Around Maryland

Young Marylanders with severe mental health needs are being “inappropriately” sent to detention settings that are struggling to help them, according to the state’s Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit. And it’s possible those environments, including the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, are worsening the young people’s conditions, the monitoring unit said in a recent report.

After Cesar Diaz’s daughter Melanie died in a fire at the Arrive Silver Spring apartment complex in February 2023, he made a promise to her that he would do everything in his power to prevent any other lives from being taken in fires. That’s why he made sure to be present Thursday as County Executive Marc Elrich signed legislation relating to fire safety protections for renters.

Remnants of Hurricane Debby brought soggy conditions to Maryland on Thursday with more rain expected Friday and a tornado watch in effect until Friday morning. Light and moderate showers soaked parts of the state Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. Forecasters anticipate off-and-on showers and thunderstorms throughout the evening and into Friday, keeping temperatures around the upper 70s to low 80s.

Wanda Knotts is a physical education and health teacher at Crossland High School in Temple Hills, Maryland. For the fourth year in a row, she’s spearheading a backpack giveaway at the school for any student in need on Aug. 17. The backpacks, for pre-K through high school students, will be filled with school supplies including notebooks, pencils, erasers and pens.

Since Baltimore asked residents in December to test their home’s water line for lead and submit the results to the city, nearly 4,500 have done so. Meanwhile, about 173,000 properties still have unknown water service pipe materials, said Paul Sayan, acting bureau chief of water and wastewater for the Baltimore City Department of Public Works.

On a rainy Wednesday evening at a public hearing about a proposed public garden — Howard County’s first — there seemed to be an elephant in the room. About a dozen or so people spoke and offered ideas to the county’s garden focus group last month about what native plants they want to see when the garden, to be located on a former plantation along Route 97 in the western part of the county, comes to fruition.

When he’s breaking — sometimes called break dancing, by those who aren’t in-the-know — Coleman “Church” Caldwell, 32, feels a mix of anxiety and freedom. Dancing surrounded by a circle of fellow breakers, called B-boys and B-girls, in a formation named a cypher is “an opportunity to show yourself.” “It’s kind of like speaking a different language that everybody can understand,” said Caldwell, who lives in Anne Arundel County. “It is truly poetry in motion.”

Hagerstown Police Chief Paul Kifer acknowledged this week that the city had a "rough couple of weeks" recently with two homicides and even more shootings. One homicide or one shooting is too many, Kifer said. Kifer talked about the shootings and homicides that occurred in late July and early August during interviews with The Herald-Mail at National Night Out at Fairgrounds Park on Tuesday evening and in a phone interview on Wednesday.