Rod Rosenstein Has New Friends In Baltimore

"Watch me make history."

My Memo Man, Rod Rosenstein, is in Baltimore, in a corporate law firm, with lots of new friends and Sally Yates.

Can you say "Land Bank"?

How about 2018 election interference.

Perhaps, just perhaps, if we are all very nice, My Memo Man will say "gerrymandering".

I would throw out "drugs, weapons, and tiny humans", but that would give away the mystery as to why he took the position.

I never did like Sally Yates because she took a peculiar stance in a piece she wrote, while at DOJ, entitled, "Poverty is not a crime" and failed to acknowledge where she got that line, then turned around and bastardized it by not making one single reference to child welfare.

She was mean to my Sweetie.

It seems I did not preserve her writings, neither did the DOJ.

My Memo Man is busy, busy, busy.

Stay tuned.

Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Joins King & Spalding as a Partner in Washington, D.C.

Rosenstein is the latest high-ranking Justice Department official to join the firm’s Special Matters & Government Investigations team; he will work closely with a deep bench of former federal prosecutors and senior government officials to help clients with their most challenging litigation, enforcement and reputational issues.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8, 2020 — King & Spalding today announced that former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein joins the firm’s Washington, D.C., office as a partner on its Special Matters & Government Investigations team.

Rosenstein spent almost two decades in senior legal management and leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Justice during the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, including as Deputy Attorney General (2017 to 2019) and United States Attorney (2005 to 2017). Prior to his appointment as the Department’s second-highest ranking official, he was the longest-serving Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney in recent history.

“Rod Rosenstein is an exceptional trial lawyer, strategist and leader with unquestioned integrity and toughness,” said Robert D. Hays, Jr., chairman of King & Spalding. “His arrival underscores the firm’s longstanding commitment to effective advocacy on the most complex and highest stakes government-related matters. Our clients will benefit from the unique experience of Rod and other senior government officials working together as a team. His arrival reflects the firm’s intent to continue building leading practices led by extraordinary lawyers to serve clients on their most pressing and sensitive needs.”

With his vast prosecutorial and enforcement background, Rosenstein becomes another critical member of King & Spalding’s Special Matters & Government Investigations team, which assists clients—corporate, institutional and individual—in sensitive and reputational legal challenges, including many involving government agencies, legislative bodies or state Attorneys General. In the past two years, the firm has significantly ramped up the group with an all-star roster of former senior Justice Department officials, including former Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates, former U.S. Attorneys Zachary Fardon and John Horn, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Alicia O’Brien and former FBI Chief of Staff Zack Harmon. Other former senior officials recently joining the firm include former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and former General Counsel for the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and acting USTR Stephen Vaughn.

Rosenstein said, “I worked with many current and former firm lawyers in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and I learned that some of the best lawyers in the world work at King & Spalding. When considering where to go after leaving the Department of Justice, it became clear to me why so many former government officials choose this firm. With an unparalleled depth of experience across its practice groups and a long and distinguished record of success in courtrooms, King & Spalding is a bipartisan firm that focuses on helping clients resolve complex and sensitive matters in the United States and abroad. The inclusive and collaborative culture allows every client to benefit from the broad expertise and deep insight of more than 1,100 exceptional lawyers throughout the firm’s 21 offices. I look forward to working with my new colleagues to expand the firm’s government investigations, national security and cybersecurity practices.” 

As Deputy U.S. Attorney General, Rosenstein formulated and implemented Department policies and programs; coordinated interactions with the White House and other federal agencies, the Judiciary, and the Congress; interacted with state, local, and foreign government leaders; and provided supervision and direction to all Department components, including its litigating divisions and law enforcement agencies.

Rosenstein conducted complex investigations and handled litigation in trial and appellate courtrooms as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Department’s Tax Division (2001 to 2005), as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland (1997 to 2001), and as an Associate Independent Counsel (1995 to 1997).

Rosenstein started his legal career in 1989, as a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He first joined the Department of Justice as a trial attorney in the prestigious Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division (1990 to 1993), before serving as counsel to the Deputy Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division (1993 to 1995). In these and other roles, he received dozens of awards and honors for his performance. In addition, Rosenstein gained impressive trial experience while representing the United States at 23 jury trials and arguing 21 appeals in various appellate courts around the country, including the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court criminal case of Chavez-Meza v. United States, in which the Court ruled in favor of his argument.

