Around Maryland

MoCo officials tout the county’s diversity as one of its greatest strengths, but a new data dashboard report suggests otherwise. Blacks make up 52% of defendants in the Montgomery County Circuit Court while Hispanics make up 13%, according to the data dashboard. “There really is growing consensus right now that issues of fairness, equity and justice in the American criminal legal system are paramount,” said Brian Johnson, the associate chair of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland.

State officials are taking a six-year, $21.2 billion draft transportation plan all over the state to field questions and gather input from local officials and the public, and the tour comes to Baltimore on Monday. The Consolidated Transportation Program (CTP) is the Maryland Department of Transportation’s annual list of state capital projects that it submits to the General Assembly for approval. Officials will present the plan at Towson University Monday morning, with a focus on projects in Baltimore County.

It was early morning on a patio just outside the Conowingo Dam, and Mike Martinek was looking at hundreds of juvenile eels that had been suctioned from the Susquehanna River into a giant freshwater pool. Martinek, a fisheries biologist for an environmental consulting firm, and a couple of colleagues were planning to truck the eels a couple of hours north into Pennsylvania, past Harrisburg, and dump them near spawning grounds upriver.

By Friday morning, the Baltimore Police Department had recorded 222 homicides in the city this year, a total that set a pace slightly higher than that of 2022, when 271 homicides were counted. The number of nonfatal shootings by that time was 528, correlating to a pace significantly higher than in 2022, when 578 were tallied. Before the day ended, police would find three more victims, the result of a nonfatal shooting at a home on the 3700 block of Fifth Street.

Several Anne Arundel County parents and students used the Board of Education meeting Wednesday evening to voice concerns and offer solutions to specific school issues. Usually the public comment portion of Board of Education meetings are not followed by responses from the board or administrators, but Superintendent Mark Bedell and others were noticeably impressed with Wednesday’s student speakers.

Maryland Child Protective Services evaluates thousands of potential cases of child neglect, abuse and mistreatment each year to determine what actions are needed to protect some of the state’s most vulnerable population: its youth. But according to a Wednesday discussion during a Joint Committee on Children, Youth and Families meeting, there are holes in the state data reporting and it’s currently unclear how many families and children receive services to protect kids from mistreatment.

In the wake of law enforcement concerns related to school safety, education officials this week released a statement citing a breakdown in communication between the parties involved. In a statement released Tuesday evening, the Worcester County Board of Education stressed that schools were not unsafe and reiterated the school system’s commitment to providing a safe learning environment for students. Nevertheless, the board said a school safety task force was being created.

Even on a day with no rain, water can be heard flowing underneath Remington at the intersection of West 27th and Fox streets. About 30 to 40 feet below a maintenance hole cover, Sumwalt Run — a creek that once flowed above ground — continues to move through the city’s stormwater sewer system, Baltimore artist Bruce Willen said.