Around 5 p.m., firefighters were alerted about a hazmat situation on the 2100 block of Wicomico Street in the Saint Paul neighborhood. After arriving, Baltimore fire crews evacuated 100 people from the building that houses Holly Poultry. Of those, 10 needed assistance, according to John Marsh, public information officer for Baltimore Fire Department.
After all 10 were evaluated, four were sent to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to the fire department.
The fire department and the Maryland Department of the Environment deemed the building safe Sunday evening after monitoring carbon dioxide levels, said Marsh. The departments were “unable to definitively determine the source of the elevated” carbon dioxide, he said.
Holly Poultry did not immediately return a request for comment.
Have a news tip? Contact Chevall Pryce at cpryce@baltsun.com. Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.
]]>Yolanda M. Jones is accused of using her company, YMJ Counseling and Consulting, to make fraudulent payments to her associates and a Census Bureau employee who steered the procurement contracts to benefit YMJ.
Jones and her firm did not immediately return requests for comment.
Prosecutors said the consulting service, which was incorporated in 2020, was a subcontractor affiliated with the Census Bureau’s Employee Assistance Program.
Court records say that the consulting firm received over $2.5 million from the subcontracting deal, and accuse Jones, 64, of sending nearly a third of that money back to the Census Bureau employee supervising the assistance program.
Prosecutors say that the employee, who is not identified in court records, had recommended YMJ as a subcontractor under false pretenses — they said that the firm had done previous good work for the Census Bureau; in reality, the firm had not even been incorporated yet.
Once YMJ was signed on as a subcontractor, the Census Bureau supervisor and Jones began reaching out to college friends and offering them work as independent contractors, sharing documentation of the work needed.
“Oh the last thing — don’t act like you know me,” the supervisor wrote from their personal email address, according to charging documents. “I’m trying to be as by the book with this as possible.”
The friends met on Zoom to discuss the “EAP opportunity,” according to court filings. YMJ also entered a partnership with another firm, which was run by the supervisor, who worked at the Census Bureau, to expedite the procurement process, prosecutors wrote.
The Census Bureau did not immediately return a request for comment. Jones did not have a defense attorney listed in court records and did not have a scheduled court date.
Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.
]]>The lawsuit, which names the county’s former top prosecutor and Harford County sheriff’s deputies who investigated the “Memorial Day Murders,” comes after John Norman Huffington was exonerated by a judge and pardoned by former Gov. Larry Hogan, and awarded $2.9 million by the state.
Huffington, 62, said the decades he spent behind bars had cost him the ability to have a family of his own and time with his aging parents. His mother died while he was imprisoned; his father was in his 90s and suffering from Alzheimer’s when he was released.
“I don’t like this. I don’t like coming into these rooms. I don’t like coming back into the courtroom and relitigating these things,” Huffington said at a Thursday news conference in Harbor East. “But I’m doing it because I owe it to my family, I owe it to a lot of people, and we’ve got to fix it.”
The lawsuit seeks damages for deprivation of liberty without due process, malicious prosecution, false arrest and other civil rights violations. In addition to suing Harford County through its executive, Bob Cassilly, the lawsuit names the estate of his older brother, Joseph Cassilly, the county’s longtime state’s attorney who was disbarred for his conduct in Huffington’s case. The Maryland Court of Appeals, now called the Maryland Supreme Court, found that the Republican prosecutor lied about documents that undermined the credibility of an investigating FBI agent. Filed last week, the lawsuit accuses the elder Cassilly of “brazen misconduct” but says he “did not act alone,” naming other investigators who it says “fabricated and coerced knowingly false witness statements and withheld material, exculpatory evidence.”
Joseph Cassilly, who served for 36 years as Harford’s state’s attorney, died in January. He had maintained that his statements about the 1981 case were true.
“Joe cannot defend himself in this decades-old matter because he is now deceased,” Bob Cassilly said in a statement, praising his brother’s military and government service. “Harford County government, in which I currently serve as county executive, has no role in this case – the county was never the defendants’ employer; however, as Joe’s brother, and as a longtime public servant, I am proud that Harford County has always supported the professionals in law enforcement and the criminal justice system who protect innocent citizens from violent criminals.”
The county is listed as a defendant, and Huffington attorney John Marrese said that the issue of whether it’s liable “will be briefed and argued zealously.”
