Harford year in review

FEBRUARY

THEN: Who should pick the people who govern the schools in fast-growing Harford? The county?s State House delegation introduces a measure that would let voters elect some members to the board, now appointed by the governor. Six members would be elected from council districts, two appointed by the governor and one appointed by the county executive. The bill draws stiff opposition from the school board.

NOW: After the General Assembly fails to reach consensus on choosing school boards in Harford and other counties, state lawmakers plan to revisit school governance measures this session. Members of Harford?s county council and state delegation back a fully elected school board.

MARCH

THEN: The Guardian Angels would be answered prayers to many of those living in a crime-ridden area of Edgewood. The crime-watch volunteers, known for their trademark red berets, visit the town and say they plan to patrol it.

NOW: Preparing for 2008 patrols, the Angels have recruited volunteers for an Edgewood chapter and begun training in crime prevention, self-defense and conflict resolution.

APRIL

THEN: A jury finds Charles Eugene Burns guilty of murdering Lillian Abramowicz Phelps, one of four women found dead in isolated areas around Harford County the preceding summer. Prosecutors drop assault charges against Burns in connection with the deaths of three other women.

NOW: Prosecutors continue to investigate to determine whether Burns killed the other women.

THEN: Michael Razzio Simmons pleads guilty to second-degree murder for the road-rage stabbing of Patrick Walker in Bel Air.

NOW: Simmons has asked a judge to rescind his guilty plea and is seeking a new trial because, he says, his attorney did not question all the witnesses.

MAY

THEN: Aberdeen asks commercial and residential developments to connect cameras to help create a citywide surveillance system monitored from City Hall.

NOW: Along Brookside Drive in Edgewood, residents have grown tired of watching drugs, gangs, guns and violence overrun their neighborhood. Soon surveillance cameras will be watching too as the county moves forward with plans to install the cameras there.

JUNE

THEN: The crime-tracking program Rudy Giuliani made famous in New York is coming to Harford County. County Sheriff Jesse Bane says the program, ComStat, also used in Baltimore, will help shape decisions about where to target law enforcement efforts.

NOW: A crime analyst, paid for with $53,710 in state grant money, is to oversee ComStat.

JULY

THEN: Samuel David Horne, whose mother had walked the streets with a bullhorn railing against violence, is shot to death on Brookside Drive in Edgewood in a confrontation with four men.

NOW: Horne?s death and other violence prompts increased police patrols and surveillance cameras in the community.

AUGUST

THEN: Animals often got sick and some died because of poor conditions at a shelter run by the Humane Society of Harford County, critics say.

NOW: Tamara Zaluzney, the shelter?s executive director for 3 1/2 years, has resigned, and the governing board is searching for a replacement. The Fallston shelter says it has changed its vaccination procedures and hired a certified veterinary technician.

THEN: Bel Air?s Julienne Irwin, 14, proves to the nation that she?s got talent, but not enough to win a national network television competition. Irwin loses in the final round of NBC?s “America?s Got Talent.”

NOW: Irwin returns home to a hero?s welcome and realizes her lifelong dream of singing the national anthem at an Orioles game.

THEN: Harford will getthe biggest share of at least 45,000 to 60,000 new residents expected to come to Maryland with military base realignment, a demographic study predicts. Most of the county?s new households will go to Aberdeen, Havre de Grace and Abingdon.

NOW: Harford planners have begun preparing for the influx, trying to keep new housing near existing development. The county?s strategies for transportation, schools, housing, zoning and infrastructure become a model for other counties and the state.

SEPTEMBER

THEN: Elaine Marie Butler, a Darlington nurse, is convicted of manslaughter for accidentally giving 16-month-old Ashton Preston a toddler cup full of methadone, which belonged to the child?s mother.

NOW: Butler is serving a five-year sentence for manslaughter. At sentencing, Harford Circuit Judge Stephen Waldron notes Butler had taken in young Ashton and his recovering addict mother, Kelly Briggs.

“In an age marked by uncaring people and an uncaring society, she cared,” the judge says.

OCTOBER

THEN: Guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant had been snoozing on the job repeatedly, but their bosses did nothing about it ? until videotaped evidence showed up on a New York newscast. The tape, filmed by a whistle-blower at the plant, prompts an investigation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

NOW: Security contractor Wackenhut has been fired, and the whistle-blower has lost his job. The NRC continues investigating the plant, just over the Maryland line in Pennsylvania.

NOVEMBER

THEN: S. Fred Simmons, the tough-talking, gun-toting mayor of Aberdeen, loses his re-election bid as voters pick Michael Bennett, a former state trooper.

NOW: Simmons, a 55-year-old State Farm Insurance salesman, says he wants to row the length of the Intracoastal Waterway. He says he has purchased a rowboat that allows its operator to face forward while paddling and plans to train along the Chesapeake Bay before tackling the 3,000-mile trip from New England to the Gulf Coast. “I?m 55,” he says, “and I?ve not lifted anything heavier than a pen for the last two years.”

DECEMBER

THEN: The year ends as it began in a crime-ridden section of Edgewood ? with violence. A man dies in a Dec. 31 shooting in the Brookside neighborhood, the sixth Harford slaying of the year. The day before, members of the Crips gang shoot two men, seriously injuring both, police say.

NOW: Police, politicos and community activists grow increasingly alarmed about violence, much of it believed to be gang-related, and police increase patrols.