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Clerk of Courts Frank M. Conaway Sr., left, allegedly threw a punch and ‘brandished’ a handgun at local blogger Adam Meister.
MEISTER DESCRIBED AS ‘UNWITTING TOOL’
OF MARYLAND POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT
A provocateur intending to cause trouble
— Allegation regarding blogger Meister
By Alan Z. Forman
When blogger Adam Meister took it upon himself to single-handedly attack the anti-establishment Conaway Family, which is headed by Baltimore’s chief Circuit Court clerk, it’s unlikely the Reservoir Hill activist had any clue what he was in for.
Meister’s had some successes, to be sure. Case in point: 7th District City Councilwoman Belinda K. Conaway lost her seat in the September Democratic primary and November general election after ill-advisedly suing Meister for $21 million after he charged her with collecting illegal property tax credits and not living in her district as required by law, and then abruptly dropping the suit.
It’s likely the former city councilwoman would still be in office today had she ignored the blogger’s charges instead of calling attention to them by filing a high profile lawsuit.
But Meister has so far been unsuccessful in his attempt to drive her father, Clerk of Courts Frank M. Conaway Sr., from office, despite repeated attempts to do so, the latest involving an altercation between the blogger and the court clerk outside Conaway’s Liberty Heights Avenue home on Nov. 21.
The police say Meister, 35, tried to karate kick the 78-year-old Conaway during a shouting match that occurred while Meister was jogging past the court clerk’s Ashburton neighborhood residence, the same home that he asserted the younger Conaway did not live in, to represent her former City Council district.
‘BRANDISHED’ A HOLSTERED PISTOL
In addition, the cops maintain, Conaway “brandished” a holstered pistol during the altercation — a misdemeanor punishable by a minimum of 30 days in jail, since the clerk’s permit to carry the weapon expired more than nine months ago.
Conaway denies the charges; Meister says he never saw the gun.
Meister says Conaway confronted him on the street; Conaway says he never left his property, and that Meister opened his gate and knocked loudly on his front door.
A classic he-said she-said, although both protagonists are male, as are the cops who filed a police report of the incident.
But Conaway has backers, some of the same community activists and NAACP leaders who came to the defense of his daughter when she was attacked by Meister during the election campaign which saw her defeated handily by newly minted Councilman Nick Mosby.
Early yesterday morning some of those same leaders — a group of six, put together by Leo W. Burroughs Jr. and calling themselves Community Activists for Justice — descended upon Meister’s Linden Avenue home and then went door to door throughout the immediate neighborhood to drum up support for the embattled Court Clerk Conaway.
‘INTENDING TO CAUSE TROUBLE’
“Why are you knocking on Frank Conaway’s door, other than to be a provocateur intending to cause trouble?” the elderly Burroughs asked the youthful Meister.
“He [Meister] was jeering at me,” Burroughs told Voice of Baltimore in a telephone interview later in the day. “He likes to harangue you when he sees you,” Burroughs said. He also was “hostile” toward some of the others in Burroughs’ group.
“‘You should be congratulated for exercising your constitutional rights,’ he said in a snide voice,” Burroughs reported, mimicking the tone he said Meister used in conversing with him.
“But this goes way further than just Adam Meister,” Burroughs told VoB. “It includes all establishment politicians not working in the interests of poor people and, indeed, the middle class.”
“The ‘political machine’ has this city in a shambles, including the fiasco of the Baltimore Grand Prix,” he said. “And now the mayor wants to have another Grand Prix next year. What is she thinking?”
The Grand Prix race operators have so far defaulted on huge amounts of money owed the city since the race was run Labor Day weekend.
PART OF THE NEBULOUS ‘ESTABLISHMENT’
Also on Burroughs’ and the other “Friends of Frank” members’ radar are Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld 3rd, who they consider incompetent and believe should resign or be fired, and Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein, who they accuse of being part of the nebulous “establishment” that historically opposes the Conaways.
Burroughs told VoB it was “unacceptable” that Bernstein has allowed five postponements in the Werdesheim Brothers case, two members of the Shomrim Othodox Jewish patrol organization in the Upper Park Heights neighborhood of Northwest Baltimore who are accused of using unauthorized force last year to detain a black youth they suspected of being up to no good.
Community leaders, both black and white, have come to the defense of Shomrim, stating that they want the organization to continue to operate in their neighborhoods, and labeling the actions of the two brothers an “aberration, not the rule,” in answer to calls for disbanding the organization by various African-American activists.
In addition to Frank Sr. and Belinda, Frank M. Conaway Jr., the former councilwoman’s brother, represents the city’s 40th Legislative District in the Maryland House of Delegates; and their stepmother, Mary W. Conaway, has been Baltimore’s register of wills since first being elected in 1982.
MAMA BEAR, PAPA BEAR & THE BABY BEARS
The family typically refers to itself in political campaigns as Mama Bear, Papa Bear and the Baby Bears.
