Black and White and Thin Blue Lines

Send a text BPD Police Lieutenant Wayne Wilson takes us back to old school policing in Baltimore and shares his wisdom about the O'Malley years, the best Baltimore Police Commissioner in the last 50 years, the police response to the Uvalde school shooting, and how the failure of the Baltimore School System is related to the city's homicide rate. To criminal justice junkies like Serge and...

Send a text Are you a police officer serving any department in the State of Maryland. Serge and Clarke implore you to listen to Parts 1 and 2 of the Maryland Police Accountability and Discipline Act podcasts. The new law went into effect on July 1, 2022. This is what YOU need to know. 

Send a text If you are a police officer anywhere in the State of Maryland, or a lawyer with police officer clients, this is part one of a two-part podcast about the new Police Accountability and Discipline Act. The Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights is repealed. It is critical for police officers and the lawyers who represent them to get ahead of the curve to survive the administrative...

Send a text Have you ever wondered why certain search warrants are served by SWAT teams and whether you are safer -- or in great danger -- when a SWAT team arrives? This episode is a very interesting discussion with a SWAT officer in a "major city on the East coast of the United States." Serge and Clarke think you will enjoy this discussion. 

Send a text      Our last podcast described the racist criminal mayhem in Buffalo, NY. After the podcast was uploaded for broadcast, but before it was released, Salvadore Ramos killed 19 school children and two teachers in Ulvade, Texas. Serge and I promised our listeners that we would address this ongoing problem in our next podcast. We have. After a short discussion about the Ulvade massacre, Se...

Send a text Serge Antonin and Clarke Ahlers discuss the May 14, 2022 mass shooting at the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York. Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white male, has been indicted for killing ten and wounding three.  11 of the victims were black. Serge and Clarke discuss the known facts of the tragic incident, consider the response of the President, and then discuss a plan to underst...

Send a text In this episode, Serge and Clarke discuss the under-publicized but highly questionable police shooting of Patrick Lyoya on April 4, 2022 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Keep your eyes on Grand Rapids in the next several months. Hear and learn about the case right here.

Send a text The lives of so many Baltimore children are beset by the trauma of violence. In this podcast, Serge and Clarke talk to a man whose father was shot in the head in Baltimore when the man was in the second grade. He remembers being driven to Shock Trauma in a police car, where his father survived, but blinded and paralyzed. Hear the remarkable story of a man dedicated to making our world...

Send a text Black and White and Thin Blue Lines introduces our listeners to men and women who fight the eternal battle for justice, or those who have fought it, or those who aspire to fight it. In our first episode of Season 2, we invite you to get to know the father/son team of lawyers, Lenny Stamm and Michael Stamm, who are leading the defense bar charge against the "forensic malpractice&qu...

Send a text As communities struggle with increasing violence, school boards debate the utility of having police officers assigned to public schools. Two leading Democrat Presidents -- Clinton and Obama -- urged Congress to fund SROs (School Resource Officers) nationwide. Yet, the United States Department of Justice and the Department of Education have issued reports that SROs discipline African Am...

Send a text Assistant State's Attorney Natasha Blount ("Tasha") joins Serge and Clarke to debate the best five courtroom movies of all time and one agreed upon honorable mention. Hear Tasha's persuasive reason for not including "A Few Good Men" in her list. But it is Tasha's number one movie that leaves Clarke speechless -- something more than a few people might...

Send a text Part II of the podcast: Maryland State Police v Trooper of the Year. In this episode Clarke, Serge and TFC Kashef Khan talk about a bizarre trial board where the prosecutor's first witness against TFC Khan was TFC Khan.  When Clarke Ahlers called an IAD investigator to the stand in the defense case, an Assistant Attorney General objected and claimed that Ahlers was attempting to i...

Send a text Serge and I discuss the backward world of the Maryland State Police with one of its own.  You will hear from a "brown skin Muslim" who was awarded the 2019 statewide "Trooper of the Year" by Governor Hogan. But the next year -- when he again outperformed every other trooper -- this Trooper First Class was told that a brown skin Muslim will NOT be the face of the age...

Send a text In this episode Serge and Clarke discuss two unrelated events: (1) the sentencing of former police officer Kim Potter after her conviction for manslaughter in the shooting death of Daunte Wright, and (2) an unfolding story of disparate treatment of two teenagers involved in a fight in a Bridgewater, New Jersey, shopping mall by police officers who arrive at the scene. One of the teenag...

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Send a text      In honor of Black History Month, Serge and Clarke interview the third African American woman appointed to the Superior Court of New Jersey. Serge was able to secure this interview because Frances Lawrence Antonin, who helped break barriers for African American female attorneys especially in New Jersey, is his mother. Clarke recommends this interview for a reason not nearly as impo...

Send a text On January 13, 2022, the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland announced a four-count federal indictment against the Hon. Marilyn Mosby, the State's Attorney for Baltimore City. There are two counts of perjury related to making a withdraw of funds from her retirement account after alleging a Covid hardship and two counts of making a false statement on a loan applicat...

Send a text On December 29, 2021 at 9:41 PM, two Village of Bradley police officers -- Sgt. Marlene Rittmanic and Officer Tyler Bailey -- responded to a Comfort Inn motel for a call about barking dogs left in a car. While investigating this minor complaint, Ofc. Bailey was shot in the head; Sgt. Rittmanic killed with her own firearm. Two young persons have been arrested: Darius Sullivan, the accus...

Send a text Serge and Clarke update their audience on everything from Derek Chauvin's  federal  conviction to Kyle Rittenhouse's celebrity status, along with Serge's "worst of the year" and Clarke's "best of the year."  An easy listen but with a note of sadness at the beginning of the episode as Serge and Clarke acknowledge the passing of Baltimore Police Of...

Send a text On December 16, 2021 on Pennington Avenue in Curtis Bay, BPD Officer Keona Holley, on-duty, in uniform, and sitting in a marked Baltimore police cruiser was shot multiple times by two men. The men then fled, only to shoot and kill a civilian in Baltimore about 90 minutes later. The Baltimore Police Department has arrested two men for these cruel and wicked crimes.  In this unscheduled...

Send a text On August 23, 2020, a white Kenosha police officer, Rusten Sheskey, shot a black man, Jacob Blake, in the back during a call for service. Riots erupted. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year old armed with a rifle, shot three men during the riots, killing two. Many were outraged and condemned Rittenhouse as a "white supremacist." Then candidate Biden wrote: "These shots pierce the...

Send a text Our guest in this episode is Sgt. James Lilley, Howard County Police Department, ret.  James ('Jim")  Lilley is a nationally renowned expert in police tactics, the creator of a police training series on handgun retention by police, and the author of fiction and non-fiction books. He is a former marine and a lifetime student of karate, awarded his 9th degree black belt in Okin...

Send a text On February 26, 2012, a “neighborhood watch captain” named George Zimmerman shot and killed a young African American man named Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. Almost eight years later to the day, in Brunswick, Georgia, 264 miles due north of Sanford, Florida, a group of self-appointed law enforcers – Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan -- pursued another...

Send a text The chief prosecutor in Baltimore City and Prince George's County Maryland released their respective "Do Not Call Lists" after a Maryland appellate court ruling. The "Do Not Call Lists" are lists of former and current federal, state, and local law enforcement officers deemed unfit to testify by prosecutors because the prosecutors question the officer's cre...

Send a text In the United States, many states have made medical marijuana available to anyone with a medical marijuana card. Some states have decriminalized marijuana and still others have made recreational marijuana use legal for adults. Serge and Clarke discuss their thoughts on this subject and especially the need for better THC testing for drugged driving cases.