By Regina Holmes

Mayor Sheila Dixon likes to shop, and she sure likes gift cards: buying them, redeeming them, whatever.

This much was clear during testimony in the mayor's trial on theft charges, at the Clarence Mitchell Courthouse East in downtown Baltimore.

But is that a crime?

The defense surprisingly rested their case Wednesday morning after calling just two witnesses: Rev. Frank Reid, pastor of Dixon's church, Bethel AME Church, who said he has known the mayor for more than 30 years and that she is an honest person; and a florist, who testified that developer Ronald Lipscomb had a $285 bouquet sent anonymously to Dixon at City Hall.

State prosecutors, who abruptly rested their case Tuesday without calling key witness Lipscomb, tried to convince a jury that Dixon's penchant for spending is indeed criminal. Methodically laying out their case, prosecutors aimed to prove that she used gift cards donated to the city by developers — and intended for poor people — for herself, staff members and her relatives.

But after observing some of the trial on Monday, I was left wondering why the city's way of doing business — not the mayor's lust for designer duds — is on trial.

Prosecutors aren't mind readers, and neither is a jury. But even without knowing what Mayor Dixon was thinking if she pocketed the gift cards or gave them to staffers or relatives, isn't there something inherently wrong with the culture at City Hall if developers doing business with the city are just showing up dropping off unmarked envelopes filled with the digital equivalent of cash?

By Regina Holmes

Can't a black man eat a hamburger in this city without getting locked up?

I'm so sorry, Tony Fein, that Baltimore, or more specifically, the Baltimore Police Department welcomed you to Charm City and your first season with the Ravens by throwing you in the slammer Sunday night after you and your friends, including two other Ravens rookies, were spotted with a cell phone that an eagle-eyed Harborplace security guard thought might be a weapon. 

The police say that you assaulted an officer, pushing him in the chest as he was questioning you, and that's why you were arrested, even though the officers determined the suspected weapon was just a phone.

By Regina Holmes

Everything is not as it seems.

When I first read a week ago about Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest in Cambridge, I was outraged. Every black person knows about racial profiling, and every black person knows how dehumanizing it is. The irony that one of the most nation's most educated and prominent black citizens had been arrested on a disorderly conduct charge at his own house was bitterly ironic.

After carefully reading the original police report filed by Sgt. James Crowley (which seemed to mysteriously disappear from the Internet by Wednesday but has since reappeared) and a lengthy statement from Skip Gates' attorney, Charles Ogletree, a fellow longtime distinguished professor at Harvard who also is black, I concluded three things: 1) This was a clear case of racial profiling. Once Gates had shown his driver's license with his current address and his Harvard ID to Sgt. Crowley, that should have been the end of it and the officer should have left. 2) Gates was justified at being humiliated and outraged that he was cuffed in front of neighbors and passersby. The professor had not broken any laws. Whether one can be disorderly on one's front porch is debatable, but it was clear that if the officer had left as he had started to do, Gates would have gone back into his house and the incident would have ended. 3) I thought Crowley made the arrest because he was embarrassed that Gates was loudly accusing him of being a racist, and the sergeant, who has trained other officers about racial profiling, wanted to teach this uppity Negro a lesson.