By STACEY PLAISANCE
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS  –  From her rebuilt but not yet fully furnished home, Irma Thomas anchors her faith in the rebirth of New Orleans to the return of the Essence Music Festival.The festival, which runs Friday to Sunday, celebrates black music and culture and moved to Houston in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina smashed New Orleans. It returned in 2007, and organizers say Essence is now re-establishing its place in the city.

An estimated 200,000 people attended the festival last year, supplying a needed injection of business into the city’s hurricane-hammered tourism industry.

“The festival is so special to New Orleans,” said Thomas, who’s still trying to find furniture to replace the pieces lost when Katrina sent floodwater crashing through her home in August 2005.

Essence headliners this year include Jill Scott, Mary J. Blige, Chris Brown, LL Cool J, and Morris Day and The Time as well as Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. Maze has closed out the festival each year since its inception in 1995.

This year there will be a tribute to Patti LaBelle, the soul diva whose career spans four decades. Patti LaBelle released 10 solo albums and six with the group that bears her name, LaBelle.

Saturday night’s tribute on the main stage of the Louisiana Superdome will include performances by two original members of LaBelle — Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx — as well as performances by Chaka Khan, Angie Stone, Ledisi, Chrisette Michele, Ruby Amanfu and Thomas.

“This honor is just a reflection on the life she has given, the time and efforts she has given to the music world,” said Dash of Patti LaBelle in a phone interview from her home in Trenton, N.J. “I can’t think of a better person who deserves the recognition. She’s done so much for humanity and for the industry. This tribute exemplifies how much we love and respect her.”

“Patti has a beautiful personality and is a real, real nice person,” said Thomas. “It’s going to be a lot of fun to celebrate her in this way.”

Michelle Ebanks, president of Essence Communications Inc., which owns the festival, said a lot of thought went into the decision to honor LaBelle.

“It’s an important part of what we do at Essence, to celebrate and recognize those icons within the African-American community,” she said. “Their music, their art has been a part of our growing up and our culture.”

The tribute, Ebanks said, “will be an emotional, thrilling 75 minutes.”

Besides concerts at the Superdome, Essence includes a series of seminars with speakers such as actor Tyler Perry, actress Keisha Knight Pulliam, the Rev. Al Sharpton and comedian-activist Bill Cosby.

A session Saturday will focus on black families, particularly children and education.

“The majority of black households are headed by a single parent,” Ebanks said. “It’s critical to think about how do we ensure that black children are getting the same levels of education and access to opportunities as children all over America. There are challenges in the community.”

Thomas said Essence is a welcomed break from the exhausting rebuilding process still affecting thousands of New Orleans residents.

“I’m trying to put my house back the way it was, and it’s taking me some time to find what I like and what I’m used to,” she said. “I want my house to be like it was.”

“LaBelle’s reunion is going to heal. We have a music that we’re recording that I feel is going to be healing.”

Besides taking part in the LaBelle tribute, Thomas will deliver a performance of her own on Sunday in one of the festival’s “super lounges,” created as mini-concert halls within the Superdome.

Thomas, who won a Grammy last year for best contemporary blues album for “After the Rain,” was among the performers at the first Essence Festival held in 1995 as a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Essence Magazine.

“I was there in the beginning, girl,” Thomas said.

By The Associated Press

PHOENIX  –  DMX has been arrested at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on outstanding warrants.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Aaron Douglas says the rapper, 37, was taken into custody Wednesday morning after arriving from Florida.

DMX (real name: Earl Simmons) is being held on a $1,075 bond for driving with a suspended license and a $10,000 bond stemming from previous drug charges.

Douglas says DMX had failed to appear in court and warrants were issued. He is expected to appear before a judge late Wednesday.

His lawyer in Phoenix, Cameron Morgan, declined TO comment.

The musician/actor has had a recent string of run-ins with the law. He was arrested Friday in Miami on charges of attempting to purchase cocaine and attempting to purchase marijuana.