Joseph Cassilly “was disbarred because of what he did in John Huffington’s case. You don’t get disbarred easily, that’s not something that happens,” said Brian Eldridge, another lawyer representing Huffington. He called Cassilly’s conduct in Huffington’s case “unethical” and “reprehensible.”
“We want to hold him accountable, even in his passing,” Eldridge said.
Huffington was twice convicted of the killings of Diane Becker, 21, who was beaten and stabbed to death on May 25, 1981, in her recreational vehicle in Abingdon, and Joseph Hudson, her boyfriend, who was fatally shot and discovered on a secluded path a few miles away.
Investigators had said that the pair were killed over cocaine and cash. Prosecutors had relied on now-discredited testimony that hairs found at the murder scene matched Huffington, who was 18 at the time of the killings. He was sentenced to death after being convicted the second time, but that sentence was overturned, and Huffington was resentenced to two life terms. He was freed in 2013, sentenced again to time served, and Hogan granted him a full innocence pardon in the final days of the Republican governor’s administration.
Prosecutors had tried Huffington and his friend, Deno Kanaras, separately for the murders. A jury convicted Kanaras of felony murder in Becker’s death, and he ultimately served 27 years of his life sentence before being released in 2008.
The lawsuit filed last week alleges that prosecutors relied heavily on Kanaras as a key witness in Huffington’s case, granting him and his family “extraordinary latitude” and using him “to fabricate a patently false and ever-evolving story implicating” Huffington. The Kanaras family was well-known in the community and owned a restaurant frequented by Harford County law enforcement, the lawsuit says. Huffington’s lawyers said that Kanaras testified “effectively that he was held hostage by John while John committed the murders,” and that prosecutors had concealed blood test results that cast doubt on his testimony.
Much of the prosecution’s case also relied on hair testing by FBI agent Michael P. Malone, whose analysis turned out to be wrong. A 1997 Department of Justice probe further found Malone had a history of testifying falsely, conducting inaccurate analysis of hair samples and making claims that exceeded the scope of scientific testing. The Justice Department informed Cassilly in 1999 that the agent had testified falsely in Huffington’s case, but Cassilly “buried” the letter and did not provide that information to Huffington’s lawyers, Marrese said.
“There needs to be a reckoning for this man’s life being denied and completely derailed,” said Antonio M. Romanucci, one of Huffington’s lawyers. “The people and the agencies that were involved must be held to account for the harms and losses that they caused John.”
Because of Huffington’s lengthy prison term, he received one of the largest awards under Maryland’s Walter Lomax Act, which regulates financial compensation for people who were wrongfully convicted in the state.
Using the civil courts gives Huffington’s team the ability to question any living witnesses and obtain documents “that perhaps John still hasn’t seen,” Marrese said.
“We’ll be able to hopefully answer questions that investigators either didn’t want to answer, didn’t think to answer, or they knew the answer and didn’t document it,” he said. “There’s both the opportunity to recover money, and there’s the opportunity to investigate this further and continue to prove John’s name is innocent.”
Huffington, who has since published a book on his case, worked as Living Classrooms’ director of workforce development after his release and has since become an advocate for exonerating people from wrongful convictions.
“I can’t help but acknowledge 32 lost years, but what I refuse is to have 32 wasted years,” Huffington said on Thursday. He said that “one of the proudest things” he’s been able to do is teach a wrongful conviction awareness and avoidance class to police recruits in Illinois.
“It’s a little bit ironic to be in a room with a hundred police cadets, but they want to hear, and they kind of look at you like, ‘How did this happen?’ Well, it happens, and that’s the problem,” he said.
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]]>The woman was found dead late Tuesday night. The police department said in a news release that Southwest District patrol officers responded at 11:26 p.m. to the 1100 block of Mount Holly Street, between Edmondson Village and the Edgewood neighborhood, for a report of a woman lying in the street.
The woman, who was not identified, was suffering from an apparent life-threatening gunshot wound. She died at the scene.
About 30 minutes later, less than a mile away, Southwest officers responded to a report of a man lying in the street, police said. At the 500 block of Edgewood Street, they found a man suffering from an apparent gunshot wound. He died at the scene.
