Around Maryland

Union leaders representing Maryland’s correctional officers on Thursday urged the state to hire more than 3,400 officers to address shortages at the state’s correctional institutions, which have endangered officers and inmates alike. In 2022, the state hired about 400 correctional officers, according to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. The department has about 5,100 total positions.

When speaking with WBAL’s C4 and Bryan Nehman, Mosby said violence among kids has become a crisis the city currently faces. “This juvenile retaliatory violence has to be the utmost critical issue right now facing our city,” Mosby said. “I mean, we are not seeing it only in school, after school, before school, in the neighborhoods, during the weekends – it’s like everywhere.” Mosby’s appearance with C4 and Nehman comes one day after a 16-year-old was critically injured after being shot in the head Wednesday night in Cherry Hill.

You might not realize this but there are tons of great hiking opportunities right here in Charm City! I just moved from what I considered a hiker’s mecca, Los Angeles. But this returning Marylander has been visiting the many area trails — and loving it! I need to my give props the dozens of locations because I didn’t know they existed here.

The Johns Hopkins University named Branville Bard Jr., who currently serves as the school’s vice president of public safety, as the inaugural chief of the university’s police department. Bar, who has worked with Hopkins since August 2021, will lead efforts to establish JHPD policies and procedures, as well as oversee staffing of the armed police force.

Only one Maryland jurisdiction ranked favorably on a new report into pollution. One in four Americans live in an area with air pollution that’s harmful to their health and can even shorten their lives, according to the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” report. The report focuses on ozone and particle pollution. Although the Clean Air Act is credited with improving air quality, pollution remains a big problem for much of the country.

The historic Oldfields School, a small all-girls boarding school in Sparks Glencoe, will close at the end of this academic year. The school, which became the first girls boarding school in Maryland when it was founded in 1867, said in a Wednesday news release the decision to close is due to “recent trends and obstacles” that have challenged independent schools nationwide.

More than 200 construction workers took park in a “unity ride” Wednesday to raise awareness about work zone safety, nearly a month after six people were killed at a site in the median of the Baltimore Beltway. Participants began their hourlong afternoon ride at noon at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and ended at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium, traveling on I-97, I-695 and I-83. Workers made a point to drive the posted speed limit along the route.