Coming Soon, a New Dog

Two years after the death of our beloved Golden Retriever "Bo" Cherie has talked me into another dog.

This young man, to be named later, is due to be picked up next week. He's a cute German Shepard with German and Belgium bloodlines.

Much more to come......

Abominable Snowman Found

Courtesy of TMZ.Com, it appears the abominable snowman has been located.

More as it develops........

Jay Landsman, the Real Sgt. John Munch

During my years with the Baltimore County Police one of the nicest characters I had the privilege of working with was Detective Sergeant John Munch of "Homicide, Life on the Street".

Well, not exactly. You see the character of Detective Munch, played by Richard Belzer, was inspired by a real life Baltimore Police Homicide Lieutenant, Jay Landsman. Jay was featured in the book by the same title and needless to say couldn't be left out of the television show.




My work with Jay Landsman was however real life. When I first met him he was still a homicide supervisor in Baltimore city. Jay was a wealth of information. He possesses a great, morbid, sense of humor which always came in handy while working murders. Munch was very much Jay Landsman.

His memory is what impressed me the most. While working a murder in Baltimore County I called Jay to run a nickname by him. A witness identified "Peanut" as being the shooter. "Peanut" is a common nickname in Baltimore crime circles but Jay said he believed our"Peanut" had the name of Anthony Williams and lived at 5** Gold Street off of Pennsylvania Ave.
Searching BGE records revealed that Williams did live at that address. We identified Williams as the killer and thanks to Jay saved an awful lot of time trying to track down "Peanut".

Jay had a side business at the time of removing deceased bodies from death scenes, natural and un-natural. His company would transport the victims to the Medical Examiners office for autopsy. On one occasion he responded to one of my murder scenes and immediately recognized our dead guy as a suspect in two previous city murders. In our case he attempted to rob his own cousin of drugs and was shot and killed by cuz.

It was always a pleasure to run into Jay at crime scenes or the M.E's office as he always had a story to tell to make you laugh.

Approx. 1994-95 Jay retired from the city police department and joined Baltimore County Police where he eventually became a homicide detective and later a supervisor.

Jay also became a regular on the HBO crime drama, "The Wire", both as a fictional character and a co-star.

The fictional Sergeant Jay Landsman was played by actor Delaney Williams. He portrayed a homicide unit supervisor.
The real Jay Landsman portrayed Lieutenant Dennis Mello (picture above with uniform on) a commander in the Baltimore City police force.

Now that "The Wire" is off the air Jay Landsman is back to real police work.

The Landsman inspired character "Munch" has gone onto make television history.
Munch has been the only fictional character played by a single actor to appear on eight different television shows. These shows were on four different networks: NBC (Homicide: Life on the Street, and Law & Order franchise), FOX (The X-Files, Arrested Development), UPN (The Beat), and HBO (The Wire). Munch has also been one of the only television characters to cross genres, appearing not only in crime drama series, but also the genres of sitcom (Arrested Development) and science fiction (The X-Files).
A muppet representation of Detective Munch appeared in the Sesame Street sketch "Law and Order: Special Letters Unit".

The Legend of Bob Speed

Officer Bob Speed, a name that brought shivers down the spine of probably thousands of motorists in Baltimore county Maryland. Bob was a traffic cop for most of his career and a fine one at that.

I had the pleasure of working around Bob when I worked the Accident Investigation unit based in the old Towson precinct on Washington Ave.
While I worked a different shift configuration than Bob our shifts would coincide at least one week per month. I would handle flyouts and fatal accidents and Bob would handle the less serious accidents and work radar, tons and tons of radar.

Bob was probably the #1 ticket writer in the county which to me is OK in my book. I didn't enjoy writing tickets and that ultimately led me to leave the unit but speeding can be a real problem and in Bob's defense he was assigned areas to work radar by citizen complaints.

I had heard stories about Bob before I ever met him. Supposedly he was hung in effigy from the old York Road underpass in Cockeysville. I heard enough about Bob to believe it's true. Bob seemed to give no one a break. He heard allot of razzing when he gave Orioles superstar Eddie Murray a speeding ticket. Bob would just smile and take it.

I once was in court and Bob was ahead of me testifying against his defendants. One gentleman told the judge that he couldn't believe he made the mistake of getting caught. He said everyone in the neighborhood know Officer Speed works radar there. In fact one of his neighbors had a framed photograph of Officer Speed working radar hung in his clubroom.

Where Bob's legend really grew was with a ongoing feud with Car and Driver magazine. Bob would write letters to the editor wherever they would promote speeding or perhaps street racing. Initially the editors didn't believe his name was truly Officer Speed. They would always respond to his letters with an editor's note making fun of Bob. Once they published a photo of a donkey on the table of contents page and titled it, "More letters from Officer Speed". I don't believe at the time they knew Bob was black or they might not have used a black donkey for the picture.

They later published this photo of Bob in their magazine. Before long the powers to be put an end to this and asked Bob to stop writing to the magazine.

My funniest personal story of Bob goes like this.

Bob had locked up a 20 something female for DWI and transported her to the station for a breathalyzer test. I was an operator so went in to administer the test.