About 10 minutes after that, officers responded to the 1700 block of Bank Street in Upper Fells Point for a reported shooting and found a 34-year-old suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. He was taken to a hospital, and his injuries are believed to be non-life-threatening, police said.
Northeast District officers were canvassing the 4800 block of Belair Road in Kenwood at about 3:30 a.m. for a reported discharging when Baltimore County Police informed them that three injured teens were found in Rosedale. The victims, a 15-year-old boy, a 19-year-old man and an 18-year-old man, were suffering from apparent non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. They were taken to hospitals.
Those with information on the two people killed are asked to contact homicide detectives at 410-396-2100. Those with information on the Upper Fells Point shooting can contact Central District detectives at 410-396-2411. Those with information on the triple shooting can contact Northeast District detectives at 410-396-2444. Anonymous tips can be submitted at 1-866-7LOCKUP.
Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.
]]>The payments, equating to an annual salary of over $500,000, lasted until mid-November, after multiple contractors had asked for courts to enter over a million dollars worth of judgments for unpaid labor and materials, according to court filings.
Those were only the beginning of the claims from suppliers and contractors that brought Chasen Companies to its financial collapse. Bankruptcy filings show that Chasen’s construction wing is now in millions of dollars of debt, while its development projects are being abandoned and real estate being auctioned off. Though the company listed its debts in its financial disclosures, creditors have noted concerns about the firm’s private jet and demanded that company representatives show up to testify under oath. They’re also pushing for a court to order Chasen himself, in addition to his companies, into bankruptcy.
The court filing surrounding Chasen’s financial affairs provides the clearest glimpse yet into the unraveling of Chasen’s real estate empire, which plunged into bankruptcy as contractors demanded payment for work and materials used in ambitious development projects. Last year, a bank filed to foreclose on One Calvert Plaza, the 16-story downtown building that Chasen was working to renovate. But the disclosures show that top executives continued to make ample salaries: Chasen’s business partner made a salary of over $9,600 per week, while the firm’s chief operating officer made over $6,700.
The construction wing of Chasen Cos. was forced into involuntary bankruptcy in April, and now, more Chasen properties are set to be auctioned off. Chasen and his company’s attorney did not return requests for comment.
The financial disclosure schedules do not mention a private jet previously registered to the company that creditors said might have improperly been sold or placed into a trust amid the firm’s financial woes.
The firm’s creditors include Sandy Spring Bank, which says Chasen owes it over $28 million in unsecured debt, and other contractors claiming other unpaid debts. They have pushed for Chasen to explain why his firm transferred ownership of the company’s $5 million jet in March to TVPX Aircraft Solutions, a trust that offers “privacy enhancement” for plane titles. The transfer was not mentioned in Chasen Construction’s bankruptcy filing, though it listed a $200,000 debt to an aviation business in Easton.
The creditors suggested in court filings that Chasen was either trying to sell the plane and abscond with the proceeds, or keep it out of reach from the bankruptcy case.
Federal Aviation Administration records list no plane under the jet’s old registration number, though a plane with the same model and serial number as Chasen Construction’s old jet is listed as being registered to TVPX. That jet flew 1,950 miles, from Texas to Maine, on Tuesday.
The transfer of the private jet, and executive compensation, “are things that the U.S. Trustee will definitely ask about” at a meeting of creditors scheduled for August, said Steven Berman, a Florida-based bankruptcy attorney with the business law firm Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick.
The financial statement filed in that case lists biweekly salary payments dating back to only May 2024. At that point, the earliest cases demanding debts had been filed in state courts. The document’s contents, which detail the company’s current finances as well as transfers in the months leading up to the bankruptcy case, will likely be at the center of the upcoming meeting of creditors. The company missed the first scheduled date for that meeting, where a representative for the construction company is required to answer questions under oath, and it’s now rescheduled for late August.
At those meetings, also known as 341 meetings, the U.S. trustee will ask “generally” about the company’s assets, liabilities, operations and what led to the bankruptcy, said Berman — “Were they in negotiations for financing that fell through? Did they have environmental problems in the development process? Was there some major external event that affected the business’s viability?”
Though usually those meetings are focused on getting to the heart of a company’s financial problems, “you can get a lot of interesting questions that may be outside the scope of what’s intended,” said David G. Sommer, an attorney with Baltimore-based law firm Gallagher Evelius & Jones.
