Yahoo Finance Baltimore Blogger Live Broadcasts Strandoff with Police
Frank James MacArthur, a local Baltimore blogger, streamed parts of his five hour standoff with police, including his conversation with the police negotiator, who came with a court-ordered warrant for his arrest.
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MacArthur (above left) knew police were going to come for him, according to his Twitter feed, and had plans to surrender on Saturday. But when police showed up at his home, he refused to leave. The Baltimore Sun's Justin Fenton reports MacArthur was wanted for a missed court date:
Police were there to serve a warrant issued in June by his probation agent stemming from a 2009 gun case and another for subsequent failure to appear in court, according to court records, and the situation was ratcheted up after police said MacArthur made threatening statements to officers over social media.
The SWAT team, and accompanying helicopter monitoring the situation from the air, were present because of tweets like this one MacArthur posted Saturday morning:
Anyone trying to capture me, ur gonna have to kill me, before I kill you. I'm a nice guy, but I'm a bad, bad man. Dangerous us, so don't try
— Baltimore Spectator (@BaltoSpectator) December 1, 2012
In a post on his Baltimore Spectator blog from early Saturday morning, MacArthur alleged he was held for no reason in a Baltimore jail for 40 days:
Later today, for the first time ever, I will take to the airwaves to relate my story, of being held in custody for 40 days in Baltimore correctional facilities. There were no charges. There was no warrant. Not even bail. When friends and family, including Maryland State Del. Jill P. Carter-- a defense attorney -- made official inquiry to the correctional facilities, they were all soundly told, I was not there. Even popular talk host and former State Senator Larry Young could not locate me through official channels.
As if that wasn't scary enough, that an innocent man, who's committed no crime could be held so long without anyone knowing. I had friends working inside the jail. Covertly I was allowed to see the internal inmate database. Indeed, through various searches using a multitude of matrices, with my own eyes I saw, there was no one even matching my description, anywhere to be found.
Whether or not that anecdote is directly related to the situation is unclear, but the message MacArthur is trying to convey is that he's being silenced by the police.
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For a little over two hours after police showed up to his home, MacArthur broadcast his negotiations to stand down live over internet radio, which you can listen to below. Pbumb also has a decent liveblog of the audio. MacArthur was also tweeting the whole time police were at his house, and it's worth taking a moment to read through his feed the morning after.
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[Image via @BaltoSpectator]