After going through the paperwork and pre-testing I explained to the young lady how the test worked. I held the breathalyzer tube to her and explained that she had to put her lips around the tube and blow until I told her to stop. She then said that Officer Speed already had her blow onto a black thing when he pulled me over. Needless to say it was pretty hard not to laugh in her face and Bob and I had a good laugh later. The black thing she was speaking of was a PBT (preliminary breath tester).

I must say Bob was not all about traffic. He started his career working the street in the Cockeysville area. Bob was one of the kind of cop that if he heard me out with a stop and he was nearby he would back you up. He also backed the patrol guys whenever he could.

After I retired and went to work at PHH, I heard from many people that they were ticketed by Officer Speed. This included a few members of my boss's family. It was almost something that people took pride in as they were part of a larger family of ticket recipients.

Bob is now retired and is a bailiff at the Towson District court where he stood to testify in thousands of cases.

I imagine some of his old defendants feel they can't get away from him.

Summer of 2008 Boating Adventures, So Far.

Thought I would give a brief photo synopsis of the summer until now. Hopefully the best is yet to come.

We bought the new boat, a 2004 Sea Ray 280 Sundancer on April 30th. It was originally called Sea Meant.

I quickly changed the name to Cherie Amour.

A Magma gas grill was purchased and mounted with a quick release mount on the swim platform.

This area of Frog Mortar Creek is alongside of Martin Airport property. Years ago only a handful of boats would be here. Now with the price of fuel nearing $5.00 per gallon, this place gets very busy. It's a great place to swim and there are nearby restaurants and bars.What these boats are doing is called rafting. That is tying boats together while at anchor.

This is Cherie's idea of rafting.

Here are a few pictures of an evening with Steve and Lindsay.

At Al & Sandy's pier

From the 4th of July, Me and Cherie

Bill and Jenn.
Here are Brad, Jamie, Cetta and me doing a Brady Bunch impression.

More to follow as we plan some trips to Rock Hall and Fairlee Creek. There is still some good boating weather ahead and if I remember to take some pictures I'll document our travels.

And Then it Was Gone

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1984 I handled a fatal accident on York Rd. just south of Phoenix Rd. A 17 yr. old was driving northbound, went off the right shoulder and struck a tree.
He died instantly. When I notified the victim's mother of his death I was saddened to learn that he was an only child and his father left his mother a few months before. This poor woman lost her marriage and son and was suddenly all alone.

She had a cross placed at the accident scene which had been there ever since.
I had thought many times of stopping my car to read the memorial plaque on the cross but it's not a safe place to pull over. No shoulder and on a sharp curve.

I noticed today that after 24 years someone crashed in exactly the same spot, taking out the memorial cross.

I wonder if that person saw the smashed cross and realized the irony.

Serpico, How I Met My Hero, Sort Of.

Frank Serpico had always been a hero of mine. From reading the book to watching the film to seeing his Biography episode. Being a cop it was easy to look up to the man. How he got screwed by the NYPD made me hold him in even higher regard.

For those who don't know the story, Paco was a New York cop during a very corrupt time. He did his best to ignore the cops around him who were on the take but eventually felt his life was in danger by the "dirty" cops who didn't trust him. He was too honest. Serpico went to some friends in the department and to a newspaper journalist for help.

Soon after while attempting to arrest a wanted guy in his apartment building Serpico was shot in the face and left lying to die by his fellow cops. After he survived his wounds he blew open the corruption within the department. I believe it was called the Knapp Commission which held hearings leading to the arrests and firings of many police. Serpico retired from the force and was a bit of a vagabond for many years and now in his 70's lives in Stuyvesant, NY (Up state).

My former police chief, Neil Behan, was a former assistant commissioner in the NYPD and had spoke about Serpico and insinuated that he was one of the guys Serpico trusted.

I had found Serpico's website and thought I'd write him. I sent him an email mentioning how Behan had spoke of him and that I had admired him and what he had went through.

The next day I received an email from Vince Serpico who said his was Frank's nephew and was pretty much the middle man in contacting Frank as Frank doesn't own a computer but does use a computer at the library. He said he passed my message on to Frank.

The next day, June 2, 2005, I received an email from Frank Serpico thanking me for writing and asking if I thought Behan was a 10%'er or 80%'er. (Serpico believes that 10% of cops are honest, 80% are not and the other 10% are iffy.) Frank finished the email by writing that he would call me and we'd talk about it.

When I got home from work I checked the caller ID and saw F. Serpico had called. (He had the spelling differently but I'll keep his identity secret as it is a listed number)
I had missed his call. The rest of the day I was a nervous as hell. I felt like a school girl waiting for my boyfriend to call. Finally around 7:30pm he called again. I couldn't believe it. I thanked him for calling and then we discussed our mutual acquaintance, Behan. Needless to say Frank, or Paco, as his friends call him, had nothing good to say about Behan. Apparently Behan's story is a little exaggerated as to how he helped Serpico.
We talked about his career and about corruption in general. I have to say the man did most of the talking and genuinely enjoyed telling his stories. I was however surprised to see how liberal the man is and somewhat radical in his dislike for Bush/Cheney.
We talked for over 90 minutes. My ear was sore and my cordless phone was dying but I wouldn't hang up until he was ready.

He told me to call him anytime and I have his number from the caller ID but I have to say I don't have the nerve to call him as I don't have anything really to say to him.

Hey Paco, this is Greg from Baltimore, what's up dawg?, just wouldn't cut it.