Michael Owen Jr., the first Prince George’s County police officer to be charged with murder for actions taken in uniform, was found not guilty on all the counts he faced in the fatal shooting of a handcuffed man, including second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter. The case hinged upon whether Owen, who fatally shot 43-year-old William Green six times while the man had his hands cuffed behind his back, pulled the trigger in self-defense on the night of the Jan. 27, 2020, shooting.

Housing Officials from across the state of Maryland meeting at the Winter MACO conference in Ocean City highlighting the state’s challenges and solutions. Speaking at a panel, Housing and Community Development Secretary Jake Day says across the state Maryland is at least 92,000 houses short. That scarcity he says hurts the marginalized and low-income communities the most, calling on the state to meet the crisis level with investments.

 

Neighbors in south Baltimore are frustrated with recent carjackings and auto thefts and they have decided to fight back. Residents are installing license plate readers on certain streets. Three community associations worked together to get the devices. “Our team of volunteers know Baltimore Police Department is understaffed. Our volunteers know there have been over 10,000 cars stolen in our city this year,” Federal Hill Neighborhood Association spokesman Brad O’Brien said.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Wednesday he would consider selling the financially beleaguered Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor hotel, a move that past mayors have ruled out in light of the likely financial loss the city would suffer. “We are open to anything,” Scott said during a City Hall news conference. “As we move forward with reimagining downtown and looking at how things operate, I’m quite open to someone coming in to operate the hotel and not having the city operate it.”

City officials have been given a proposal: If they can’t eliminate vagrancy problems in a public park, why not make the area private? Cumberland Historic Cemetery Organization President Ed Taylor Jr. on Tuesday asked the mayor and City Council to consider renting Cumberland’s George Washington Headquarters cabin at Riverside Park along Greene Street to the Cresap Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution for $1 per year.

Joanne Wunderly got a dreaded call one morning two years ago that there had been a break-in at her Manassas, Virginia, store and the burglar made off with the cash register. Not only was the register gone, so was the cash box, the week’s deposit, and some jewelry that she sells in her store The Things I Love. “I think I was more angry than anything,” Wunderly said. “I’ve worked so hard, and we all do as small businesses … and you walk in and somebody just thinks they have the right to come in and just take whatever they want from your personal space.”

Quantaz Smith, a lifelong resident of Southwest Baltimore, is 22 now and well beyond the age of playing on playgrounds. But that hasn’t stopped his efforts to help bring a brand new and much-needed park to his neighborhood in Gwynns Falls. The work paid off. Smith was one of at least two dozen people present Wednesday as Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume announced nearly $1.3 million in congressional funding for the Gwynns Falls Mighty Park project and the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative.

Since 2012, the requirements for being appointed to serve on Frederick County’s boards and commissions have included residency in the county and being registered to vote. The requirements were repealed in September because they had been enacted during the time when the county was governed by a Board of County Commissioners.

Tisha Skinner operates the only Rita’s Italian Ice franchise at an airport anywhere, in Terminal C at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. She also has a Smoothie King franchise in Terminal D14 at BWI. Like a lot of vendors who run businesses in the airport, she’s excited about the multimillion-dollar improvements the state plans to make over the next several years at BWI.

As a child raised in the video-on-demand era who also spent the first half of his life as a Walt Disney World pass holder, my 10-year-old Brooks was pretty clear on the specifics of the “Cinderella” story before we saw ArtCentric’s live version at Baltimore Center Stage last week. When it was over, I asked for a recap. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was coming for my job as a cultural critic.