DMX recorded the 1999 hit single “Party Up (Up in Here).” His last album, “Year of the Dog … Again,” was released last year.

By The Associated Press

OCALA, Fla.  –  Wesley Snipes will be allowed to leave the United States to work on two movies while his lawyers appeal his tax convictions.

Federal judge William Terrell Hodges on Wednesday approved the actor’s motion to travel to London and Bangkok, Thailand. Snipes will be in England about three days this month for post-production editing of “Gallowwalker,” and in Thailand for eight weeks to film “Chasing the Dragon.”

A jury convicted the action star in February of three counts of willfully failing to file his income taxes. The 45-year-old Snipes, star of the “Blade” trilogy, “White Men Can’t Jump” and “Jungle Fever” among other films, has appealed the convictions and his three-year prison sentence to the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta.

Prosecutors asked Hodges to deny Snipes’ request to travel abroad, saying he was a flight risk.

Jazz singer upsets many by changing the lyrics

DENVER (MyFOXColorado.com) - Some were simply confused. Others, immediately offended.

A local jazz performer caused a stir at Denver mayor John Hickenlooper’s State of the City address Tuesday by replacing the lyrics of the National Anthem with those of the so-called Black National Anthem.

The city asked Rene Marie, an African-American, to sing the Star Spangled Banner before Tuesday’s speech.

However, unbeknownst to all but a handful of people in the crowd -not including the mayor- she replaced the lyrics of the traditional National Anthem with “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson: a song commonly referred to as the “Black National Anthem” by those familiar with it.

“If anyone has a right to be angry it is probably me,” says Mayor John Hickenlooper. “I guess what I feel most is deeply disappointed.”

Hickenlooper says Marie has apologized.

“What she said was that she was very sorry, she did not mean any disrespect, that she was trying to make a creative expression for her love of the country.”

Watch video of the performance

The mayor says no one knew what Rene Marie had planned.

“She said there was only herself, her husband, and her musical mentor were the only three people in that room that knew she was going to do this hybrid of two songs together,” Hickenlooper said.

——————–

LIFT EV’RY VOICE AND SING
also known as “The Black National Anthem”
by James Weldon Johnson

Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring.
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast’ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee,
Shadowed beneath thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

The Prince George’s County chapter of the NAACP is demanding county officials continue investigating the suffocation and asphyxiation of police detainee Ronnie White.  White was the primary suspect in their investigation of the murder of a Prince George’s County Officer.

While there is an ongoing investigation, the efforts have been complicated because many of the officers who had access to White are refusing to cooperate with authorities. The NAACP held a press conference today in order to voice their concerns about the case.

“Our hearts are bleeding for both families.  We demand the truth come out and that those who are wrong in their conduct be punished,” said Rev. C. Anthony Muse, chair of the Prince George’s County senate delegation.

The NAACP chapter is requesting that the officers who had access to White be put on immediate administrative leave until the investigation into the man’s homicide is complete.

They also want the FBI to keep open the civil rights investigation which they launched in response to White’s murder.

“Mr. White was a suspect, not a convicted felon at the time of his death,” said June Dillard, president of the Prince George’s County chapter of the NAACP. “Until this is resolved, we have a vigilante county”. According to Dillard, White was not the only suspect in the case, though he was the primary person of interest.

White, a 19-year-old Prince George’s County resident, was detained on June 27 after he police say he refused to cooperate with Cpl. Richard Finley, who attempted to pull him over.

According to police after being pulled over, White began ramming Finley’s car, and when the corporal got out of his car, police say the suspect ran Cpl. Finley over.

The suspect was last seen alive in his solitary-confinement cell at 10:15 a.m. last Sunday. When an officer came to deliver White his lunch, they found him slumped over and unresponsive.

