It was during the evening commute in the 200 block of East Biddle Street when Baltimore Police officer Francisco Pena spotted a minivan with a single headlight rolling through a stop sign, and attempted to make a stop that would prove to be anything but routine.
"Officer Pena stops this minivan and as the minivan pulls over to the side of the road, the driver who we later identified as Corey Rogers immediately bails out of the car with a gun and takes off on foot," said Baltimore City Police Commissioner Kevin Davis.
Rogers tossed the gun and was arrested without incident, but inside that van, police discovered three additional loaded handguns and an AK-47 style rifle with a magazine that contained 31 armor-piercing rounds of ammunition.
They also found a bullet proof vest.
"The timing of the arrest while the region mourns the deaths, the killings, the murder of two Harford County deputy sheriffs is not lost upon us,” Davis said. “This is traffic stop of a minivan late in the afternoon by a police officer just doing his job, and thankfully Corey Rogers chose to flee instead of fight."
Rogers is no stranger to the Baltimore City police.
He's been arrested more than 20 times.
The police commissioner says cases like this one underscore the need for tougher penalties for those caught with illegal guns multiple times, yet tend to get off with misdemeanors rather than felonies.
"That's just not where we need to be for public safety in the State of Maryland. It's a felony in the district. It's a felony in New York. It's a felony in Chicago, and it needs to be in Maryland," Davis said.
Next month, lawmakers in Annapolis will consider a pair of proposed bills, which would make a second illegal gun possession a felony that would carry a one-year sentence without parole.
