Environmental regulators have long known of the contamination in the soil at Sparrows Point in eastern Baltimore County. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is probing the mud under the waters around the old steel mill to test for contamination.

But people who live nearby fear the agency isn’t paying enough attention to that part of the massive cleanup project.

Sherry Gerben has lived on Jones Creek, across from Sparrows Point for 37 years. She says back in the day, they had a boat. Not anymore.

LeBron James proclaimed he was stunned that his 10-year-old son was already the subject of recruitment by college basketball coaches. James has to be acting if he wants to convince anyone that he’s not aware that recruiting of kids is going on. How could he not? The practice of attempting to attract youthful talent into the pipeline of sports has gone on for well over a century, back to the dawn of intercollegiate athletics.

Baltimore Police arrested Devin Leroy Jones and held him in a detention facility for two years under what appears to be a falsely reported search warrant.  Detective Ramon Lugo admitted to the inconsistencies in court, prosecutors dismissed the charges, and the defendant is now suing the city police department for wrongful arrest and imprisonment.   WYPR's Fraser Smith talks to the reporter who broke the story, The Baltimore Sun's Mark Puente.

After that dark, snowy unforgettable night when the Mayflower trucks hauled away the Colts and the franchise and all that the team possessed, a furious Mayor Schaefer threatened to sue the demon Colt owner Irsay. To avoid the delay and embarrassment of a court case,  Irsay agreed to have his own lawyer and the Colts representative, Ted Venetoulis, settle the matters privately. At the end of the affair they did--the Colts got back their memorabilia and Irsay got a penalty-- slapped on by Venetoulis for "unsportsmanlike like conduct."

WYPR's Joel McCord talk to Goucher College's Mileah Kromer about the recently released Goucher Poll. Do voters approve of Governor Larry Hogan so far? What is the number one issue on Marylanders' minds? Do individuals see a connection between themselves, pollution, and The Chesapeake Bay?  Goucher's Sarah T. Hughes Politics Center polled Marylanders and published the results this week.

WYPR's Fraser Smith talks to The Baltimore Sun's Mark Puente about all things police: the police officer's bill of rights before the General Assembly, police body cameras, and a recent court case that involved a man held for two years under a falsely reported search warrant and a lawsuit against the city police department.

After years of complaining about police misconduct, advocates packed the state Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee room Thursday to support several bills aimed at making police more accountable.

Among them was one proposed by Baltimore City Senator Lisa Gladden that would alter the rights given to police officers under investigation for misconduct.

Gov. Larry Hogan’s education platform will face its first big test today when a House of Delegates committee will take up his plan to reform Maryland’s strict charter school law.  Although some Democratic lawmakers have signaled interest in seeing a reform to Maryland’s strict charter law, many say the bill goes too far. Public schools advocates say the bill is a giveaway to national charter operators.

A dozen years after Maryland passed one of the strictest charter school laws in the country, charter advocates are calling for changes to make starting and operating a charter school in Maryland easier.

At Patterson Park Public Charter School in East Baltimore principal Chad Kramer will show you what’s working about Maryland’s charter schools.  Middle schoolers are giving power point presentations on bloody Elizabethan sports, and kindergartners in Spanish class are up and about imitating animals.