“Rod deserves his well-earned reputation for being decisive and unflappable in extraordinary professional situations,” said Special Matters practice chair Wick Sollers. “His experiences conducting and supervising large criminal and civil litigation uniquely qualify him to counsel and defend clients facing complex investigations, lawsuits and enforcement matters. Clients will benefit from his big-picture perspective, as well as his insights from having updated, improved and formulated federal law enforcement policies on corporate and white-collar enforcement, national security, CFIUS and cyber-digital issues. King & Spalding’s Special Matters & Government Investigations team is stronger with his addition.”

Rosenstein graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, with a B.S. in Economics, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

About King & Spalding
Celebrating more than 130 years of service, King & Spalding is an international law firm that represents a broad array of clients, including half of the Fortune Global 100, with more than 1,100 lawyers in 21 offices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The firm has handled matters in over 160 countries on six continents and is consistently recognized for the results it obtains, uncompromising commitment to quality, and dedication to understanding the business and culture of its clients. More information is available at www.kslaw.com.

After Trump administration stint, Baltimore is still on Rod Rosenstein’s mind

As he takes a job with a high-profile law firm, Maryland’s former longtime U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein isn’t looking to talk much about his time with the Trump administration. He’s turned down book offers, and avoids questions on the subject.

If he did write a book, Rosenstein told The Baltimore Sun Wednesday, “it would probably be a lot about Baltimore.”

The city remains on the former deputy U.S. attorney general’s mind, after 12 years leading federal law enforcement efforts that he said were key to the city experiencing fewer than 200 homicides in 2011. (There were 348 homicides in the city last year.) He remains in touch with protege Robert K. Hur, who succeeded him as U.S. attorney for Maryland.

“It’s important for everybody at the federal, state and local level to agree that reducing murders is a priority,” Rosenstein said. “I’m hopeful they’ll get back to where we were before ... but it’s going to take a long time.”

The law firm of King & Spalding announced that Rosenstein will join its special government investigations team, following about eight months he spent with his family after stepping down as deputy attorney general. Rosenstein said it was Maryland’s former Republican governor Robert Ehrlich who helped connect him to the new job after they had lunch in the summer.

Rosenstein’s tumultuous two-year tenure included writing a memo supporting the firing of FBI Director James Comey and overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

[Read more] Before leaving Baltimore, Rod Rosenstein predicted he might not last long as deputy attorney general »
Of his tenure, Rosenstein said, “I’ve been out of government for eight months, and I’m on to a new career. ... I’m practicing law, not politics."

Rosenstein has continued to weigh in on Baltimore’s crime rates and on issues of law enforcement. On Jan. 1, he tweeted: “When Baltimore City prosecutors and police worked with federal and state partners to send every violent repeat offender to prison in 2011, only 197 people were murdered. Now criminals murder 350 victims and shoot hundreds more every year. WHAT CHANGED?”

When Baltimore City prosecutors and police worked with federal and state partners to send every violent repeat offender to prison in 2011, only 197 people were murdered. Now criminals murder 350 victims and shoot hundreds more every year. WHAT CHANGED? https://t.co/7dUt2yd5Bt

— Rod Rosenstein (@RodRosenstein) January 1, 2020

Rosenstein maintains other ties to the city — he was scheduled to speak to a city law club, the Serjeants’ Inn, Wednesday night.

Rosenstein noted that the number of federal prosecutors in Baltimore increased significantly when he was No. 2 at the Justice Department.

“That’s not because I was showing favoritism; we had additional resources and were able to allocate them based on population and crime rates and need,” he said.

He said Hur is “doing a superb job,” and suggested, without citing specific agencies, that other law enforcement partners are not on the same page.

“If people are not being caught and prosecuted locally, they need to find out why that is,” Rosenstein said. “We had a decade of sustained improvements in Baltimore. We had improvements in Prince George’s County [as well] — the PG County improvements have stuck; they have not fallen back. Baltimore is worse today than when I got there 15 years ago.”

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Baltimore County Schools Shreds Procurement Records After Being Told Not To Do It

I bet Wayne County does it, too.

