Good Cop/Bad Cop: A Would-Be Mayor Comes Clean
October 9, 2007
Twenty-three years ago, Aberdeen mayoral-candidate Mike Bennett made the biggest mistake of his life.
This week, as he prepared for a candidate’s forum showdown, Bennett, a Vietnam veteran and ordained deacon, was exorcising old ghosts and cutting off at the pass an anticipated ambush set by his detractors.
In 1984, I was six years old, George Orwell’s fears were becoming reality and Mike Bennett was a thirty-something upstart with the Maryland State Police hankering for a promotion.
The seedy story that’s recently been circulating the drain, where I usually hang out, is that a couple decades ago Bennett and his state police colleagues buddied up with some guys in the local print shop and were able to swipe a copy of the MSP sergeant’s exam.
Of course, that’s not the truth. The local whisperers left out a few details, which Bennett was more than happy to provide. Continue reading Good Cop/Bad Cop: A Would-Be Mayor Comes Clean
Off to the Races (updated again)
October 5, 2007
The City of Aberdeen will hold its municipal election for mayor and four city council members on Tuesday, November 6 from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Senior Citizens Center at 7 Franklin Street.
The Harford County Municipal Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 128 will be sponsoring “Meet the Candidates Night” on Wednesday, October 10 at The American Legion Post 128, 44 N Parke Street. The doors open at 6:15 p.m. and the event begins at 7 p.m. Organizers are advertising it as a chance for citizens to meet and ask questions of those running for office.
For those who can’t wait that long or won’t be attending, here is The Dagger’s take. Continue reading Off to the Races (updated again)
Former Aberdeen police corporal-turned-council candidate challenges mayor’s “law enforcement strategy”
October 4, 2007
By Rick Denu (candidate for Aberdeen City Council)
http://www.rickdenu.net/
The “Aberdeen Model” isn’t a Model at all!
The Aberdeen Mayor claims to have a “model law enforcement strategy”,
which was only placed on paper weeks ago, that eliminates crime and now he wants to impose that ridiculous notion outside City limits; has crime been eliminated from Aberdeen?
Let me start by saying that Aberdeen’s Mayor is not a law enforcement professional, he is an insurance salesman whom became Mayor. He has absolutely no basis of knowledge to create, nor implement any crime model; that is the job of the Chief of Police. Continue reading Former Aberdeen police corporal-turned-council candidate challenges mayor’s “law enforcement strategy”
Fear and Loathing at Campsite 100
September 25, 2007
The weekend started like this: me, stopping the car at an intersection in the middle of a 44,000-acre state forest, gray dust rolling past the windows. “Do you want to try it?” I backed up the car and eased the 1997 Nissan Maxima (manual, with spoiler) onto the brown dirt ski slope that is Kirk Road. A Coleman lantern, filled to the brim with kerosene, dangled from the rear view mirror. There was an hour of daylight left, and as battery acid leeched into my veins, I pushed the car harder and harder up and down the impossible rocky hills of the off-road trail.
About five minutes after I had yelled at the guys in the car to shut up, I pulled to a stop at the zenith of a rollercoaster-looking drop-off; I turned off the engine, jumped out and lit a cigarette. Brian and Scott – cooler heads than mine – set off running down the road while I tried to calm down. We were off to a bad start.
Over the next two days we would evade the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police twice, rescue a pair of lost dirt bikers, catch and release a rare wood turtle and a hognose snake, survive an insane 40-mph ride through the woods in the bed of a drunken redneck’s pickup truck, and hone our skills at axe tossing. But first, Brian would have to run off the hippie squatters at Campsite 100, and my poor old sedan would have to traverse the final grueling 400 yards of Kirk Road. Later that night, significantly, after we had laid hotdogs and beans on top of frayed nerves, we hiked out into the black woods, and gazed up at the Milky Way. “How can we see it if we’re in it?” I asked. Not 24 hours later, I was drunkenly calling out foreign moons like Karaoke requests around the fire, imploring the brains among us to retell the icy details: “Do Io again, man…Now do Europa!”
