Four months after it took effect, Baltimore?s new gun offender registry is starting to yield results ? including its first criminal charge.
As of Tuesday, 47 people have registered under the new city law ? the first of its kind in Maryland ? which is modeled after many states? sex offender registries. Late Thursday prosecutors filed their first criminal charge, when a Baltimore man?s Salisbury address didn?t check out.
“Extra attention on gun offenders is what we were looking for, and I think there?s reason to believe it?s going to have some effect,” said Sterling Clifford, spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon and the Police Department.
Quentin Adams, 18, of the 1900 block of Hillcrest Road, was charged Thursday with failing to register as a gun offender.
On March 31, detectives from the Gun Trace Task Force responded to the Salisbury address where Adams claimed to have moved and learned from a resident that Adams never resided there, prosecutors said.
Margaret Burns, spokeswoman for the Baltimore City State?s Attorney?s Office, said prosecutors are “energized” to be working with police to crack down on gun offenders.
Burns said there are currently 76 people who have been convicted of gun crimes who will have to register upon release.
Clifford said the office of the Gun Offender Registry is located next door to an office full of parole and probation officers, who work closely with the gun task force.
“The Gun Trace Task Force is actually going out to make sure they live at that location and they?re taking with them, whenever possible, the post officer on that beat,” Clifford said. “That means the cop that [gun offender] sees every day knows who he is and is watching and is paying attention.”
Dixon signed the Gun Offender Registry Act into law Sept. 20 of last year, and it took effect Jan. 1.
The city ordinance requires gun offenders to register with the Police Department immediately upon release from imprisonment and every six months afterward for three years.
A gun offender who violates the act, which applies to every gun conviction in Baltimore, faces up to a year in prison or a $1,000 fine.
Each day the violation continues constitutes a separate violation, prosecutors said.
