• We got to see a little bit of what Mayor Catherine Pugh and other city officials used to unsuccessfully woo Amazon to Baltimore via the website thismustbetheplace.city, and, well, we weren’t impressed. The pitch didn’t feel very much like Baltimore at all. In fact, Port Covington seemed to be the city’s only selling point (it’s a “master-planned, mixed-use, urban redevelopment project,” you know). There’s nothing wrong with seeking to bring new business into the city, but this feels like a real moment to break away from the business-as-usual way things have been done, and create something new. Consider this quote: “The Port Covington peninsula, located in South Baltimore, has very low crime rates, as do the surrounding neighborhoods of Locust Point, Westport, Fells Point, Federal Hill, and Riverside.” Yes, those are the parts of the city that have always received the resources that help keep crime down. But let’s not ignore the parts of the city where crime rates are higher and life isn’t so rosey (there’s no use ignoring it—surely the folks at Amazon have read a paper or two). And, btw, can we start asking these companies what they are willing to do for us, too?
• The whole country was left reeling after another tragic mass shooting—this time in Parkland, Fla. Here in Maryland, school officials at Loch Raven High School in Baltimore County went on high alert when a student brought a pellet gun the day after the Florida shooting. Police got the gun and no one was injured. Baltimore County Executive Kevin B. Kamenetz noted that he wanted things at the school to go back to normal. But it feels like fear is the new normal now.
• Then there’s this: Sgt. Aaron Penman, a Republican running to represent Harford County in the Maryland House of Delegates, held a gun bingo fundraiser the weekend after the Parkland shooting. One of the prizes: an AR-15, the same kind of rifle used in Florida and in other mass shooting events around the country. We’ll just say kudos to the protesters who didn’t let the weekend’s snow stop them from showing up outside the event and holding a vigil for victims of the mass shooting.
• Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) members Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor (the only two of the eight federally-indicted officers not to plead guilty) were found guilty by a jury on Feb. 12. Next comes the sentencing of all eight of them in the spring, but in the more immediate: Ongoing demands for massive police reform. Del. Bilal Ali recommended disbanding BPD (an idea Mayor Catherine Pugh quickly dismissed). Meanwhile, BPD commissioner Darryl DeSousa went on ABC2 News and apologized to the public for GTTF’s actions and also declared that there will be an “independent, outside” group looking into Det. Sean Suiter’s death. Suiter was killed just one day before he was supposed to testify to a grand jury about a GTTF-related incident.
• A jury made up entirely of women found that the police shooting of Korryn Gaines and her son to be “not objectively reasonable,” awarding her family $37 million. The ruling feels bittersweet, considering the officer who shot her has received a promotion since the August 2016 incident. The Baltimore Sun has noted that the case is far from over, and it’s likely that Gaines’ family will never see the full amount. It’s notable that although Baltimore County government attorney Mike Field released a statement indicating that he could appeal the verdict, County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who is running for governor, declined to comment. And of course, no amount of money will bring a life back.
• There have been four homicides between Feb. 12 (when last week’s issue of the Beat went to press) and Feb. 19 (when this week’s issue goes to press): Sadik Griffin and John Townes Jr. on Feb. 13, Maurice Anthony Knight on Feb. 15, and a victim not yet identified by police on Feb. 17. These four homicides come after a lengthy break without any homicides—from Feb. 3-12. So far this year there have been 31 homicides in Baltimore.

The post Week In Review: The City’s failed Amazon pitch, HarCo candidate hosts post-Parkland gun bingo fundraiser, more appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Korryn Gaines was a pretty and petite young woman, at 23, with tiny hands and tiny feet. Her friends and family members say she was a voracious reader and they became accustomed to seeing her face immersed in a book, reading until late at night. On Aug. 1, 2016, she was in a stand-off with Baltimore County police who had come to her Randallstown apartment to serve her with a warrant for a traffic violation and her fiancé, Kareem Courtney, with a warrant related to an alleged assault. Fearful of police, she held a shotgun on her lap and reached out to family and friends on her cell phone and shared video of the incident on social media. Her 5-year-old son, Kodi, stayed near her.