“This did not happen on some dark, abandoned, lonely road,” Bobby G. Henry Jr., the family’s attorney, said at a separate news conference on Tuesday. “This happened in broad daylight, in the custody of county officials  Everyone who has someone or knows someone who is in the county correctional facility should have a problem with that.

Later today, a memorial service and viewing will be held for, Cpl. Richard Finley.  The slain officer’s funeral is this Thursday. The investigation into his murder is ongoing.

SILVER SPRING – No matter how high gas prices go, it’s never a good idea to resort to driving a golf cart on the Beltway.

A FOX 5 news crew was on their way back from an investigative story when they spotted two people sitting in a golf cart on the Inner Loop of the Capital Beltway.  They had been pulled over by an officer near the Georgia Avenue exit.

Ant Harris, the passenger in the cart, told FOX 5 people were honking at them and then some.

“Honk, scream, people throwing stuff at us, all that,” said Harris, 18.  “We got all that.”

Harris says he and a friend were doing about 20 miles an hour when they got pulled over, and they got a laugh out of it.

“20 miles per hour,” Harris laughed.  “We got a ticket for going under the speed limit.”

Harris’ friend, who was the driver, didn’t want to appear on camera or be named.   In fact, he looked a little glum as the state police wrote him a second ticket for unsafe driving. 

Harris told FOX 5 the pair didn’t get far, but they almost made it home before they were caught.  But if you ask the state police, they’ll say differently. 

Harris and his friend are from Baltimore—nearly 45 miles from where they were stopped on the Beltway.   At 20 miles an hour, it would have taken them a little more than two hours to get to their final destination. 

The law says drivers are not allowed to have a golf cart on the interstate, and the pair didn’t want to say where they got it from.  They would only say that they had borrowed it from a ‘friend’.

By JONATHAN LANDRUM Jr.
Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA  –  When he was growing up, most of T.I.’s male role models were either selling drugs or locked up in jail; he ended up following in both of those paths. Even after T.I. started his rap career and became one of its biggest stars, he didn’t abandon a life of crime: He recently pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges and faces almost a year in jail.So T.I. would be the last person one would expect to be espousing the beliefs of Martin Luther King Jr. and reading the words of Andrew Young, the longtime civil rights leader, King compatriot and former U.N. ambassador.

But these days, T.I. is thinking about social responsibility and leadership, thanks to an unlikely mentor in Young, who reached out to the rapper a few months ago.

“He’s bright enough, sensitive enough, vulnerable enough and intellectual enough that he might be able to help the society deal with the problem of violence,” said Young, also a former mayor of Atlanta.

It may seem odd that the 76-year-old Young, who marched and stood for nonviolence alongside King, would affiliate himself with someone caught purchasing machine guns and silencers.

But Young sees T.I. in a positive manner — especially after they met at Young’s home — saying the rapper has the potential to influence this hip-hop driven generation in a similar way King did during the civil rights movement.

“If you put him in jail for 20 years, that won’t do any good toward gun violence,” Young said. “The judge had the wisdom and courage to give him a chance and force him to think about the process.”

T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris, was sentenced in March to serve about a year in prison after completing at least 1,000 hours of community service and three years of supervised home detention. He was also given a $100,000 fine. To avoid a lengthy sentence, he agreed to speak with youth about the pitfalls of guns, gangs and violence.

That’s where Young stepped in. He took T.I. to a rehabilitation hospital in New York to meet with people who were paralyzed from gang violence. He’s given T.I. books to read, including one written by Young and another on the genocide in Rwanda.

Young hopes to take T.I. on a trip to Africa before he starts his prison sentence in late March. He already took him to an exclusive birthday party for poet Maya Angelou in May.

“He’s a mentor of some sort to me,” the 27-year-old T.I. said of Young in a recent interview, shortly after lecturing almost 100 youths about the importance of education and entrepreneurship.

“Thing is, I didn’t really expect to be the spokesperson for positive decisions in kids lives,” he said. “That’s not necessarily what I saw for myself.”