There will likely be questions about how the principals have been running the business. Chasen’s compensation will likely be looked at by creditors and the bankruptcy court, especially if it’s seen as excessive, Berman said. What counts as excessive, he said, comes down to the facts and circumstances.
While over $10,000 per week might not be excessive “for an executive running a nationwide business,” it’d be more inappropriate for a failing firm, depending on its size and the scope of the executives’ responsibilities, Berman said.
“If [the salaries] are extremely outside the market, that would raise some yellow flags,” Sommer said. “Particularly if they were taking those salaries, you know, even while the debtor was really struggling financially to meet its other obligations.”
The financial schedules say that the construction firm has over $39.5 million in liabilities and $0 in assets. Its bank account has been left with a negative balance due to being garnished. In 2023, the firm had over $77 million in gross revenue; the next year, it had just over a third of that. And in 2025, it reported $0 in revenue.
“It’s disappointing that these projects didn’t succeed,” said Sommer, who noted that the fall of Chasen has left “some conspicuous unfinished projects in an important part of Baltimore.”
He said he’d be interested in seeing if resolving the bankruptcies can turn some of the abandoned projects “into lemonade.”
Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.
]]>
Eli Winston, 30, pleaded guilty to first-degree assault, drunken driving and a weapons charge in connection with the public October 2024 assault, which was caught on surveillance footage in downtown Baltimore.
Police reviewed the footage after responding to a crash at the intersection of East Lombard and South streets. Winston and his then-girlfriend were in the vehicle; his girlfriend said that the officer had assaulted her that evening. The vehicle had damage that seemed to be “from being shot,” police wrote in charging documents.
Winston, who was carrying a gun, was seen in the footage striking the vehicle with an object from his waistband, and later dropping the handgun while assaulting his girlfriend. He is also seen apparently raising the handgun at the vehicle as his girlfriend pulled out.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Jeannie Jinkyung Hong sentenced Winston to 10 years, suspended to five years, Tuesday morning after Winston pleaded guilty.
Winston’s attorney, Craig Kadish, did not immediately return a request for comment. State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said in a statement that he commended the victim “for their tremendous courage in working with our office to ensure that Mr. Winston was held accountable.”
He added that the sentence “sends a clear and unwavering message: those who commit acts of domestic violence, regardless of their position or title, will face serious consequences.”
Winston received more than eight months of credit for time served in both jail and home detention since his arrest. He was ordered to serve three years of supervised probation after his release.
Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.
]]>The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Dr. Ron Elfenbein, 51, to face a second trial on charges alleging he overbilled patients’ insurance providers for COVID-19 tests in the heat of the coronavirus pandemic. In August 2023, a jury found Elfenbein, owner of First Call Medical Center, guilty of five counts of health care fraud, but the judge who oversaw that trial found the verdict couldn’t stand because of insufficient evidence.
The charges — and Elfenbein’s defense — surrounded medical billing codes that First Call, which has closed in Gambrills, used to price out COVID-19 tests. Elfenbein billed over $350 for high-level “evaluation and management” visits that “took only a few minutes of his clinic’s time,” the opinion handed down Friday said.
“With nearly 1500 patients coming through on some days, the clinic made millions,” Judge Julius N. Richardson wrote in the 4th Circuit’s opinion. Elfenbein had argued that the codes were vague and that billing for high-complexity visits was appropriate, but the government’s expert and multiple First Call employees disagreed.
U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that using the billing level for COVID-19 tests was “false or fraudulent.” The circuit court later called the government’s case “thin” but found that Bredar was wrong to throw the jury’s decision away.
“As we read the record, the jury had enough evidence to convict Elfenbein,” the court ruled. Former Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein, who leads Elfenbein’s defense team, declined to comment on the decision.
Elfenbein faced a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison for each of the five counts after his conviction, which was thrown out only a few months later. He did not undergo any physician disciplinary proceedings due to the case.
The fallout from the charges against Elfenbein, who has made three unsuccessful runs for seats in Maryland’s state house, reverberated into Anne Arundel County politics. The urgent care chain was co-owned by then-Del. Sid Saab, who dodged questions about his involvement and sued his Democratic opponent in the 2022 midterm elections, Dawn Gile, for defamation because of a mailer referencing the charges. He lost reelection and dropped the suit.
