Around Maryland

For Mental Health Awareness Month gets close to its midway point, Harford County has partnered with the Core Service Agency of Harford County to bring free programs to residents to support mental wellness. The free activities include a family wellness night, an outdoor movie screening of the documentary “The Power of Expression” in Bel Air, and training on suicide prevention. “Mental health is as important as your physical health, and we’re working with the Core Service Agency of Harford County to bring you programs to support mental wellness during Mental Health Awareness Month in May,” Glassman said.

Nearly 28,000 children in Baltimore County could receive increased food benefits to help their families buy groceries this summer under a significant local expansion of a state anti-hunger program. Summer SNAP for Children will provide $30 monthly per eligible child in June, July and August. Each child will also receive $10 over winter break in December. The county had planned to serve about 10,000 kids, but additional state funding means many more will qualify, officials said.

A late-semester spike in coronavirus cases at Johns Hopkins University, spurred by recent social events, has some students pleading for the option to take exams online. After many months of strict health protocols at Hopkins, the campus in Baltimore has seen more than 500 cases in the past week and, according to its online dashboard, had filled all available isolation housing. The spike shocked some students because of the school’s international reputation in public health and its early and enduring warnings about the dangers of the pandemic.

Gov. Larry Hogan is directing state law enforcement to assist local and federal partners should they be called to protect the homes of Supreme Court justices in Maryland. Over the weekend, crowds of abortion-rights demonstrators held protests outside the homes of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, both of whom live in Maryland.

For years, the lawn outside the Eastport fire station has been crisscrossed with dirt footpaths worn by pedestrians who cut through the property between nearby residential neighborhoods and a commercial district. Capt. Dallas Lister, a 26-year veteran of the Annapolis Fire Department, has pondered what could be done to accommodate that foot traffic and spruce up the patch of grass. In 2020, Lister came up with the idea for a memorial park to honor three fallen members of the fire department and other community heroes.

Maryland’s top court grappled Monday over an impossibility defense as it heard the appeal of a man’s second-degree murder conviction for being an accessory before the killing of two Montgomery County teenagers on the eve of their high school graduations. Attorney John N. Sharifi, pressing Roger Garcia’s case, told the Court of Appeals a person cannot be guilty of assisting in the planning of a second-degree murder, which by definition is not premeditated and thus not planned.

Carroll County Public Schools announced Monday that Cynthia A. McCabe has been selected as the finalist for superintendent. McCabe has served as CCPS chief of schools since 2019. McCabe was the school system’s director of elementary schools from 2011 until she was elevated by Superintendent Steve Lockard to chief of schools. In this role, McCabe supported principals and the directors of elementary, middle, and high schools. This position also supervises student services and the technology services department.

Baltimore officials are seeking public feedback as they look to redraw longstanding police district lines for the first time in more than 50 years. The current boundaries of the city’s nine police districts were set in 1959, Mayor Brandon M. Scott (D) said at a Friday news conference. He called the police precinct redistricting “long overdue.” Baltimore had a population of 585,708 at the 2020 decennial census, according to the United States Census Bureau. In 1960, that figure was 939,024. While the city’s population has seen an overall decline since then, some neighborhoods have grown in recent years.