Public Safety

In July, a gunman with an assault rifle opened fire inside a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and wounding 58 others. It was one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. Despite that, gun control has been mostly absent from this year’s presidential campaign. But with Election Day approaching, we welcome Daniel Webster, one of the nation's top gun-policy experts and lead author of a new Johns Hopkins prescription for public safety through tougher gun laws.

A new bill in the City Council would require restaurants and bars to post health inspection grades out front. We talk with the lead sponsor of the bill and a representative from the Health Department about how the grading system might work.

Baltimore Fire Chief James Clack has been appointed to a new term, which means he'll lead the city's fire department until at least 2018. But he's received criticism for his decision to close disband several fire companies in the city.  We'll talk with him this morning.

The University of Maryland is developing a robot to explore the Chesapeake Bay's Dead Zone.  We talk with marine science professor Don Boesch, who says it's more like a drone than anything else.

Aggressive incidents in Department of Juvenile Services facilities seem to be down...but Pod E in the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center saw a spike in aggressive incidents in May.

According to a new Abell Foundation report, encouraging Baltimore police officers to live in the city could help reduce crime. Yet the report found that nearly 72 percent of employees of the Baltimore Police Department live outside of the city. Our guest: the report’s author, Matt Van Itallie, on why so many officers chose to live in the suburbs and how providing housing incentives could help lower the crime rate.

Conversation originally aired August 3, 2009.

Last month BGE requested a gas and electric distribution rate adjustment with the Maryland Public Service Commission--which regulates gas, electric and water companies and sets utility rates.

Bad timing?

Whether the “war on women” is a fabrication of election year politics, scholar and activist Beth Richie says the threat of real violence to black women in the U.S. has never been more serious. And, with the partisan divide over the recent renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, she says legal, social, political and economic policies are to blame. Richie is author of “Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation.”