It’s also not the kind of message he’s doled out in his music. Though his lyrics aren’t exceptionally violent or profane given rap’s often raw standard, his rhymes depict — some would say glorify — life on the street, whether it deals with gunplay or drugs. He would certainly never be called a conscious rapper.

Yet Young sees him doing great works. He welcomed T.I. to his home: They talked for almost three hours about King not initially wanting to lead the civil rights movement until he finally took ownership of the guiding role.

During their meeting, T.I. said Young compared the rapper to King.

“Once he saw that no one else wanted that responsibility, he was forced into it,” said T.I., recalling his conversation with Young about King. “People depended on him and pushed it on him. It wasn’t until (Young) said in Montgomery (Ala.) that King accepted the responsibility of being the leader of the civil rights movement. He compared that to my situation.”

When asked about the comment, Young neither denied or completely confirmed it.

While Bishop Eddie Long, leader of megachurch New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, doesn’t speak of T.I. in King-like terms, he does believe the rapper — who has given himself the boastful title “King of the South” — has the drive and ability to reach a large mass of people even Long can’t reach.

“Here’s a man who has a past,” the pastor said. “Here’s a man who has gotten himself in some trouble because of decisions. Here’s a man that commands a great audience of young people, who maybe I may not be the prophet of the day.

“But he is someone who can say things and make people move in a generation we need to touch. So he is very valuable.”

From Atlanta to Los Angeles, T.I. has visited community centers, churches and schools, speaking to crowds of about 250 youths. On a short leave from house arrest in March, T.I. delivered a speech on overcoming life’s tribulations to almost 30,000 churchgoers for Long’s Easter service at the Georgia Dome.

T.I. is used to having an audience of millions. Last summer, his sixth album, “T.I.. vs T.I.P.,” debuted at No. 1 on the album charts. T.I., who also appeared in the Denzel Washington-Russell Crowe film “American Gangster,” was enjoying perhaps the biggest success of his career when he was arrested just blocks away and hours before he was to headline the BET Hip-Hop Awards last October.

Federal officials said he was trying to pick up machine guns and silencers his then-bodyguard bought for him.

His actions beg the question: Why T.I. would jeopardize his rising stardom?

Fear, according to T.I. His best friend Philant Johnson was killed and three were injured in a gun shootout following a post-performance party in Cincinnati in 2006. He worried that he could suffer the same fate.

“People would also love to say they, ‘Hey, I killed T.I.’” he said. “Let’s say if T.I. is out, didn’t have any weapons around and I got shot dead in the street. The first thing people are going to say is, ‘Why didn’t T.I. have something to protect himself?’”

But T.I. has a new train of thought after his arrest.

“No matter how much security you have, how many guns you got, no matter how much money you got, God’s will supersedes all of that,” T.I. said. “So, instead of walking with guns, I now have to walk with God. I now have to trust in God’s will.”

He’s currently on a 14-city concert tour to promote his upcoming album, “Paper Trail,” which is expected to released in September. Even though his first single “No Matter What” has no curse words, he says it doesn’t mean that the album will be profanity-free. And he won’t promise that violence or drugs won’t be mentioned in his lyrics.

But now, he plans to use those topics not to glorify, but to advise others about the consequences. He’s trying to not disappoint the many who believe in him — like Young.

“I don’t want to disgrace nobody who supported me who believed I pushed pass this situation,” T.I. said. “I won’t disgrace their good faith with another absolutely unnecessary situation.”

By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer

ZANESVILLE, Ohio  –  Reaching out to religious voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for expanding President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — supported some ability to hire and fire based on faith.Obama unveiled his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday at Eastside Community Ministry, which provides food, clothes, youth ministry and other services.

Video: One-On-One With Obama (MyFoxCleveland)

“The challenges we face today … are simply too big for government to solve alone,” Obama said.

