[BALTIMORESUN] For the third time in a month, 18-year-old Curtis Deal had been incarceratedBook 'im, Mahmoud!
on gun or drug charges. Judge Nicole Taylor wanted to be sure the young man understood what was expected if she released him to wait for trial.
"I'm gonna give you a second... uh... third... uh...fourteenth chance...
"You're not going out at night, you're not going to get food, you're not going to meet your girlfriend. You're in your house," Taylor told him, raising her voice. "I'm giving you an opportunity to go to school and not be in jail pending this trial. The curfew is 1 p.m., 7 days a week."
Rrrr! Tough! Don't get too much tougher than that, do you?
Deal said he understood.
Right.
Taylor wished him luck.
"I trust you, now!"
The next day about 3 p.m., Deal was fatally shot by a Baltimore police officer after allegedly jumping out of a vehicle being tailed by officers and fleeing through the same neighborhood where he'd been arrested the week before. Police said an officer chasing Deal shot him after he saw Deal had a gun and feared for his own life.
"Don't shoot!" he begged, just before the copper shot him full of holes. He had his hands up! He was pleadin' for his life! He was a good boy...!
The officer's body camera captured the shooting, police said.
Ewps.
An aunt said Thursday the family was not prepared to make a statement. Deal's attorney also declined to comment Thursday.
"Prob'y somebody else in the camera!"
Almost immediately after the shooting, the circumstances of Deal's release became a flashpoint in the growing debate in Baltimore around perceived leniency for repeat gun offenders in the court system. "That's really despicable, because it's putting our officers and our citizens in harm's way seeing these people continuously possess these firearms and walk these streets and want to inflict harm on people," said T.J. Smith, a police front man.
"But he had his hands up! Youse can see it! Kinda!"
"It shows dysfunction, I believe, in our criminal justice system," said Mayor Catherine Pugh. "People who have those many gun charges probably should not be on our streets."
"An' dat might not be a gun in his hand! It wuz prob'ly a bag o' Skittles!"
Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said authorities need to "make sure people carrying guns in the community are held accountable." He said Deal's death was "tragic," but that the officer was "put in a situation maybe he shouldn't have been in."
I'm not sure what was so tragic about it.
Smith, Pugh and Rosenstein all emphasized the context for their comments: a city reeling from gun violence, with more than a killing a day so far in 2017. But none of them spoke to the specific nature of Deal's arrests, the evidence against him, or the conditions of his release.
Wipe the meal from your chins, guys. You're drooling.
The recording of Deal's 20-minute bail review hearing from the day before his death as well as court records from his two prior arrests provide a better understanding of those circumstances.
A better understanding of how a formerly nice city came to be uninhabitable.
Deal, who turned 18 in November, was first arrested as an adult in the city just a month ago.
Don't even ask about his juvie record. No doubt he was a nice boy, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The coppers prob'ly had it in for him, too.
On Jan. 4, he was charged with four handgun counts. According to court records, plainclothes officers were in an unmarked vehicle in the 1100 block of S. Carey Street that day when they observed Deal, whom they recognized, standing on a corner. Upon seeing the officers, Deal looked startled, "put his hands up in the air and shouted 'I'm leaving,'" police wrote.
"Hands up! Don't shoot! I wuz just standin' here mindin' my own bidnid!"
As he did, an officer saw a bulge in his waistline, which the officer believed to be a gun, the records say.
"Izzat a .380 in yer waistband or are ya happy to see me?"
One of the officers exited the vehicle and Deal ran, thus beginning an extended foot chase.
See? Dey had it in for him!
Eventually Deal was caught.
[TACKLE!]
"Ow! Police brutality!"
"Shuddup."
[CLICK!]
The officer chasing him said he'd heard Deal throw the gun in an alley and it was recovered, the records say.
"Not my gun! Somebody left it dere!"
At the time, Deal was already prohibited from possessing a firearm after a previous juvenile arrest, the records say.
"It wuz just for personal use!"
Deal was transported to the hospital because "he was complaining that he couldn't breathe," and later was charged.
"I can't breathe! I can't breathe!"
"Yeah. That's what they all say!"
He posted $100,000 bail the next day and was released.
"Can you take a personal check?"
"This is Baltimore. Of course we can!"
"Can you hold it until Thursday?"
On Jan. 30, Deal was arrested a second time -- again by plainclothes officers, again after an extended pursuit.