Baltimore County Schools Destroyed Accounting Records Amid High Profile Procurement Audit and Directive to Stop all Record Destruction

In the midst of a high profile and widely anticipated procurement audit last year, employees from Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) had over 53,000 lbs. of accounting documents from its fiscal services file room destroyed, a windowless storage-room-turned-office in its Business Administration building.

This, according to information provided by BCPS in response to a direct request, specifically seeking a log detailing which records had been removed from the room, purportedly first scanned and then destroyed.

Last fall, the school board directed then-interim Superintendent Verletta White to direct all staff to cease the destruction of all documents after roughly 2,600 financial disclosure statements were found to have been destroyed months earlier, which included some records needed for the procurement audit.

Two floors above the meeting room, where school board members convene for bimonthly public meetings in Building E of BCPS’ Greenwood campus headquarters, the file room was emptied to make room for a new office.  Certificates from a shredding company show that the records were destroyed in November and December 2018, a few months before an April 2019 report was delivered to the school board, at the conclusion of what was supposed to be a comprehensive procurement audit which looked into the system’s procurement practices for years 2012 through 2017.

While BCPS provided a list on Friday, detailing what was archived and sent to an offsite storage facility, what was purportedly “electronically scanned” – and then destroyed – is not so clear. And the scant information provided by the school system does not include what a system employee told The Gunpowder Gazette was also in the file room for fiscal services.

According to that employee, who spoke with The Gunpowder Gazette under the condition of anonymity due to fears of retribution, the sudden and unplanned clearing of the file room – which included “wall-to-wall” and “a center isle” full of file cabinets – included employees’ reimbursement documents as well as travel, mileage and conference expenses which were a topic at the center of controversy for the district after the New York Times and Baltimore Sun published reports which questioned travel and vendor-employee relationships.

So far, the school district acknowledges that the destroyed files were from the Department of Fiscal Services, stating that boxes identified for destruction included vendor invoice documents from its accounts payable department.

Two orders to destroy the records were signed off by the “office head” of the Office of Accounting. Other records were sent to a storage facility. But, not included in a description of the transferred documents, were reimbursement and travel records the employee claims had been there.

The Gunpowder Gazette has requested precise details from Baltimore County schools on exactly what was destroyed since a vague initial response from the school system is disputed by the anonymous employee with familiarity with the file room which was turned into an office for a senior executive director.

Shredgate #1:

Knowledge of this second shredding arose in the middle of a yearlong and continued fight for records concerning the first known shredding – coined by some as ‘Shredgate” or “Purgegate” – that occurred months before, in which roughly 2,600 financial disclosure statements were suddenly purged in the middle of a reporter’s request for financial disclosure records, which immediately preceded the procurement audit.

Financial disclosure statements ask employees to declare all work performed outside of the school system, including any done for school vendors.

The forms are signed under penalty of perjury and the failure by employees to disclose information on them can lead to prison sentences which is what occurred in the case of former superintendent of Baltimore County schools, Dallas Dance, last year.

In late 2017, after The New York Times and Baltimore Sun published stories which questioned vendor and employee relationships, widespread calls for an audit ensued. In early 2018, after Dance was indicted for perjury for failing to disclose $147,000 in income on his financial disclosure forms, pressure mounted.

Within weeks, 2,600 financial forms would be destroyed. At roughly 16 pages each, 40,000 pages for years 1997 to 2013 were simply eliminated and included two years’ worth of records – 2012 to 2013 – that were later needed for the procurement audit.

While the discarded financial disclosure records were destroyed in accordance with school policy – which states that anything over four-years-old can be destroyed – it was the first time in the 21 years the records had been maintained by the system that school staff made use of the policy and decided to purge the records.

For over one year, a now-Gunpowder Gazette reporter has tried in vain to obtain any details about the massive document destruction. The shredding was discovered after several anomalous responses to the records led to the discovery that they had been destroyed during the precise time she had been requesting them.

To date, an attorney for the school system’s law office that oversaw the destruction of documents says there are “no responsive records” available surrounding any part of the disappearance of the financial records.

For months, the office has maintained that there simply are no records of any expenses, employees, contractors or shredding companies which may have been involved in the selection or destruction of roughly 40,000 pages of financial disclosure statements.