Saab and Elfenbein both filed another lawsuit in April against a related urgent care company. They say in the suit that the billing practices were “entirely under the purview and control” of Gambrills Medical Management. The lawsuit blames that company, which has since over the First Call name for five Howard County locations, for forcing Elfenbein off its board in the wake of the indictment and failing to pay him and Saab consulting fees.
Gambrills Medical Management did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.
]]>In recent years, tensions with neighborhood groups over the development of new treatment facilities and harm-reduction services have divided residents, leading to prolonged legal battles.
To reduce the harms stemming from addiction, city leaders had already started work to allocate over $402.5 million in settlement funds from lawsuits against opioid distributors. Then, a mass overdose in Penn North rekindled local conversations about the city’s struggles with drugs.
Advocates say that proven treatment and overdose prevention work gets stymied in public hearings, courthouses and community association meetings due to stigma of drug use. But neighborhood leaders say their opposition is more complicated than that.
Community associations won a victory earlier this month when a Baltimore judge ruled against plans for an addiction treatment center in the city’s Westfield area. The decision was the latest blow for CMDS, a Howard County health care firm embroiled in a yearslong dispute with community associations over zoning laws.
The judge’s decision — which the company plans to appeal — was based on zoning, but the legal saga caused heated conversations between CMDS, City Council members and neighborhood organizations about substance abuse.
The health care company says that residents have made prejudicial comments about people seeking treatment, while community groups say that the firm’s poor reputation is to blame.
“There’s always going to be some people who don’t represent the most enlightened viewpoint, and maybe there were some people who objected to it on the grounds of objection to addicts,” said John C. Murphy, an attorney representing the neighborhood associations. “I don’t think that was the predominant view of the neighborhood associations.”
Residents spoke against the facility at public hearings and sent letters to the Board of Municipal Zoning Appeals making “discriminatory comments,” CMDS’ attorney, Lauren McLarney, said. The letters emphasized the safety of area residents, the facility’s proximity to Hamilton Elementary/Middle School and its potential impact on commercial and residential areas.
“That fear is rooted in the misconception that drug addicts are somehow inherently dangerous,” McLarney said.
Rochelle Lachance, president of North Harford Road Community Association and a social worker, objects to the proposed facility because of what she called CMDS’ “horrible” reputation for addiction treatment and concerns about the 100-plus proposed beds.
“They’re more concerned about the quantity of their treatment for funds versus the quality of their treatment,” Lachance said. “I love everyone, whether they’re addicts or not, but I don’t love people who try to make money off of addicts.”
Kevin Pfeffer, CEO of CMDS, challenged the criticism, telling The Baltimore Sun that the amenities at the proposed clinic are unlike any other Medicaid facility in response.
“It’s just something, whatever they got to say to try to achieve their goal of not having a facility there. If it takes slander, so be it,” Pfeffer said.
Pfeffer added that while the Turning Point addiction treatment center in the Broadway East neighborhood once had a bad reputation, it was before CMDS provided services at that facility. He said the last surveyor to review Turning Point praised the facility’s “level of management sophistication.”
The dispute over the Board of Zoning Appeals action was decided in state court, but a broader case brought by CMDS in federal court seeks more than $2 million in damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Fair Housing Act and the Equal Protection Clause. That case is paused until the appeal of state case is finished.
Concerns in Baltimore County
The demand for treatment resonates in Dundalk, which has consistently had the highest rates of overdose deaths in Baltimore County. Residents of Eastwood, a densely populated neighborhood tucked behind Eastern Avenue, said their concern with a planned inpatient facility is more about its size and scope.
Local contractor Ben Cox is looking to replace his Eastern Avenue roofing business with a treatment center more than double the size of the current facility. The proposed three-story building would be located just over 50 feet from the closest residence, backing up closer to the adjacent neighborhood.
“It’s a big issue. Drug treatment facilities are needed,” said Lynne Mitchell, president of the Eastwood Residents & Business Association of Baltimore County. “But this is something that belongs attached to a medical center, or across from, like a hospital, right?”
Mitchell said that the community association had asked Cox to build a smaller facility — “and then I could probably rally some support because, you know, we understand the issue.”
“We’re an understanding community, we realize these facilities need to exist,” she said. “Of course, there’s a drug problem. But there’s also millions of square feet of commercial property available.”