[TACKLE!]
"Ow! Police brutality!"
"Shuddup."
[CLICK!]
According to court records, he'd been spotted approaching a vehicle, seeing officers, then taking off with a clenched fist, court records say.
"What's that in his hand?"
"Prob'ly Skittles."
"Better chase him to make sure!"
"Boy, I really got it in for him!"
Deal allegedly tossed a bag of suspected heroin under a car before he was caught, court records say. He was released on his own recognizance the next day.
"Okay. You can go. But don't do it again!"
"No, no, commissioner! Of course not!"
"Better spit out that mouthful of butter, kid. It don't seem to be melting!"
At Deal's bail review hearing Monday, Taylor began considering his third arrest, from last week, in which he was charged with nine new gun and drug counts.
"Nine new gun and drug counts?"
Police alleged that Deal had been involved in a large-scale drug operation in several vacant homes in the 1900 block of Frederick Avenue, according to court records. Raiding the homes, officers netted a gun, ammunition, hundreds of gel caps of suspected heroin, and thousands of dollars in cash, records show. Deal had run from the location with a co-defendant in the case and both had been arrested, police said. Officers had pinned the entire haul on the pair.
"Dat wudn't mine! Somebody left it here!"
In court, Taylor pressed prosecutors about the charges against Deal. She acknowledged drug transactions were occurring at the home, and that Deal and his co-defendant were in the area and had wanted to escape when police rushed in. But she noted a difference between Deal and the co-defendant. "They want to get out of that yard, and in the yard there's a lot of money, and on his co-defendant there's a lot of money and there's lots of gel caps. But on Mr. Deal there's no money, no drugs, no gun...?" Taylor asked.
"They're both standing in the same tub of poop, but he don't have none in his mouth? Gotta give him benefit of the doubt!"
"How about the other guy, yer honor?"
"Listerine."
"He's an active participant in a large-scale sale of drugs," said Assistant State's Attorney David Chiu, arguing for the state. "This isn't someone who just happened to be there. This was a lengthy period of observation with multiple sales. Flight obviously is evidence of guilty knowledge."
"I know you're a legal genius and everything, yer honor, but trust me on that!"
Chiu pointed out that Deal was already out on $100,000 bail from his previous gun case at the time of this arrest.
"See? Here's his check, exhibit K!"
"Given the connection of violence and drugs and guns and the enormous amount of drugs that were being sold here, while he's out on bail for guns, the state thinks he poses a continuing and extreme risk to public safety," Chiu said.
"Y'think?"
Taylor asked Deal's defense attorney, Jerome Bivens, what he thought.
My guess would be racism.
"Judge, this was a lot of confusion, a whole lot of people, and this is the standard scenario: We see two black guys running, we're going to lock them up," Bivens said.
Toldja so!
Bivens said Deal was in his last year at Digital Harbor High School.
"He's still a schoolboy!"
His family attended church,
"He might, too. Someday. Who knows?"
he played basketball.
"Midnight basketball!"
"He tells me that his intention is to go into the Army and to study engineering," Bivens said.
"And the U.S. Army would be ever so happy to get a guy like him!"
Taylor said she understood all the facts in the case weren't clear, but noted Deal's pending gun and drug charges. "And now here he is running allegedly from an area where there's lots of guns and drugs," Taylor said.
"Just the wrong place at the wrong time, yer honor! Coulda happened to anybody!"
"Ain't never happened to me!"
Bivens declined to comment Thursday. A court spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment from Taylor.
"He's dead now. We should just move on..."
Deal -- who listed himself as jobless and indigent in court records -- had been released on a $250,000 unsecured bond, meaning he wouldn't have to put any money down but would theoretically have to pay the full amount if he didn't show up for court.
"Can you take a personal check?"
"Yer sure it's good?"
"Can you hold it till Saturday?"
In addition to that and the curfew, Deal would have to check in with the court three times a week, and bring proof that he was attending classes, Taylor said.
That worked well.
The next day, hours after his 1 p.m. curfew, Deal was back in the same block of Frederick Avenue where the drug bust had happened the week before, this time bleeding on the ground.
And the rest is past tense.
Col. Stanley Brandford, the Baltimore Police Department's chief of detectives, said the agency planned to release body camera footage to the public.
"Youse can't do dat! Yer violatin' his privacy!"