But shred certificates – sans a detailed log of the destroyed contents – exist for the records destroyed in the system’s Fiscal Services file room last November and December, which occurred months after the financial disclosure statements vanished without a trace.

Shredgate # 2?:

On Friday, two responses – obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act request – show the school system not only destroyed the records after a directive by board members specifically prohibited it, but the records officer also misinterpreted a reporter’s request in which The Gunpowder Gazette specifically requested a log detailing precisely what had been destroyed, in addition to what may have been archived or stored elsewhere.

Instead, a list of some of the documents that had been archived was provided, including banking reports that were moved for storage to an offsite facility. But requests for details on what had been scanned and subsequently destroyed, only produced responsive documents called “Transfer Requisitions,” and “Certificates of Records Destruction,” provided by a shredding company which stated that 53,000 lbs of of the records were destroyed. Additionally, a short description in the response attempted to describe some of what was discarded.

According to a single sentence in the response from the system’s law office, “boxes identified for destruction included vendor invoice documents from Accounts Payable that were scanned and retained electronically.”

Yet no such detail was provided on what had been purportedly scanned and destroyed or retained, elsewhere.

Baltimore County Schools did not respond to requests for clarification or comment. But communications specialist, Brandon Oland, sent a message after the publishing of this story, stating, “Nothing to add, other than I hope you have a good evening.”

The school system also failed to address the decision to scan and destroy the accounting documents in the midst of a procurement audit and after a directive by school board members specifically asked for all document destruction to immediately cease.

In question is who exactly oversees the documents since the directive to cease purging any records was modified, a month after the directive was implemented, to apply to executive directors and above.

Interim Superintendent Verletta White, who led the system at the time of the purges, stepped down in June and was hired as a consultant for the system after current Superintendent Darryl Williams took over on July 1 of this year.

Timeline of events leading to shredding and procurement audit:

Feb 14, 2018: Reporter made first of six requests to review Financial Disclosure Statements (FDS)

Feb 14, 2018: BCPS’ Office of Law created Excel spreadsheet to log the future destruction of the FDS (the same day that the reporter made the first round of FDS examination requests). Destruction, according to BCPS, occurred on April 27, 2018 and Aug 1, 2018.

May 22, 2018: BCPS school board hired UHY to conduct procurement audit, chooses years 2012 to 2017 for scope.

Aug 9, 2018: Reporter discovered, after six rounds of requests for FDS, that roughly 2,600 had been destroyed

August 21, 2018: School Board directs superintendent to direct school staff to cease all further document destruction due to active audit.

September 2018: The directive to freeze all record destruction in BCPS modified to include only executive directors and above.

November 12, 2018: Seven boxes of material from “Fiscal Services File Room” destroyed. Seven boxes archived. Signed off by “Office Head” from Office of Accounting. But shred certificate states: 26,715 lbs of materials destroyed.

December 7, 2018: Fifteen boxes of documents containing materials from “Fiscal Services File Room” destroyed. Nine boxes archived. Signed off by “Office Head” from Office of Accounting. But shred certificate states: 26,365 lbs of materials destroyed.

April 9, 2019: UHY provided audit report to Baltimore County Board of Education, produced under its consulting services arm, UHY Advisors.

Want to learn about the backstory to this story?  See: Gunpowder Gazette Insider: The Story Behind the Story on Baltimore County Public Schools’ Financial Document Destruction

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The Legacy Of Elijah Cummings - Devoid Of The Love Of Rockeymoore

It was not Elijah, it was his wife.

Rockeymoore's eulogy was devoid of love, unless you consider her passionate roar for Hillary 2020 Clinton as a testimony of love.

I was repulsed.

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HUD: Did SIGTARP Have A Special Talk With Ben Carson? Baltimore Press Conference On Opportunity Zones

Ben Carson speaks upon self sufficiency.

Will this self sufficiency assistance contain opportunities for legal representation to go after public corruption in fraudulent mortgage and property tax foreclosure schemes?

What about a bit of self sufficiency support to take out these Public Private Partnership so called land banks which just so happened to be designed to intentionally interfere in elections?

Hey Ben, hook me up with some of that legal self sufficiency stuff and get me with the U.S. Treasury FinCEN so the people in Baltimore and Detroit can stay in the homes before the next round of stealin'.

