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BARE HILLS BRASS — Four-star general from Baltimore faces charges of misconduct, misuse of government funds

Monday, August 20th 2012 @ 3:55 AM

Baltimore-bred Genl. William E. ‘Kip’ Ward stands accused of misconduct, including stays at posh hotels and allowing his wife to send a member of his staff on a personal errand to buy Snickers bars.

KIP WARD GREW UP IN BARE HILLS,
AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN ENCLAVE
NORTHWEST OF ROLAND PARK

Accused of unauthorized, lavish spending,
including lengthy stays in luxury hotels

WIFE SENT AIDE FOR SNICKERS BARS

UPDATE (Nov. 13th): Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta today stripped Gen. William E. “Kip” Ward of one of his four stars, allowing him to retire as a three-star lieutenant general. Panetta also ordered Ward to repay the government $82,000.

Retiring as a three-star general will cost Ward nearly $30,000 a year in retirement pay, affording him about $208,800 a year rather than the $236,650 he would have received in retirement as a four-star general.

By Alan Z. Forman

When fighter pilot and Tuskegee Institute graduate Chappie James became the first African-American to achieve the rank of four-star general in the United States armed forces, William E. “Kip” Ward was barely out of college and into graduate school at Penn State University.

The year was 1975, and Ward was finishing a B.A. in political science at Morgan State. Three decades earlier, when James was first commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in 1943, the Army was segregated. There were no black officers of senior rank.

Ward grew up in Northwest Baltimore, just over the county line in a small suburban enclave of historically black-owned homes not far from Roland Park and Mount Washington — Bare Hills, where his mother still lives — then went on to become one of only five African-American four-star generals in the history of the U.S. Army, the best known of these being former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

He stands to lose as many as two of those stars before the end of August when Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is expected to rule on his punishment for misuse of government funds and military aircraft in the wake of an Army Inspector General’s report released to the Associated Press at week’s end charging him with excessive, unauthorized spending and travel costs, including lengthy stays at posh hotels for himself, his wife and staff members.

Following a 17-month investigation the IG has also charged Ward with using military vehicles to shuttle his wife on shopping trips and to a spa, and for allowing her to dispatch a staff member on a personal errand to buy a bag of dark chocolate Snickers bars.

He and his wife frequently used staff to run personal errands, the IG’s 99-page report reveals. In addition, Ward was warned several times by staff that his activities were over the top, but he rejected their concerns and apparently found ways to get around them.

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WITHOUT DRESSING — Salisbury man steals chicken pot pie, bakes it in victim’s oven

Friday, August 17th 2012 @ 5:33 AM

Salisbury resident Russell E. Neff, 22, is charged with stealing a chicken pot pie, then stripping down to his underwear and baking the pie in the victim's kitchen.

BREAKS OPEN FRONT DOOR OF HOME,
THEN STRIPS DOWN TO UNDERWEAR;
IS FOUND LICKING REMOTE CONTROL

CHARGED WITH THEFT OF POT PIE

Twenty-something-aged college students are famous for raucous activity and fraternity-inspired behavior at such venues as Spring Break in South Florida and South Padre Island in East Texas.

Also on the beach and boardwalk at Ocean City, Md., where many of the Free State’s summertime pranks get played out every year, much to the dismay of law enforcement officials charged with responsibility for maintaining order.

But not far from Ocean City in the Eastern Shore City of Salisbury Wednesday night, police answered what has to rank among the strangest breaking and entering calls ever reported, not just in Maryland but anywhere.

The cops were called, shortly after 10 p.m., to deal with a burglary in progress. But not just any burglary.

A Salisbury homeowner called to say a man was beating on his front door, and while the homeowner hid upstairs and called police, the man gained entry by breaking open the door and proceeded to strip down to his underwear, whereupon he baked a chicken pot pie he found in the victim’s kitchen.

As reported by the Salisbury Daily Times (click here to read the full story) the man then retreated to the living room, where he was found by sheriff’s deputies shortly thereafter licking a remote control device.

When the deputies attempted to handcuff the man — who was identified as Russell E. Neff, 22 — he struggled with the officers, police say, and was charged with resisting arrest, as well as first-degree burglary and malicious destruction of property.

Following an initial appearance before a District Court commissioner, he is being held at the Wicomico County Detention Center in lieu of $250,000 bond.

He is also charged with stealing the pot pie.

— Alan Z. Forman

alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org

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BLACK OCTOBER — The killing of a drug-dealing state delegate (Excerpt 3)

Sunday, August 12th 2012 @ 1:33 AM

Flyer left at scene of grisly 1973 murder of Maryland State Delegate James ‘Turk’ Scott.

A Voice of Baltimore Feature, an excerpt from

BLACK OCTOBER AND THE MURDER OF TURK SCOTT
The Case Files of Homicide Lt. Stephen Tabeling

A NEWLY PUBLISHED MINI-eBOOK ON AMAZON.COM

By Stephen Tabeling and Stephen Janis

Before joining the Baltimore Sun and beginning more than 20 years of celebrated commentary on Maryland politicians and local citizenry for WJZ-TV-Channel13, Michael Olesker was a crime reporter for the now-defunct News American newspaper that until 1986 was published by the Hearst Corp.

Along with reporter Joe Nawrozki, who later also worked for The Sun, Olesker was first, in 1973, to report the Black October murder of drug-dealing State Del. James “Turk” Scott.

