Why darkies can't have anything nice, always fucking shit up

[CountDeMoney]

Balto. Co. roller rink began with great hopes, now dashed
Exasperated officials want to shut it down

By Nick Madigan, Mary Gail Hare and Jessica Anderson, The Baltimore Sun
4:18 PM EDT, April 17, 2010






When Barney Wilson was growing up in West Baltimore, one of seven children of a city police officer, there was no recreation center in his neighborhood and few entertainment options he or his siblings could afford.

It was with that memory fresh in his mind that Wilson, now the principal of Baltimore's Polytechnic Institute, opened a roller skating rink in Woodlawn 16 months ago. One of four partners who sank $1 million into Skateworks, Wilson hoped to create a place where "multiple generations can hang out."

The way Wilson saw it, the rink could be a model for businesses in urban centers — "if only the police and community can work together."

But the rink has been bedeviled by problems since it opened in December 2008, and the police are anything but pleased with the place. Huge crowds, fights, disturbances and arrests have been a regular feature of closing time on raucous Friday nights, and exasperated Baltimore County officials now have given Skateworks' owners until Wednesday to come up with a plan to prevent such disruptions. If they don't, the officials say, the rink will be closed.

"I am from a police family, and I understand clearly their concerns," Wilson, a 51-year-old father of two, said Friday. "At the end of the day, everyone wants to go home safely."

That's not always what has happened at Skateworks. Police officers have reported unruly crowds, fistfights, thefts and general rowdiness, mostly outside the rink in an industrial park off Whitehead Road as the crowds leave at midnight. Some nights, police say, hundreds of teenagers dart across the six lanes of Security Boulevard to congregate at a bus stop.

Police have been called to the rink or its immediate environs 196 times in the past 16 months. A year ago, two men were shot about 3 a.m. in a parking lot behind the rink.

The reports of violence have thrown a cloud over a place that, at its inception, had the full support of county officials and the community.

"This had all the greatest of intentions originally, and it just got out of hand," said Baltimore County police Cpl. Michael Hill. He said Friday that the situation has improved since a code enforcement hearing April 7, during which police officers testified about a long series of violent incidents and disturbances.

"We have not seen the problems since the hearing," Hill said. "It doesn't appear that they've had the late parties that were causing all these problems. There have been no serious calls for service, that we're aware of, since April 7."

Two days after that hearing — on a Friday, when the rink typically sees its biggest crowds — a reporter observed no altercations or arrests among the approximately 600 patrons. Many appeared to be middle-school students. Fifteen security guards were on duty, supervised by two of Skateworks' owners, Devin Johnson and Carolyn Pratt.

Before they could enter, patrons were asked to take off their shoes for inspection, open bags and purses, and give up pick combs. Besides weapons or drugs, the guards also checked for anything that might suggest membership in a gang, such as do-rags, Johnson said.

Watched by a half-dozen surveillance cameras inside — another 10 scanned the grounds outdoors — teens gathered in clumps, some on the wooden rink to dance to a thumping bass, others at tables eating pizza and gulping Powerade. Some posed for pictures.

"Kids are going to be kids, whether they are here or in the mall," said Corey Bradford, a security guard who has worked at the rink for a year. He said he had broken up a few fights inside the building in the past, but that he and the other guards usually foresee a potential fracas and stop it before it escalates.

"They respect us," he said of the teens. "We know all of the kids by name."

Paisley Satchell, a 12-year-old student at Father Charles Hall Middle School in Baltimore, called Skateworks "a good place to socialize with others." Without it, she said, "I wouldn't have a social life."

Her aunt, Martha Parker, 46, waited for her at a table near the entrance, passing the time by reading a book. Parker said she takes her niece to the rink once a week, along with as many of the girl's friends as can fit into her Volkswagen.

For 12-year-olds, "there's no other place to go," Parker said. "Everybody's got to come every week."

Parker used to take Paisley to the Shake & Bake Family Fun Center Roller Skating Rink on Pennsylvania Avenue but stopped going because "it was terrible — dangerous."

She said more parents need to stay at Skateworks while their kids are there, rather than just dropping them off. "I would be devastated if they closed," she said.