Now, that TARP - Hardest Hit Funds are all done, HUD seems to be rolling out a new model, walking away from the RFP, and listening to the people.

You must always have a replacement hit the ground running operation in queue.

My only question is, "What is going to happen to all those Public Private Partnerships and their Predictive Modeling Crappy Social Impact Bond Program Fake Ass Operations?

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Cocktails & Popcorn: Trump v. Cummings - Who Will Be The First To Say TARP In Detroit?

Contrary to what the media wishes you to believe, their #coloredrevolution psyoptic has absolutely nothing to do with the epidermis of another human.

Privatization 301 - Gerrymandering & Cartology:
"If you do not live there, you cannot vote there."
(Fall enrollment for the next #coloredrevolution
 starts soon!)

This #coloredrevolution is about the color of property ownership heat ramping maps based upon meshed governmental databases through Public Private Partnerships of foreign operations for the purposes  of stealin', and in this particular instance, I am focusing on TARP, Hardest Hit Funds, because I am the world's expert on stealin'.

Forced migration is a war crime, you know.

Elijah Cummings was the first to speak out upon the stealin' of TARP, a sophisticated, complex fraud scheme developed by "Legal Geniuses" (trademark pending) to execute the foreign invasion of the bloodless war using Predictive Modeling Crap to implement privatizations by stealin' the children, the land and the votes.

But, Trump is the first person to bear witness to stealin' in the public cybersquare by calling out Baltimore.

President Trump: "Baltimore has been very badly mishandled for many years. And you know Congressman Cummings has been there for a long time, he's had a very iron hand on it. It's a corrupt city, there's no question about it." pic.twitter.com/XE5Ds4rXy6

— The Hill (@thehill) July 30, 2019

Now, the only question left is to figure out who will be the first to say TARP in Detroit.

#sayhisname 

State is 'gold mine' for human trafficking

Baltimore Received $1.8 Billion from Obama’s Stimulus Law

City burned despite ‘massive investment’ implemented by president

Cummings Introduces TARP Accountability Legislation

Companies receiving TARP funds would be required to publicly disclose expenditures

Washington, DC—Today, Congressman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), a senior member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and member of the Joint Economic Committee, introduced the Accountability from Corporations for Outlays Under TARP (ACCOUNT) Act, which would require institutions receiving assistance under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to report expenditures on corporate junkets, executive compensation and bonuses, and other employee perks.

“When these companies come to us on their knees begging for money and then turn around and continue the partying on Wall Street with the corporate junkets and million-dollar bonuses, it is nothing less than a slap in the face of the American taxpayers,” Congressman Cummings said. “The American people are now shareholders in these companies, and it is only right that we know how our money is being managed and spent.”

Congressman Cummings has been a leading critic of profligate spending by companies that have received TARP funding—particularly expenditures on executive compensation and bonuses, corporate junkets, and sports sponsorships—and is concerned about the lack of transparency with regard to how these institutions are spending taxpayer dollars.

Under the ACCOUNT Act, any company receiving TARP funds would be required to prominently disclose on its website its expenditures on corporate events and junkets, bonuses and compensation, corporate jet use and executive travel, club memberships, and lobbying. The information would be updated monthly.

“While my neighbors in Baltimore continue to lose their jobs and their homes, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to understand why AIG is taking their hard-earned money and then giving away more than a billion dollars in bonuses or why Citigroup is taking this money and then spending $400 million to put its name on a baseball stadium in New York,” Congressman Cummings said. “This bill is an important first step in bringing transparency and accountability to the distribution of TARP funds.”

111th CONGRESS

1st Session

H.R. 846

To require institutions receiving assistance under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to report certain corporate data, and for other purposes.

---

February 4, 2009

Mr. Cummings introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Financial Services

---

A BILL

To require institutions receiving assistance under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to report certain corporate data, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Accountability from Corporations for Outlays Under TARP Act” or the “Account Act”.

REPORTING BY ASSISTED INSTITUTIONS ON CERTAIN EXPENDITURES.

(a) In General.—Title I of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (12 U.S.C. 5211 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following new section:

REPORTING BY ASSISTED INSTITUTIONS ON CERTAIN EXPENDITURES.

