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This link will take you to a too-good-to-be-true story of Aquille Carr, one of the most hyped basketball players in the country despite (or because of) being 5'7". What made it worth linking to is the uniqueness of his nickname: "The Crimestopper."
Aquille Carr acquired that brilliant nickname because, as legend has it, all the dealers, hustlers and assorted knuckleheads in east Baltimore shut down business for those two hours every time Patterson has a game.
“Ain’t no flashing lights,” Tammy Carr says, “until after the game.”
“Ain’t no way you’re going to try to go kill somebody or rob somebody when Patterson’s playing,” Aquille says. “Naw. They’re coming to see the show first.”
Rodney Coffield, an 18-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department, who until this year doubled as the head coach at the city’s Douglass High, provides confirmation that the legend of the Crimestopper is rooted in truth.
“All your gangbangers, your drug dealers, people out robbing in the community, all the so-called big G’s — those guys are going to be in there, just to make sure they see this kid play,” Coffield says. “And believe me, there’s money [being gambled] on it — how many points [Carr] scores, stuff like that.”
Indeed, the handy crime map on the BPD’s Web site shows that in the week preceding Dec. 19 — the night Patterson hosted rival City College High (and the most recent Patterson home game for which data was available) — there were three car break-ins and two aggravated assaults within a half-mile radius (the largest available search radius) of the school.
But on Dec. 19 itself, with the Crimestopper doing his thing, and the tiny gym packed with both the devout and the sinister, there was not a single crime reported in the area. |
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