She did, however, cite fears about the facility being able to let patients “out into the community,” concerns that people in treatment could look into residents’ windows and uneasiness over a picnic area she said could provide an opportunity for drug sales.
‘Biggest roadblock’
Jessie Dunleavy, a harm-reduction advocate, said that stigma surrounding drug use is the “biggest roadblock” to mitigating the problems associated with it.
Dunleavy understands the initial skepticism about harm reduction efforts. She herself was confused when her son started using drugs. “This is just the worst thing you could do,” she remembered thinking. Since reaching out to advocates and professionals, she now realizes his drug use was to mask his pain.
“I realized that his death was entirely preventable,” Dunleavy said. “We have, as a society, we’ve shamed [people who are addicted], pushed them into back alleys and taught them that they have nowhere to turn.”
The same fears translate over to harm-reduction services that distribute naloxone and clean syringes to prevent overdose deaths and the spread of bloodborne pathogens like HIV. Toni Torsch, who leads a Baltimore County-based nonprofit helping people who struggle with addiction, said there are neighborhoods and certain places “that we’re not allowed to park our van” because of fears of crime and trash.
Her group, the Daniel Carl Torsch Foundation, was established in honor of her son, who died of a heroin overdose at 24. In addition to connecting people with treatment resources, the group offers mobile harm-reduction services like clean syringes and naloxone, as well as essentials like hygiene and first aid kits. The organization is mobile, traveling to areas and encampments where there’s a need.
“We’re doing everything that we can to, you know, lower those fears,” said Torsch. Her group carries out syringe cleanups and gives people who use drugs safe containers to store used needles, which the foundation properly disposes of.
Since launching its mobile harm-reduction services, Torsch’s foundation has seen a drastic increase in people requesting to be connected to treatment.
“It takes education and empathy” to change a person’s mind on harm reduction services, she said. Getting people into addiction treatment is important, but “you have to save the person in order to treat them.”
Torsch said that she was impressed by how community-based resources came together in the wake of the recent mass overdose, during which at least 27 people were hospitalized in a short period of time after consuming a particular batch of drugs. She noted, though, that she felt that an overdose prevention center — a site where people can consume drugs under the supervision of medical professionals — could have prevented the “mass casualty” event. A pilot of such a program has been pitched in the state legislature, but never approved.
“I think it’s really a struggle for a politician to say, ‘Yes, let’s vote for this in our neighborhood,’” she said. But “I don’t know if we would have experienced that last week had we had that safety site.”
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]]>Police did not say whether they believed any of the drug arrests in the past several days were linked to Thursday’s overdoses in Penn North, but confirmed there had not been any arrests in that case as of Tuesday. Authorities have not said much about their probe into the source of last week’s mass overdose, which quickly sent at least 27 people to hospitals.
Court records filed since Thursday indicate that authorities have been monitoring drug-dealing hot spots more closely, arresting alleged dealers and seizing various illicit substances in raids.
Former narcotics investigators said the recent arrests and drug seizures appeared to be aimed at casting a wider net to remove a “bad batch” of drugs from the street and trace their source. Officials have not confirmed why the batch caused so many overdoses in a short period Thursday morning, though experts say it likely involved a powerful dose of fentanyl. The Drug Enforcement Administration is assisting the police department in its criminal investigation.
“They’re going to want to seize any remaining drugs that they can” and determine if they contain lingering substances that are causing additional overdoses, said Brian Townsend, a former DEA agent who now runs a nonprofit focused on combating the fentanyl crisis.
“When something like this happens, it forces law enforcement to get out there,” he said.
Community groups have often criticized the police department and elected officials for not doing enough to shut down public drug activity. But the more hands-on approach to drug enforcement, law enforcement accountability advocates said, was reminiscent of aggressive policing practices that violated residents’ civil rights and resulted in a consent decree for Baltimore Police.
The police department noted that its Group Violence Unit and District Action Teams “continue targeted enforcement based on priorities identified through the violence review processes, community complaints and major case investigations.”
“We remain committed to working with our partners to disrupt this type of activity while supporting the city’s harm reduction emergency response and risk reduction efforts,” the department said. Maryland has a good Samaritan law, which protects people experiencing a medical emergency from drugs or alcohol, or people helping them, from prosecution for certain lower-level drug offenses if they seek medical assistance.