“(a) In General.—The Secretary shall require any financial institution that receives any assistance in any form under this title on or after October 3, 2008 (hereafter in this section referred to as the ‘assisted institution’), to publicize on the corporate website of such institution, in a prominent location on the homepage or on a dedicated tab or window accessible through a link prominently displayed on the homepage, the following information, which shall be updated on a monthly basis:

“(1) Total expenditures made by the institution on travel during the month for which the report is being made, including reports on expenditures on each of the following: plane fares, rental cars, hotel expenses, food purchases, and any other expenses incurred by corporate employees during travel.

“(2) Total expenditures made by the institution on lobbying (as defined in the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995) at both the Federal and State levels, including a list of the individual States where lobbying activity was conducted.

“(3) A list of the corporate events, including retreats, conferences, planning sessions, and office parties held at the assisted institution’s place of business or organized at any other location by the assisted institution, citing the city, State, and venue of the event; date of the event; number of attendees at the event; and the entire sum of expenses associated with the event paid by the assisted institution.

“(4) A list of the corporate jets owned and a list of the trips taken by corporate and non-corporate officials on these jets which shall cite the total cost to the assisted institution of operating the jets for each listed trip.

“(5) A list of the corporate sponsorships supported by the company citing the name of each entity sponsored and the amount provided to each sponsored entity.

“(6) A list of the automobiles provided by the assisted institution to employees of the institution and their values together with the cost to the assisted institution of the operation of each automobile.

“(7) The total amount of compensation provided to the employees of the assisted institution, including expenditures on each of bonuses of any kind, retention payments of any kind, and any other form of compensation, citing the form thereof.

“(8) A list of all club or corporate memberships maintained by the assisted institution citing the cost of each membership.

“(9) Total corporate expenditures on furniture, office equipment, and office renovations made during the period by the assisted institution.

“(10) Such other information as the Secretary may require to be disclosed or the assisted institution wishes to disclose.

“(b) Regulations And Compliance.—The Secretary shall—

“(1) prescribe appropriate regulations to implement and carry out this section; and

“(2) establish appropriate mechanisms to ensure appropriate compliance with the requirements of this section”
.

(b) Clerical Amendment.—The table of sections for title I of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 136 the following new item:

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Day 184.3. Pelosi Connections To Port of Baltimore - Basmati Rice.

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If Baltimore Police Can Do It To Adults, What About The Kids?

For your viewing pleasure, I have found a clip from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, providing a whimsical take on the blatant lunacy of the Baltimore Police Department in its operations, even during a federal investigation.

For those who wish to read the actual findings report of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, just scroll down.

Either way, I wish for my audience to keep one thing in mind:  "If a police department operates in this egregious manner in dealing with its residents, what do you think it is doing to its children?

 

"...BPD uses unreasonable force against juveniles. These incidents arise from BPD’s failure to use widely-accepted tactics for communicating and interacting with youth. Instead, officers interacting with youth rely on the same aggressive tactics they use with adults, leading to unnecessary conflict. "

DOJ INVESTIGATION OF THE BALTIMORE CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISIO... by Beverly Tran on Scribd

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Water Shutoffs Are Costly For Taxpayers When Children Are Involved

What struck me about this article was not that Baltimore's water shut off campaign is similar to Detroit's water issue, it immediately called out the elephants in the room:

Big corporations with outstanding water bills that will face no punitive actions, and,

Child Protective Services.

The rates of foster care in Maryland hover around $30 a day, just for placement.  This does not include court costs, administration and services.  On a low end estimate, an out of home placement of a child removed due to water shutoff stands to run the tax payers about $2000 a month, with a minimum time frame of 3 months.

An average past due water bill, according to the story, starts at $250.

You do the math.

This City Could Become The Next Detroit

Starting this week, 25,000 households in Baltimore will suddenly lose their access to water for owing bills of $250 or more, with very little notice given and no public hearings.

Rita, a renter in Southeast Baltimore who asked to remain anonymous for this story in order to protect her two children from being taken away, told ThinkProgress she was served with a shutoff notice last week. Maryland law states that a child that is “neglected” may be taken out of his or her home and put into foster care. One characteristic of “neglect” as defined by the Maryland Department of Human Resources is a child with “consistently poor hygiene” that is “un-bathed, [having] unwashed or matted hair, noticeable body odor.”