The stand-off lasted for nearly six hours. A SWAT vehicle remained parked outside Gaines’ apartment vehicle. A tactical unit of police officers in full armor, guns at the ready, stood in her doorway and in the hallway, along with a hostage negotiation team. 

Family members who came to convince her to come out were corralled into a nearby church and their phones were taken, so they had no communication with her.

Three minutes after Korryn’s Facebook account was shut down at the request of police, she was shot by Corporal Royce Ruby who said in a deposition that he feared for the life of his fellow officers when Gaines walked into the kitchen, where she would have had a more direct line of fire. During testimony in court he said she raised her gun at him at that moment and he fired at her. Her son Kodi was hit by gunfire in the face and in the arm, which shattered his elbow. 

Lead attorneys for the Gaines’ family, J. Wyndal Gordon and Ken Ravenell, filed a lawsuit for a total of $42 million ($32 million for Kodi, $2.6 for the estate, $3.38 million for Gaines’ daughter Karsyn Courtney, $2.08 million for her mother Rhanda Dormeus, and $2.23 million for her father, Ryan Gaines Sr.) claiming excessive force was used by the Baltimore County Police Department and that Gaines and her son Kodi’s rights were violated. 

During testimony in court Ruby said he feared for his life and the lives of his fellow officers, diverging from his deposition in which he said he feared only for the lives of his colleagues. The subject of mental illness came up as it related to Gaines, who had been prescribed medicine for mental illness, but had not been taking it for over a year. Gaines’ mother, Rhanda Dormeus, a retired psychiatric nurse, surmised that her daughter was having a psychotic break and had called her doctor during the stand-off to speak with police officers, but the officers Dormeus said, did not deem it necessary.

This afternoon, a jury of women declared Ruby’s shooting Gaines and her son “not objectively reasonable” and awarded Kodi Gaines $32 million, $300,00 each to Gaines’ father and mother, and $4.5 million to Gaines’ other child.

In an exclusive interview with Gaines’ mother, she talks about the day of her daughter’s death and the fallout. 

Baltimore Beat: Tell me a little about Korryn as a child.

Rhanda Dormeus: Korryn was my third child. She was born a 9-pound, 12-ounce, blue-eyed baby girl [laughs]. She was precocious. She was a daddy’s girl. She was extremely outspoken. She was an extremely honest child. I told her to speak her mind, but be respectful. She was on the swim team. She was always a reader. She played in marching band, she played clarinet. She wanted her own clarinet, because she took it seriously, so I bought it for her; an electric blue clarinet. That was one of her favorite colors. I think she wanted it so I could be able to spot her.

With her not being with me since she passed, it makes me reflect so much on her and the way she lived her life and the things she did for herself and her children. It was almost like these were things she was trying to get out of the way. She was doing so much. 

In her last year at City [College High School] she knew she wanted to focus on political science in college; she wanted to be a lawyer. She didn’t decide if she wanted the campus experience or stay home, so I told her she could have both at Morgan. If you want to stay on campus, you’re gonna stay on campus. Between her grandmother, her father’s mother, and myself, we made it happen. I borrowed against my 401K, my retirement, her grandmother helped me. We had a dorm warming party, it was a big thing, it was just a big thing. She started at Morgan in 2010, but she only stayed the one semester. Kodi came about, but let me tell you how hard I was fighting to keep her in school. I was fighting for her to finish school. I think it was Notre Dame that had a program where mothers and their children could come. They had on campus daycare. The cost was astronomical, but I was gonna try to figure it out, between her grandmother and I, we were gonna try to figure it out. I think from her perspective, she wasn’t as motivated, to move from this place, now to attend another school and being a mother. After she had Kodi she went to Fortis hair salon to do hair and she was working at a salon on Liberty Road, Salon L.

BB: How many children do you have?

RD: I have three of my own children and a 12-year-old I’ve been taking care of since birth. She has special needs, some mild cognitive deficits. She was born a preemie. Korryn’s godmother’s grandchild. Me being a nurse I took her in. In 2010 I got papers saying that she was placed in my care.