Prior to the murder, Nawrozki told Voice of Baltimore in an email earlier this week, he and Olesker broke the story of Scott’s drug-dealing, initially being prevented by the News American‘s lawyer — who was also a lobbyist at the time in Annapolis — from identifying Scott by name.

So to get the drug-dealing politician’s nefarious activities on record, “we had to run a story — without naming Scott — that said ‘a member of the Maryland House of Delegates’ was the target of a major investigation by the Justice Department for moving multi-kilo shipments of heroin from New York to Baltimore,” Nawrozki wrote in his email.

He and Olesker were subsequently “subpoenaed by Scott’s attorney,” he said, “in a pre-trial hearing to force us to reveal our sources; [however] the assistant U.S. attorney [on the case] got us off the hook.

“But speaking for myself,” he concluded, “I was a tad scared that my two little babies at home would never hear from daddy again.”

Fortunately for Nawrozki and Olesker, “The judge ruled in our favor,” he said, and the two reporters were neither held in contempt nor required to do any jail time.

And they never revealed their sources.

Read more »

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BOOK REVIEW — ‘Black October and the Murder of Turk Scott’

Monday, August 6th 2012 @ 12:01 AM

Earlier this year WBFF-Fox45-TV Investigative Producer Stephen Janis interviewed retired Baltimore Homicide Investigator Stephen Tabeling and the two produced a mini-eBook published by Baltimore True Crime, titled above and available now on Amazon.com for $2.99 (click here to purchase), on a shadowy group known as “Black October” and their 1973 murder of State Del. James “Turk” Scott.

Exclusive advance excerpts have been published by Voice of Baltimore in April and May (click here and here) and a third excerpt will appear in this space later this week.

Following below is a review of the book by photojournalist Bill Hughes, a frequent contributor to VoB, and is reprinted from American Chronicle, where it was published early last week online (click here).

Be sure to check Voice of Baltimore at week’s end for Excerpt 3

———- ———- ———-

A SHADOWY CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION IN BALTIMORE
MURDERS A MARYLAND STATE DELEGATE IN 1973

By William Hughes

In 1973, the movie, “Magnum Force,” came out. It was a huge hit with the public. It featured Clint Eastwood as the iconic San Francisco cop, “Dirty Harry.”

The flick’s theme dealt with “vigilante justice.” It involved a group of renegade traffic police who had decided on their own, using extra-legal methods, to take out society’s bad guys. This included, of course, drug kingpins. To say the least, even the indomitable “Dirty Harry” had his hands full trying to bring a secret “death squad” of cops to justice.

Closer to home, on July 13, 1973, James “Turk” Scott, an African-American, was shot to death inside a garage used by residents of his hi-rise apartment, k/a “Sutton Place.” It’s located in the swanky Bolton Hill area of Baltimore City.

The grisly crime shocked the populace and created banner headlines in the Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore News American newspapers. A dozen bullets had ripped into Scott’s body. It was pure and simple — a cold-blooded execution.

A shadowy group, “Black October,” claimed responsibility for the vicious hit. The assassin or assassins’ left flyers, 8-by 11-inch in size, spread by Scott’s body. The hand-written message proclaimed that the state delegate was taken out because: “Selling drugs is an act of treason. The penalty for treason is death.” Was “Vigilante Justice” to be Baltimore’s latest curse?

Scott, age 43, was a member of the House of Delegates in Maryland. He was a bail bondsman, a political and courthouse insider who knew all the players from Baltimore City to the halls of Annapolis. Scott was also an accused drug dealer. He was under a federal indictment on charges of conspiracy to transport 40 pounds of heroin from New York to Baltimore.

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AT DOVER, DEL. — First annual Firefly Music Festival seems destined to become summer tradition

Thursday, August 2nd 2012 @ 6:30 PM

First annual Firefly Music Festival, at Dover, Del., attracts crowd in excess of 30,000. (VoB Photo/Kaitlin Nëwman)

JOINS ALL GOOD AND BONNAROO MUSIC FESTS
IN APPEAL TO 20-SOMETHING CAMPOUT CROWD

Band lineup includes Grouplove, Modest Mouse,
Death Cab for Cutie, Cold War Kids, The Killers

By Kaitlin Nëwman and Andrew Windham

Rainbow trees, hammock slung forests, hot air balloons and the scent of fresh rain set the atmosphere for the sold-out woodland music festival known as Firefly, which hit Dover, Del. the last week of July and seems destined to become a summer tradition.

The festival’s first-annual lineup included big names like Jack White, The Killers and the Black Keys, supported by bands such as Modest Mouse, Grouplove, Death Cab for Cutie, the Flaming Lips and Cold War Kids.

The three-day festival offered attendees the chance to buy a camping pass that included a 10×30-ft. campsite where they could set up camp with tents, propane grills, coolers and flags marking their territory.

Within a few hours of opening, the dull grass was covered with tents of every shape and size, resembling a colorful shantytown of music enthusiasts. The mood was bright and relaxed, in contrast to the dull skies hanging low above Dover.

“In my opinion, camping was pretty much overall good,” said Brian Haack, one of the attendees — most of whom were in their early to mid-20s — in an interview with Voice of Baltimore.

However he noted that “they definitely could have given more space. Having to fit your car and your tent in the same space was difficult. It was in a really nice location though; for the majority of it people were in good spots. If the festival is bigger next year they’ll have to move to a bigger location or it won’t fit. Overall, it was really good!”

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