“I love my kids, and I’d do anything for them,” Rita told ThinkProgress. “But if I turn on the shower or the sink and there’s no water, how can I give them a bath?”

Food and Water Watch researcher Mary Grant explained that making water unavailable to residents is a major health risk, and that if Baltimore were to deprive 25,000 households of water, diseases would have a high chance of propagating throughout densely-populated neighborhoods.

“There is direct risk associated with lack of access to water,” Grant told ThinkProgress. “When you lose your water service, you lose water to wash your hands to flush the toilet, there is risk of disease spreading.”

City officials like Department of Public Works director Rudy Chow claim that residents using water without paying are to blame for the $40 million in overdue water bills. In fact, the Baltimore Sun found more than a third of the unpaid bills stem from just 369 businesses, who owe $15 million in revenue, while government offices and nonprofits have outstanding water bills to the tune of $10 million. One of those businesses, RG Steel (now bankrupt) owes $7 million in delinquent water bills all by itself.

“It’s interesting that the city isn’t targeting those businesses first,” Grant said.

According to Grant, Baltimore has steadily increased water usage rates over the past three years by a total of 42 percent, once another 11 percent rate increase takes effect this July. The Baltimore Sun reported that the public works department elected to raise the rates in 2013, when 19,500 customers owed$29.5 million. While the city has pointed out that there are payment plans available for residents behind on water bills, Grant said the help is far too small to make any real difference for overdue households.

“There is low-income assistance, but it’s only a one-time payment of $161,” Grant said.

Approximately half of Baltimore’s 1.8 million residents rent their homes, and many are counting on property owners to promptly pay water bills. Even if a landlord is not making payments, Baltimore’s water department refuses to open new water accounts for anyone who isn’t a property owner. Jessica Lewis, co-founder of the Housing Rights Alliance, said landlords shifting water payment responsibilities to tenants is a “growing problem.”

“We have weekly tenants’ meetings here, and there’s never a meeting where someone isn’t talking about how high the water bills are,” Lewis said. “Tenants have a hard time challenging water bills when these burdens are shifted from the landlord to the tenant.”

Last year in Detroit, residents fought back against a similar plan to shut off water to customers with overdue bills. At one point, the United Nations stepped in and condemned the city’s water shutoff plan, taking the side of residents unable to pay increasingly high water bills.

“Disconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to lack of means constitutes a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights,” the statement read.

Catarina de Albuquerque, a UN expert on the human right to water and sanitation, directly addressed the argument that Detroit Water and Sewerage Department officials proposed that residents who have the means but don’t pay deserve to lose their access to water.

“Disconnections due to non-payment are only permissible if it can be shown that the resident is able to pay but is not paying. In other words, when there is genuine inability to pay, human rights simply forbids disconnections,” de Albuquerque said in the statement.

According to Jessica Lewis, Baltimore’s recent water shutoff initiative may be the follow-up to a failed effort that could have led to the privatization of Baltimore’s water last year. In August 2014, a group of Baltimore residents and community organizations formed the One Baltimore United coalition, which dedicated itself to fighting a proposed $500,000 consulting contract between the City of Baltimore and Veolia, a private water corporation.

The Baltimore Sun reported that Veolia’s proposal for an evaluation of the city’s aging water systems would ostensibly improve “operation and maintenance performance” while “reducing costs and enhancing operational efficiencies.” However, Lewis said that would have only paved the way to privatization.

“What happens is these studies then become proprietary information, and the city has to agree to privatizing some of its infrastructure for the repairs to be done,” Lewis said. “[The contract] was only shut down because of a strong public outcry.”

Baltimore’s crumbling water infrastructure is estimated to lose enough water to fill the city’s World Trade Center every day, about 20 percent of the total finished water revenue.

Residents and advocates are calling for the city to institute a moratorium on all water shutoffs until those served with notices have had a chance to have their side considered in public hearings. The city has yet to respond to protesters’ demands of a moratorium, and has not yet scheduled any public hearings.

“The city is trying to make the case that this is bad actors, but many people don’t have the resources to pay their water bill in this low wage economy,” Grant said. “We don’t want to get into a situation where people have to choose between food on their plate and water in their tap.”

Repeated calls to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s office, the Baltimore Department of Public Works, and Baltimore City Council president Bernard C. “Jack” Young were not returned.

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