BB: Let’s talk about the case. According to your nephew’s testimony, Ruby told him after he shot her that, “I was hot. I was frustrated. I had been out there all day . . . ”

RD: That day, after they told me she’s gone, I dropped. I have to see the welfare of my grandson and what state he’s in. As I was doing that, my nephew came to help me up, that’s when the officer began to chastise him, and it was a row of them. I remember my nephew confronting him and having an exchange. He said, “this motherfucker is gonna tell me he was hot out there.” I remember my nephew having that outburst.

BB: At some point the police told you that Korryn had shot Kodi?

RD: They led me to believe that the bullet wound in his elbow came from her gun

BB: At this point you didn’t know she was gone.

RD: No. They shut her [Facebook] page down at maybe 3:30, 3:40—two minutes later, she was shot.  

BB: Were you looking at her page as it was happening?

RD: They took my phone as soon as I got there. I told my best girlfriend, “I am on my way to Korryn’s. I think think they are gonna kill my baby.” 

BB: Your nephew testified that the officer told him that he wasn’t going to sleep for weeks over this?

RD: Yup, that’s what he said. We won’t be right for the rest of our lives.

BB: How has Kodi been coping? He was shot in the arm and the face. What did the doctor in his testimony say about Kodi?

RD: He used a hierarchy scale—post-traumatic stress hierarchy scale. Based on his hierarchy it shows the highest level of trauma. He’s faced with a lifetime of therapy and all of these outcomes for this type of trauma, drug abuse, suicide, lack of being able to take care of himself from depression. He suffers from anxiety, night terrors, he’s become aggressive, which was never in his character. He’s physically abusive, he’s lying, something that was never tolerated. My oldest daughter told me he has turned dark. He’s not an average six-year-old like he should be. When you know a child pre-trauma and now have to deal with him post-trauma, it’s not just a shock to the child, it’s a shock to his caregivers. You’re faced with these new challenges for something that was out of his control.

BB: How have you as a mother been coping?

RD: I’m a mess. Sometimes it gets very dark. I can’t get out of bed. Kodi is experiencing anxiety and panic attacks. I have panic attacks. Not wanting to eat. I have to force myself to eat sometimes. The sporadic crying. I just start screaming and crying. There are not even words to explain the depth of hurt and pain. I’m not even angry with Rudy, there’s no space there, there’s too much pain. And that’s how I’m able to stay focused. There’s no room for anger and pain. I’m so profoundly hurt. Especially when I know all means weren’t exhausted. There was no urgency, it was six hours later. They can wait it out for days. I was a psych for nurse for years. There’s a group of mothers in court everyday to support me and they are my source of comfort and strength. They really do understand.

BB: There are mothers there that have lost children?

RD: Yes, one of the mothers her son was killed 19 years ago by a Prince George’s County police officer—Marion Gray-Hopkins. She lives in PG County and she drives up every day to come to court. Another mother, she lost three sons six weeks apart due to community violence, one was robbed and he had a heart attack, another one stabbed to death, gas was on in the house. I am a member of the Coalition of Concerned Mothers—their focus is on police violence. It’s so profound the connection the mothers have because we share a common pain that nobody unless they walk in their shoes will ever imagine. And I don’t want them to.  

BB: The topic of Korryn’s mental illness has come up in court—she suffered from lead paint poisoning?

RD: One day she called me crying saying, ‘I don’t know if I’m good enough to be Kodi’s mother.’ She was about to get the settlement for the lead case and she was like I want to make sure I do everything I’m supposed to do with the money to make sure we’re good. She was overwhelmed. She had gone into a depression. I told her you need to go in to talk to someone. She agreed and they admitted her. She was 21 so I wasn’t privy to everything that was said. She was released on an antidepressant to outpatient therapy. She told me about being sexually abused. They put her on Celexa. That was working. Then she got pregnant with Karyson (youngest daughter) and she wasn’t comfortable taking it anymore and she stopped taking it.  

BB: You explained to the police her history of mental illness at the scene?

RD: Yes. When I got to the scene I explained that she had had a mental break and that she was under doctor’s care and I actually called the clinic. I spoke to I believe the charge nurse that morning. I told them what the situation was and that Korryn wasn’t coming out. She made Wanda Allen, the doctor, aware that I was on the phone. She then tried to get Dr. Allen on the phone. The officer told me straight up, ‘I’ll talk to her if I need to talk to her.’ She was 23 years old, she shared what she wanted to share with me. At the end of the day the doctor would be able to reveal more information than I could ever reveal. He never called.

