Commentary

People did rotten things, real and mythical, in the vast Leakin woodlands of West Baltimore. It’s an old story, going back decades, and the stuff of local legend: Leakin Park, where killers dump their victims or bury their bodies. It’s by now a municipal cliche. A few years ago, when I heard of a witness in a murder case claiming to have been “taken to Leakin Park” and ordered by the primary suspect’s gun-wielding brothers to change his story or else, the tale struck me as trite. I had heard Leakin Park invoked in a criminal context, or just for laughs, too many times.

As 2023 draws to a close, we look back on some of the year’s biggest headlines, alphabetically: A is for the Attorney General’s Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which was released in April and chronicled 80 years of horrific abuse of hundreds of young people. B is for Brooklyn Homes and the tragic mass shooting that took two lives and injured 28 other young people during a block party this summer.

Over the past several weeks, world affairs have moved to the forefront of our national dialogue, and an exchange of viewpoints is underway at colleges across the country, including those in Maryland. Global learning has never been more critical for fostering the mutual understanding and cross-border collaboration essential to addressing our shared existential challenges and to deepening our humanity.

Maryland is on a path to gain control of almost 300 acres on the Chesapeake Bay just outside Annapolis, a potentially huge victory for increasing public access to the bay. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation announced Tuesday that it would turn over Holly Beach Farm to the state Department of Natural Resources roughly 20 years after the state helped pay for the purchase of the one-time horse farm from its private owner.

Mark Bedell wants a conversation about youth violence in Annapolis. The superintendent of Anne Arundel County Public Schools, he started it off last week, talking about nine homicides in the city this year — some of them involving teenage boys — and recent fights at Annapolis High. “We can’t be the greatest educational institution and the greatest social services institution. You can’t be great at both of them,” Bedell said.

Recently, about 75 irate people packed a meeting at Bel Air Town Hall to give some public officials a piece of their minds. Many had seen the future of this town of roughly 11,000 souls, and they did not like it. What had caused such concern? Was it the return of COVID? No. A spike in the crime rate? Not that either. No, they dreaded the possibility, as voiced by a local small business owner, that Bel Air was destined into something almost unspeakable. Something far different from the Harford County seat they knew and loved.

At 9 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 8, a man chucked a brick through the front window of the Subway on the 300 block of N. Charles Street; stepped inside and helped himself to bags of chips. The next morning, the same individual returned to the scene of his crime, according to a surveillance video I viewed. Apparently determined to recreate his success of the day before, the man chucked another brick at the carefully decorated, glass front door catty-corner to the window he smashed earlier.