Obama’s announcement is part of a series of events leading up to Friday’s Fourth of July holiday that are focused on American values.

The candidate spent Monday talking about his vision of patriotism in the battleground state of Missouri. By twinning that with Tuesday’s talk about faith in another battleground state, he was attempting to settle debate in two key areas where his beliefs have come under question while also trying to make inroads with constituencies that are traditionally loyal to Republicans and oppose Obama on other grounds.

But Obama’s support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions could invite a protest from those in his own party who view such faith requirements as discrimination.

Obama does not support requiring religious tests for recipients of aid nor using federal money to proselytize, according to a campaign fact sheet. He also only supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.

Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, criticized Obama’s proposed expansion of a program he said has undermined civil rights and civil liberties.

“I am disappointed that any presidential candidate would want to continue a failed policy of the Bush administration,” he said. “It ought to be shut down, not continued.”

John DiIulio, who in 2001 was director of Bush’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said Obama’s plan “reminds me of much that was best in both then Vice President Al Gore’s and then Texas Governor George W. Bush’s respective first speeches on the subject in 1999,” according to a statement from the Obama campaign.

Bush supports broader freedoms for taxpayer-funded religious charities. But he never got Congress to go along so he has conducted the program through administrative actions and executive orders.

David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003 and later became a critic of Bush’s commitment to the cause, said Obama’s position on hiring has the potential to be a major “Sister Souljah moment” for his campaign.

This is a reference to Bill Clinton’s accusation in his 1992 presidential campaign that the hip hop artist incited violence against whites. Because Clinton said this before a black audience, it fed into an image of him as a bold politician who was willing to take risks and refused to pander.

“This is a massive deal,” said Kuo, who is not an Obama adviser or supporter but was contacted by the campaign to review the new plan.

Obama proposes to elevate the program to a “moral center” of his administration, by renaming it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and changing training from occasional huge conferences to empowering larger religious charities to mentor smaller ones in their communities.

Saying social service spending has been shortchanged under Bush, he also proposes a $500 million per year program to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps with white and wealthier students. A campaign fact sheet said he would pay for it by better managing surplus federal properties, reducing growth in the federal travel budget and streamlining the federal procurement process.

Like Bush, Obama was arguing that religious organizations can and should play a bigger role in serving the poor and meeting other social needs. But while Bush argued that the strength of religious charities lies primarily in shared religious identity between workers and recipients, Obama was to tout the benefits of their “bottom-up” approach.

“Because they’re so close to the people, they’re well-placed to offer help,” he said.

Kuo called Obama’s approach smart, impressive and well thought-out but took a wait-and-see attitude about whether it would deliver.

“When it comes to promises to help the poor, promises are easy,” said Kuo, who wrote a 2006 book describing his frustration at what he called Bush’s lackluster enthusiasm for the program. “The question is commitment.”

Obama also talked bluntly about the genesis of his Christian faith in his work as a community organizer in Chicago, and its importance to him now.

“In time, I came to see faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I went out and did the Lord’s work,” he said.

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. – A number of questions surround the death of a 19-year-old suspect in the killing of a Prince George’s County police officer, and so does the debate over what role race may have played in the deaths of both men.

Prince George’s County officials point to great strides that have been made in easing racial strife in their county, but now a split has emerged among African American leaders.

A group that calls itself the Greater Beltway Coalition has been trying to form a new NAACP chapter in Prince George’s County for several months.  But now, the deaths of Corporal Richard Findley, who was white, and 19-year-old Ronnie White, who was African American, have pushed the old and the new group even further apart.

In a news conference, Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson promised no stone will be left unturned in the investigation.

“We’re angry, we’re upset, and these acts do not reflect the values of the people in Prince George’s County,” Johnson said late Monday.

But in the county, there are questions about what role race played in the events that have occurred since Friday.

Zalee Harris heads a group that is trying to form a new NAACP chapter in Prince George’s County.