BB: You said they didn’t exhaust all means.

RD: We begged all day to let one of us talk to her. I told them I would go in there. I said I would sign a disclaimer exonerating them from any collateral damage. They said it wasn’t protocol to let me talk to her. I said what about flash bang grenades and smoke bombs? They said that was out of protocol because there was an innocent child there. But they ended up shooting an innocent child.

The post Korryn Gaines’ mother Rhanda Dormeus discusses her daughter’s death, her grandson’s trauma, and police force appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

-Attorneys representing the six-year-old son of Korryn Gaines, a woman shot and killed by police in Baltimore County, are suing county police—including Royce Ruby Jr., the officer who shot and killed Gaines (and also struck Gaines’ son twice)—and question major details of the day’s events. Namely, they say Gaines was not aiming her gun at police when she was shot—one of the many confusing elements of the events highlighted by activists in the days after the shooting. The civil trial begins on Jan. 30.

-As the Woodlawn-based rap trio Creek Boyz’s maudlin ‘With My Team’ gains more traction, moving from a local staple and a buzzing song among serious rap heads to potentially a national hit, it has also been compromised. A new, more professional video for the song was released last week and with it, an edit to the hook. “Everyday we on our grind/ Baltimore too many niggas dying/ Gotta watch out for me and mine/ Everyday I’m with my team,” goes the original. The line referencing Baltimore’s homicide rate has been changed to, “Can’t nobody stop our shine”—turning the touching track into just another great rap song about success. As Noisey’s Lawrence Burney wrote, “[Creek Boyz’s record label] has deflated a song that was initially made as a coping mechanism to heal a city in pain.”

-Eddie’s Market in Mount Vernon has been approved for demolition so that the space can be used for a new grocery store and a “mixed use” development, which as we all know by now translates to expensive apartments and places to eat. The plan from developer Dennis Richter was voted on by the Commission on Historic Architectural Preservation due to Mount Vernon’s status as a historic district. For those counting: Club Hippo’s now a CVS, Grand Central’s for sale, and Eddie’s is good to go. It seems Mount Vernon has moved one step closer to morphing into Adams Morgan.

-“VIOLENT JUVENILES WREAKING HAVOC ON THE STREETS OF BALTIMORE. SQUARE OFF SPECIAL SUNDAY 11AM ABC 2,” local TV personality Richard Sher tweeted just like that in ALL CAPS to promote the latest episode of his long-running news commentary/debate show. The guests on this episode of “Square Off” were Commissioner Kevin Davis, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, Councilman Eric Costello, BPD spokesperson T.J. Smith, and Gavin Patasknick of the city’s Juvenile Division. In other words, all city officials very much of the “we need to lock more kids up” persuasion—and no youth advocates. Skip this scaremongering nonsense and copaganda and watch our friends at The Real News Network talk with Councilman Bill Henry and public defender Jenny Egan in “Questioning the Narrative of Increased Youth Violence.”

-In recent months, authorities with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Information, or ICE, have taken full advantage of support from the Trump administration to lock up immigrants in hospitals, at work, or outside schools while they pick up their kids. It’s created a very real culture of fear here in Baltimore and all over the country. To combat those fears, the Open Society Institute-Baltimore announced Safe City Baltimore last week, a fund that will collect money for immigrants in need. The group hopes to raise $500,000 so they can help with legal claims and provide representation and education. Mayor Pugh has said Baltimore is a welcoming city for immigrants, but can’t officially be termed a sanctuary city. That’s because we don’t have control of our detention facilities and therefore don’t have a say in whether immigrants held here are turned over to federal officials.

-There were four homicides in Baltimore over the past week (Nov. 13-20, the week before the Beat goes to press): Brandon Neville on Nov. 13; Tyrone Rogers and Alexander Wroblewski (a Locust Point bartender whose homicide was highly publicized) on Nov. 14; and on Nov. 16, Baltimore Police Detective Sean Suiter, an 18-year veteran of the police force. As of Nov. 20, Baltimore has had 309 homicides.

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