From behind the manager's desk, Pratt, one of the four owners, said most of the kids were normally picked up in front of the rink. But about a month ago, she said, the police officers who oversee the exodus from the building began preventing cars from waiting on the street outside, forcing kids down the hill to Security Boulevard to be picked up.

For those who need public transportation, Pratt said she normally texts the Maryland Transit Administration and asks for extra buses. She said most of the teens who frequent Skateworks are from Baltimore County, with about 20 percent from Baltimore.

By 11:30 p.m., the security guards began shouting for the kids to start making their way to the door. Outside, about 100 kids were waiting on the sidewalk across from the rink's entrance to be picked up. Three security guards stopped traffic and ushered teens across the street in a path marked by orange cones. The kids remained in clumps, shouting goodbyes and laughing.

Despite orders from the guards — "Yo, get out of the street!" — several youths ducked into the slow-moving traffic on Whitehead Road on their own to cross the street and make their way down the hill to Security Boulevard to catch the bus.

Jene McLecurin and Ashante Bennett, both 14, were among the smaller groups to break off and head down the hill. McLecurin, a Friendship Academy student in a "Twilight" T-shirt, said she hadn't come to skate, but rather to dance and because "there are boys here." She and Bennett, who attends Baltimore Freedom Academy, said they would be "mad" if the rink were shut down.

At a BP gas station at Security Boulevard and Whitehead Road, a dozen teenagers waited in line to buy chips and sodas. The crosswalk signal at the intersection didn't work, and many kids darted across Security Boulevard from the gas station's parking lot to reach the crowd at the bus stop.

By 12:30 a.m., four MTA buses had carried off the crowd on the north side of Security Boulevard, but some kids remained in the parking lot of a strip mall. A few stragglers headed off in different directions.

Inside the rink, the cleanup had begun.

Chanel Holmes, a 16-year-old Polytechnic Institute student who socializes and volunteers at the rink, said it would be important for the rink to stay open because many teens need a place to unwind after a week at school.

"You feel safe here," she said, adding that most of the "chaos" people hear about in relation to Skateworks happens "around the corner" and not inside the building. Nor, she suggested, is the trouble necessarily caused by people who go to the rink.

"They assume it's us causing the problems," she said, because Skateworks "has the most teenagers."

Wilson, the rink's co-owner, said that "predetermined attitudes" might be partly responsible for Skateworks' troubled reputation.

"There are not too many situations in Baltimore County where large groups of African-Americans congregate and then let out all at the same time," he said. "I don't think the county has another black-owned business of this size."

He compared the situation to a town suddenly getting a baseball team that lets out spectators all at the same time.

"We have to put in systems that will work," he said. "That requires cooperation from everybody, including our patrons. If we can't do this, then we should have a serious discussion about what community means and whether police understand these children. In some cases, I think they have predetermined that these kids are about bad things."

Wilson said he was somewhat encouraged that "the police and the county are offering us middle ground." He and his partners expect to hire four off-duty police officers to provide more security, and they will use the proposed 90-day probationary period to alleviate closing-time problems.

He will also ask the police to consider opening a Police Athletic League center at Skateworks.

"We want to establish a great working relationship with the police," Wilson said. "This should not be antagonistic. There are ways to have a large crowd without having problems."

[CountDeMoney]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui6-Wc0PDc4

[Tamas]

disturbing

[Strix]

Sounds like the night clubs in downtown Rochester. When they let out the police tactical unit gets pulled off their assignments to patrol the main area and surrounding streets.

Last year they had issues with people driving down for closing time to random fight people.

[Josquius]

What I find most odd is that a roller rink could be so popular.

[The Larch]

Police Athletic League center?

[garbon]

I have nice things.

[Jaron]

CdM is just sad he can't have any more Friday night skating adventures with his family.

[Grey Fox]

I have nice things.

but you're an Indian.

[garbon]

I have nice things.

but you're an Indian.

Oh. I'd better tell my boo that.

[Jaron]

I have nice things.

but you're an Indian.

Oh. I'd better tell my boo that.

I already know.

[garbon]

I already know.