Former Baltimore Police Maj. Neill Franklin, who was once head of the Maryland State Police’s drug and criminal enforcement bureau and has since become a vocal critic of the war on drugs, said that the arrests were “a typical response” for the department. Franklin said he feared the more aggressive enforcement could encourage unconstitutional policing practices documented in various lawsuits and a scathing Justice Department investigation of city police in 2016.
“I don’t know the extent of their dragnet right now … but I hope they don’t get to the point like we’ve seen in the past,” said Franklin, who became disenchanted with the drug war while working as a narcotics agent for the Maryland State Police and later served as executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. He said one concern was that busts at busy drug corners would lead to buyers being arrested and sent to jail rather than receiving treatment.
“I hope that they’re cognizant of that and are just focusing on, you know, maybe some intelligence that they have,” he said.
Police data shows an increase in the number of both felony and misdemeanor drug arrests last week as compared with the same week last year. The police department said in a statement that it “remains focused on addressing open-air drug markets across the city,” causing the uptick.
Although the number of drug arrests has only slightly increased across a few days, charging documents in recent cases log police pursuing suspects and seizing drugs while conducting “covert surveillance” and “proactive enforcement” as well as after watching city cameras to monitor activity at busy areas known for drug activity.
Police wrote that they seized nearly 100 vials of suspected crack cocaine during Sunday’s raid in Sandtown-Winchester, as well as 38 capsules of a fentanyl and heroin mixture. The department’s recent enforcement approach has extended far beyond West Baltimore, with officers making arrests and seizing drugs at spots they were surveilling as far as Curtis Bay and Southeast Baltimore.
Franklin said that while police may be seizing drugs, their raids at drug hot spots are unlikely to make much of a dent in Baltimore’s drug market. He said the arrests will mainly net lower-level street corner dealers — “there’s not a whole lot of high-level stuff out there” beyond the few people who traffic drugs into the city. And no matter how police choose to attack the problem, he said, the illegal drug market will find a way to adapt.
Penn North, he said, “has always been a drug-selling mecca.” He recalled surveilling the subway station there during his time with the Maryland Transit Police Department. Back then, the drugs of choice were pharmaceutical pills like Oxycontin and oxycodone. Fentanyl saturated the opioid market in the mid-2010s. Next, maybe it’s “some designer drug that’s created by AI,” he said.
“It doesn’t change. The substance may change, but the landscape isn’t going to change, as long as you’ve got people who want the drugs and feel that they need them,” he said.
Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.
]]>Overdose-related 911 calls were more than triple this year’s daily average on both Thursday, the day a batch of drugs caused a chaotic scene of illness in the Penn North neighborhood, and Friday, where data shows 29 more calls for overdoses throughout the city.
The spike in calls suggests that even after Thursday morning’s “mass casualty” event in Penn North, highly potent drugs could have continued to cause symptoms in other pockets of the city. The data does, however, show that overdose-related 911 calls had dropped back to almost-average levels on Sunday, the last full day with data available.
While an investigation to find the source of Thursday’s overdoses is underway, officials have not said what substance they believe was involved. But experts believe that it was likely a potent dose of fentanyl that caused 27 people to be hospitalized Thursday, and said that the specific blend was likely still out there.
A spokesperson for Baltimore’s health department did not provide information on overdoses that happened over the weekend or say whether any were connected to the batch distributed Thursday morning in Penn North. A fire department spokesperson said that there were “no updates at this time” to the official count of 27 hospitalizations, seven of which were critical. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott declined to comment Monday on the criminal investigation being conducted by Baltimore Police and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
No deaths have been linked to the bad batch. While drug overdose deaths have been higher across the U.S. over the past decade due to the rise of fentanyl as a powerful street drug, Baltimore has seen a decline in fatal overdoses in recent years. A section of West Baltimore, including Penn North, the site of a long-running open-air drug market, had the highest rate of overdoses.
While overdose-related calls Thursday were mainly concentrated in Penn North and nearby areas of West Baltimore, allowing first responders to rapidly find patients and treat them, the 29 overdose calls from Friday were more dispersed throughout the city. Four were in Druid Heights, which is adjacent to Penn North, while three were in Carrollton Ridge in Southwest Baltimore, and five were in East Baltimore.
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