All but Belinda were reelected last year. However in September, Frank Sr. lost running against Stephanie Rawlings-Blake for mayor.
“Establishment politicians don’t like the Conaways,” Belinda has told Voice of Baltimore on numerous occasions, and the activists supporting her father Saturday reiterated that view.
They consider Adam Meister to be an “unwitting tool of The Establishment,” which most notably includes Mayor Rawlings-Blake and her putative political mentor, Gov. Martin O’Malley.
The governor’s brother, Peter O’Malley, was named as Blake’s chief of staff last May, they note. And the partner of Governor O’Malley’s former communications director, Damian O’Doherty, is the brother of Rawlings-Blake’s press spokesman, Ryan O’Doherty.
“Do we need more evidence?” asked Burroughs, in an interview with VoB shortly after Belinda Conaway lost the September primary and was announcing her attempt to mount a write-in campaign, which ultimately failed to get her reelected in November.
‘TO HARASS AND/OR THREATEN’
“On Monday Nov. 21 at approx 10:30 a.m., political activist/blogger Adam Meister went to the home of Clerk of the Court Frank Conaway Sr. to harass and/or threaten the Conaway Family because in his judgment they are unfit to hold public office,” Burroughs declared in a “Statement of Opinion” circulated Saturday in the neighborhood surrounding the intersection of Linden and North Avenues where Meister lives.
“I am a senior citizen” — Burroughs is 69 — “outraged by his confrontational tactics [plus] I’m more convinced than ever that he knocked on the Conaway residence door (at 3210 Liberty Heights Avenue) for the purpose of conspiring with the Baltimore City police, the mayor, the governor, and all other Democratic machine politicians to get Frank Conaway out of office.
“State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein has said he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate police allegations that Conaway was carrying a gun which Meister said he never saw,” the statement continues.
‘A WITCH-HUNT AND SHOW-TRIAL’
“Clearly the state’s attorney is attempting to conduct a witch-hunt and show-trial to drag Frank Conaway through the mud for purposes of character assassination and ouster from office.
“We, the Community Activists for Justice, roundly condemn the smear campaign being orchestrated by the political establishment.
“We are demonstrating today to show our support and solidarity with the Conaway Family’s independent democratic view.
“Ours is a nonviolent protest demonstration.”
The statement concludes with charges that Bernstein’s wife, Sheryl Goldstein, the director of the Mayor’s Office on Criminal Justice, represents “a clear conflict of interest.”
In addition to Burroughs, the group of six included community activists David George and Aaron Wilkes.
Wilkes is president of East Baltimore’s Dolly Parks Community Organization.
Two emails from Vob requesting comment from Meister — late afternoon Saturday and early morning Sunday — went unanswered.
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
December 18th, 2011 - 12:45 PM
I have been following this case since it first broke. I also checked the Annotated Code of Maryland to see if there are any definitions regarding “brandishing” of a firearm. There are laws in some states that define “brandishing” to include even the inadvertant showing of a handgun when one’s coat is blown open by the wind. In other states, one has to actually remove the fiream from its holster or a porcket, then show the fiream to the aggreived and make some kind of statement such as, “watch it or you’ll get something from this.” I have not searched the Baltimore City Ordinances yet for such a law, but maybe one of VOB’s readers can enlighten us on this aspect of the law.
Regarding the conspiracy theory that Meister and other members of “the establishment” were acting together to entrap Mr. Conaway into committing a crime to drive him out of office, I think that it is ludicrous to think that Commissioner Bealefeld and his minions have the intelligence to pull off such an operation. Given the current abysmal state of ineptitude of the Baltimore City Police department in general and Commissioner Bealefeld in particular, it’s hard to believe that they have enough working brain cells to try to pull this off.
It is also curious that if Mr. Meister were a part of the “conspiracy” that he would not be smart enough to say the one simple thing that would get Mr. Conaway into trouble and that would be to affirm what the Baltimore City Officers claimed when they reported that Mr. Conaway “brandished” his firearm on the day in question.
I’m still awaiting the decision on what the “powers that be” do to Mr. Conaway regarding the very real charge of him carrying a concealed weapon without a permit to do so. Mr. Conaway’s statement about how the Maryland State Police should have reminded him that his permit was about to expire is even dumber than the assertion that Mr. Meister is involved in a conspiracy with other city officials to get Mr. Conaway removed from office. Any officer of the court (especially Mr. Conaway) should be familiar with the oft-quoted saying, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Following Mr. Conaway’s line of legal thinking, anyone could carrya concealed weapon with impunity and, upon being arrested for doing so, simply put up the defense that “the Maryland State Police should have told me that this is illegal. Since they didn’t tell me, then I am free to carry.”
March 3rd, 2014 - 5:11 PM
A crrew of corrupt ghetto politicians try to crush the 1st Amendment rights of a constituent.
And their toady at the “Voice of Baltimore” falls all over himself to parrot their nonsense.
Baltimore, the city chock full of Balti-morons.