[CountDeMoney]

Can't even have colleges in idyllic sylvan locales, fucking shit up and all.

Deadly triangle
In quiet college town, shooting leaves one student dead, one jailed, many questions

By Don Markus, The Baltimore Sun

FROSTBURG

There are no outward signs of tragedy at 68 E. College Ave. A couple of pizza boxes are stacked on the porch; a crushed beer can lies nearby. The blood has been cleaned from the front of the two-story house across the street from Frostburg State University.

But for four students who had made their separate ways from Baltimore and Washington to this pastoral college town in Western Maryland, the explosive confrontation during the early morning of April 18 has changed their lives forever.

There is the high school soccer standout from Glen Burnie who had struggled to catch on at a succession of small colleges. The Baltimore woman with whom he tangled at an off-campus party. The basketball player from Washington with whom she had a tumultuous, sometimes violent relationship. And the teammate from Waldorf who joined him last Sunday morning on an outing that would prove fatal.

Now Brandon Carroll, a sophomore forward for the Division III Bobcats, is dead. Classmate Tyrone Hall, who dreamed of international soccer stardom, faces life without parole. And this campus of 5,200 students nestled in the mountains of Allegany County is left with unanswered — perhaps unanswerable — questions.

"Everything that I've heard, everything that I knew about them, these were not violent people," Frostburg State University President Jonathan C. Gibralter said last week.

"They were from very loving and supportive families, very kind," he said. "The thing that shocks us the most is that we don't know where this came from."

Students packed the arena in which Carroll once competed for a candlelight vigil last week to honor his memory. Gibralter's voice had choked with emotion as he spoke to a crowd that included Carroll's mother and stepfather. But after the service, Gibralter expressed compassion for Hall.

"What would compel somebody to pull out a gun?" the university president asked. "I can only imagine how much fear he must have felt at that moment."

Police and campus sources say the confrontation grew out of an altercation between Hall and former Frostburg student Patrice Britton. But it appears to have had its genesis in a relationship that began months earlier, on another campus, hundreds of miles away.

Britton, a 20-year-old from the Gwynn Oak neighborhood of West Baltimore, came to Frostburg last spring from St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, N.C. It was there that she started dating fellow student Ellis Hartridge Jr., a near-neighbor from Washington.

The relationship continued after she transferred, and last fall, Hartridge followed Britton to Frostburg. The couple shared an off-campus apartment; Hartridge, 21, enrolled in the college as a junior, joined the basketball team and worked his way into the starting lineup.

But while Hartridge was establishing himself on the court, he was having trouble at home with Britton. In early December, she filed a protective order against him, alleging that he had been physically violent with her. Three days later, he filed a similar request, making similar allegations.

Britton admitted kneeing Hartridge after being pushed and choked, according to court documents. He admitted pushing her after she slapped him in the mouth and hit him in the head with a liquor bottle.

Frostburg coach Webb Hatch said Hartridge told him of his domestic difficulties around the middle of December.

"He had come to me and said he had some issues, that 'this young lady and I are not getting along,' " Hatch said. "They had made decisions to part company. He didn't tell me what her name was. I didn't want to know what her name was."

Hartridge would eventually file a police complaint against Britton. He told them she had damaged more than a dozen T-shirts and a sweater of his.

"She broke into my room and cut holes," he wrote in the complaint. "The holes were cut out right on the left side of each T-shirt where my heart would be."

Britton was charged with fourth-degree burglary, malicious destruction of property, violating the protective order and harassment.

Hall's dream

Less clear is Britton's relationship with Hall.

A graduate of Mount St. Joseph, the 21-year-old Hall had shown promise in soccer. Playing on high-level club teams in Maryland, he traveled across the country and overseas; a YouTube video shows him with a Bethesda club team on a tour of England.

One former coach said Hall obsessed about being an international star, to the point of referring to himself on his Facebook page as Tyrinho, in the manner of the single-named stars of Brazil.

"He was like a lot of kids, he had illusions of being a little better than he was," said Chris Barrett, an assistant coach at Division I Radford University in Virginia, where Hall worked out with the team while attending school there last spring.

