Around Maryland

Overall crime in Maryland steadily declined between 2010 and 2020, according to data from Maryland’s Open Data portal and yearly Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), a compilation of crime statistics from Maryland police departments. Yet homicides increased in that same period. Homicides in the state rose to a ten-year high of 573 in 2020, a nearly 35% increase from 2010. The largest year-to-year increase occurred in 2015 when homicides rose to 553, a 52% increase from the previous year.

Charles County Public Schools in Maryland will join a growing number of D.C. area public schools with advanced gun detection technology. Weeks after a number of Virginia schools detailed security screeners that could be coming to schools in Prince William and Alexandria City Public Schools, the Maryland school system announced plans to incorporate artificial intelligence “visual gun detection technology” into their schools.

Homeowners in Frederick are concerned about their safety after a tanker crashed and exploded along a busy highway earlier this month. State and local leaders held a meeting Wednesday to hear the concerns of those residents. “It wasn’t good,” Frederick resident Jeff Oranczak said. “It wasn’t good at all.” Oranczak and his wife live along U.S. Route 15 in Frederick, right near where a tanker truck crashed into a tree and exploded on March 4. Firefighters said the truck was carrying flammable liquid.

Residents in Frederick sounded off after a tanker explosion killed a driver and damaged several homes and vehicles earlier this month. Wednesday night, they received a promising response. Frederick City held a community discussion Wednesday night discussing the incident and the steps the city and Maryland are taking moving forward. The biggest issue residents like Lamar Reese brought forward is a lack of barriers between U.S. Route 15 and nearby neighborhoods.

Civil rights attorneys say they haven’t ruled out appealing a Maryland court’s ruling this month in a decades-old lawsuit over the state’s funding for Baltimore City schools. The original 1994 case known as Bradford v. Maryland State Board of Education has ricocheted through the legal system for years, resulting in a consent decree, a local governance overhaul and several attempted funding fixes by lawmakers.

Wholesale price increases in the United States slowed sharply last month as food and energy costs declined, a sign that inflationary pressures may be easing as the Federal Reserve considers whether to keep raising interest rates to fight higher prices. From January to February, the government’s producer price index fell 0.1%, after a 0.3% rise from December to January. Compared with a year ago, wholesale prices rose 4.6%, a big drop from the 5.7% annual increase in January.

The Board of Carroll County Commissioners will get its first look Thursday at a list of the transportation priorities in the county, and like last year, the widening of Route 97 in Westminster tops the list. The county must send its priorities in a letter to the Maryland Department of Transportation by April 1. If approved by the state, funding will be included in the Maryland Consolidated Transportation Program, the state’s six-year capital budget for transportation projects.

Jason Perkins-Cohen will leave his longtime position as director of the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development next week, according to the mayor’s office. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott accepted the Perkins-Cohen’s resignation on Tuesday, which takes effect March 21, according to a news release. MacKenzie Garvin, the office’s current chief of staff, will become the acting director of the mayoral office.