Supporters of jailed blogger A.F. James MacArthur held a vigil Thursday evening outside Baltimore’s Central Booking facility. (VoB photo/Alan Z. Forman)

FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES GATHER
ON EAST MADISON ST. TO PROTEST
‘UNJUST’ JAILING OF CITY BLOGGER

HELD WITHOUT VISITORS FOR THREE WEEKS
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
Waving hand-lettered signs with messages like “Free James MacArthur, Journalist,” and chanting “Free MacArthur! Free MacArthur now,” a contingent of 20-30 supporters of the controversial Baltimore blogger incarcerated three weeks ago after a BPD SWAT team surrounded his Waverly home and a police negotiator “debated” with him on live streaming radio for nearly five hours, gathered on East Madison Street outside Central Booking Thursday to support their friend and colleague and protest what they consider to be his “unjust” treatment by city police.

Except for his lawyer, MacArthur has been held without visitors — or bail — for nearly three weeks.

“We view James as a ‘political prisoner,’” Nadrat Siddique, of the Baltimore-D.C. Jericho Movement, which advocates for “freedom of all political prisoners,” told Voice of Baltimore as she shouted through a bullhorn to passing motorists: “We’re here today because our brother is locked up, one of the few independent journalists. This brother was speaking out for all of us. They’re locking up our journalists.

“James had the gall and the balls to speak out,” she asserted.

MacArthur runs a website titled “The Baltimore Spectator,” whose stated mission is “to deliver ‘Truth to the Masses.’” Portions of his dialogue with BPD Lt. Jason Yerg immediately prior to his Dec. 1 arrest at the end of his five-hour standoff with city cops on violation of probation involving gun charges may be heard on the Spectator’s website, BaltimoreSpectator.com.

As a gadfly journalist MacArthur has worked with Voice of Baltimore and VoB’s predecessor website Investigative Voice to report crime and what he considers to be police malfeasance in Charm City. He has often broken stories for VoB, frequently beating other Baltimore news outlets, including mainstream legacy media, by hours, sometimes days.

MacARTHUR ON THE SCENE

When an off-duty BPD officer moonlighting as a security guard two years ago was shot by uniformed city cops who fired 41 rounds into a large crowd late at night outside a downtown club and was taken to the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in critical condition, James MacArthur was on the scene.

As legacy media continued through the night to report the officer’s condition as “unknown,” MacArthur telephoned VoB within minutes of the officer’s arrival at Shock Trauma and reported — accurately, hours before any other news outlet had the information — that the plainclothes detective was in fact dead.

On another occasion, in June 2010, when a rogue cop killed a bar patron, an ex-Marine, outside a Mount Vernon nightclub for groping his girlfriend, MacArthur texted photos of the crime scene to VoB within minutes of the Marine’s death.

At Thursday’s vigil, demonstrators focused on MacArthur’s role as an independent news source, waving signs questioning “Why Is the U.S. Detaining Journalists?” and declaring, “INDY Media is a Threat to BPD.”

Some sought to make a racial issue of his arrest, flashing signs such as “AmeriKKKa Stop Killing and Jailing Innocent Black Men,” and asserting that MacArthur was “following the police around when they were out there doing their dirty deeds.”

WATCHING WHAT THEY DO

His sister, Jean Arthur, a Washington area lawyer who is a legislative analyst for the Montgomery County Council, believes the cops are intimidated by her brother and that they want to stop him from snooping around crime scenes and watching what they do.

A hearing has been scheduled for Dec. 28 regarding his lawyer Jill Carter’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus to consider denial of bail despite the fact he has never been charged or accused of a violent crime.

He did however tweet allegedly threatening messages on his Twitter feed and post similar alleged threats against Baltimore City Police on his Facebook page, local authorities claimed in convincing a judge to authorize a warrant allowing police to search his home following his arrest at the end of the five-hour standoff.

Plus he sent threatening emails to a city official who he blamed for his being committed for a psychiatric evaluation several years ago. The official told Voice of Baltimore she had nothing to do with the decision to commit him.

A sawed-off shotgun was found in his house after his arrest Dec. 1; however MacArthur insists the weapon “looks very much like a gun that was confiscated” from him several years ago and which he says was “planted” in an upstairs bedroom of his home.

A condition of his probation on two previous gun charges is that he not be permitted to own or possess a firearm.

If convicted on the two new gun violations he is currently charged with, he could be facing as much as 10 years behind bars.
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
CHECK OUT VOICE OF BALTIMORE’S RECENT STORIES ON A.F. JAMES MacARTHUR’S STANDOFF WITH POLICE AND SUBSEQUENT ARREST  (click here)  and  (here)  AND HEAR VoB’S COMMENTARY ON THE MARC STEINER SHOW ON WEAA-RADIO 88.9-FM  (click here).