"He [thought he] was headed to the pro contract, headed to Brazil, depending on who he told," Barrett said. "He had some potential, he was very talented. He really wanted to be a professional soccer player, but the academics held him up here."

Hall left Radford after failing to gain NCAA eligibility. Barrett said Hall submitted paperwork to a couple of big-time Division I programs, but no offers were forthcoming.

"At that time, Tyrone really needed to mature about the reality that he was probably not going to be a pro soccer player in Brazil," Barrett said. "He needed to worry about getting his degree and, like the [NCAA] commercial says, 'Be a professional in something else.' "

But the dream apparently would not die. Radford had been Hall's second stop in the search for a college at which he could play, after a year at Division II Limestone College in Gaffney, S.C. Division III Frostburg would be his third.

After arriving on campus last fall, Hall contacted soccer coach Keith Byrnes, who remembered watching the slick-footed midfielder play in tournaments when Hall was in high school. Byrnes says he understood that Hall had some work to do to regain his eligibility.

"It was kind of a wait-and-see," Byrnes said. "If he kept his skills up, I thought he could help us."

Then came April 17, and the off-campus party at which Britton saw Hall dancing with a woman. Hall told police that Britton pushed him in the face, then pushed the woman he was dancing with, resulting in a scuffle. As Hall and several of his friends were being made to leave the party, there was some back and forth between Hall and Britton. Brandon Carroll was there watching, according to a student who attended the party.

Like the others, the 20-year-old Carroll was a transfer student, from St. Vincent's College in Latrobe, Pa. Unlike Hartridge, he had yet to see much playing time for the Bobcats. But Hatch said Carroll rode the bench without complaint.

"His upside was huge," Hatch said. The coach met with the player three days before his death to review the season. "I told him, 'I'm really expecting you to contribute next year.' "

Hatch, who has coached basketball for more than 30 years on the high school and college level, described both Carroll and Hartridge as exemplary players and students.

Early in the morning of April 18 — hours after the party — Hartridge telephoned Hall. Hartridge, who had moved out of the apartment he shared with Britton, said he wanted to come to the house at 68 E. College Ave. to talk about his former girlfriend. Four of Hall's friends were at the house with him and two of them got on the phone and tried to defuse the situation.

Hartridge arrived with Carroll and another man shortly before 4 a.m. Hall came to the door, police say, with a 12-gauge shotgun on his shoulder. Hall told police that Hartridge lunged at him twice, and Hall fired, hitting him in the hip. Hall said Carroll then lunged at him, and he pulled the trigger again, blasting Carroll in the abdomen.

Carroll and Hartridge were taken by ambulance to the Western Maryland Regional Medical Center in Cumberland. Carroll died at the hospital a short time later. Hartridge is expected to recover.

Police say Hall waited in his home until police arrived. The high school soccer star has been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and two counts of assault. He is being held without bail at the Allegany County Detention Center in Cumberland.

'Spread peace'

Two nights after the fatal confrontation, some 2,500 mourners joined in the candlelight procession from the Upper Quad on the Frostburg campus to the vigil in Bobcat Arena. Carroll's great aunt Juanita Terrell implored the students "to use this terrible tragedy to pick up the torch and spread peace."

Frostburg sophomore Maurice Williams, a teammate and Carroll's best friend, surveyed the crowd.

"He told me his dream was to fill this gym," Williams said. "Even if this isn't a basketball game, this fulfills his legacy."

Terrell said after the vigil that Carroll's family would have no further comment. Britton, who is no longer enrolled at Frostburg, could not be reached; Hartridge's family declined to comment.

As teary-eyed students filed out of the service, the university president tried to piece together what had led to the tragedy.

"I think it was a matter of some intense emotionality, the matter of the heart, over a woman," Gibraltar said. "And I think it was outright fear. Fear on all their parts and an inability to know how to express that fear appropriately."

Williams is having trouble squaring his friend's violent end with the ordinarily serene life on this usually peaceful campus.

"When you pack up for school, you pack up certain things," he said. "The last thing you think anyone would pack is a shotgun."

[derspiess]

my boo

[Berkut]

"He told me his dream was to fill this gym," Williams said. "Even if this isn't a basketball game, this fulfills his legacy."