“There truly is a race issue that obviously everybody is afraid to discuss,” said Harris.

Harris says the county NAACP has been slow to address the social and racial issues surrounding the deaths of Cpl. Findley and White.

“If we don’t sit down and deal with these issues, then another policeman will have died, and another young black man will have died in vein,” Harris said.

But Earl Adams, vice president of the Prince George’s County NAACP, says the issue isn’t race—it’s civil rights.

“Right now, there is really no evidence to suggest this is racially motivated,” said Adams.

Adams says Prince George’s County has made progress in race relations, having emerged from federal government monitoring after questionable police practices and the arrival of African Americans holding top positions throughout the county government.

According to Adams, boiling the case down to simply black and white is wrong, and it ignores that progress.

“You do the county a great disservice when you minimalize or marginalize what the true issues are, and the undercurrent of this county,” said Adams.

More questions are certain to arise from the case, which is seemingly far from being over.

The Greater Beltway Coalition was recently turned down by the Maryland State NAACP in its bid to gain a new chapter.  Organizers say they will take their fight to the national convention in Cincinnati later this month, and they intend to use the case of Cpl. Findley and White as part of their argument.

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. — The family of a 19-year-old man found strangled in his cell a day after he was jailed on charges of running over and killing a police officer is “outraged” over his death, their attorney said Tuesday.

Ronnie White’s death is being investigated as a homicide by the FBI and Maryland state police. He died Sunday in the Prince George’s County Correctional Center from asphyxiation and strangulation, the state medical examiner said.

Officials said seven guards had access to White at the time of his death, as did an unspecified number of supervisors. Authorities are also investigating whether anyone from the outside had access to the inmate.

Bobby G. Henry Jr., the attorney representing the inmate’s family called for “a thorough and exhaustive investigation.” The family is “absolutely, unequivocally outraged and incensed and deeply saddened for the loss of life of their loved one,” he said.

He angrily denounced the actions that led to White’s death, saying the perpetrators “took it upon themselves to be both the judge, the jury and the executioner.”
——————————————————————————–

VIDEO: Press Conference from the Family Attorney of Ronnie White

VIDEO: Statement from Prince George’s Co. State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey on the White Investigation

VIDEO: County Executive Jack Johnson speaks to the media

——————————————————————————–

State police are leading the investigation into White’s death at the request of county officials. The FBI is focusing on possible civil rights violations.

“If we have vigilante justice, our society will fall apart,” Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson said at a news conference Monday.

Johnson said that he believes the death was “unrelated to any act by the Prince George’s County Police Department.”

Curtis Knowles, president of the corrections officers’ union, said he was working that day but not in the unit. Officers involved in monitoring the inmate told Knowles that they came to feed White, tapped on the window and yelled through a slot in the door, but White didn’t reply. They went in and shook White, but he didn’t respond, Knowles said.

June White-Dillard, head of the Prince George’s branch of the NAACP, said that she was pleased the FBI was investigating the case but disturbed by the nature of the death of the inmate.

“No one should have had access to him that could have caused him harm,” she said.

White was found on the floor of his cell at the Prince George’s County jail at 10:30 a.m. Sunday with no pulse, according to officials. Jail medical staff who treated him reported no visible signs of trauma on his body, and he was declared dead an hour later at a hospital.

Henry said White’s family wasn’t immediately contacted about the death. It was not until several hours after he died that the family was told to go to the hospital to identify the body, Henry said. When the family arrived, they were told the body was not there. Instead, it had been taken by the medical examiner to Baltimore for an autopsy.

White had been held by himself in maximum security since he arrived at the jail around 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning.

He was charged with first-degree murder in the death Friday of Prince George’s County Cpl. Richard Findley, 39, during a traffic stop in Laurel. Findley, who was part of a team investigating car thefts, was killed after he got out of his cruiser and was dragged by a truck, which had been reported stolen. Authorities said White was driving the truck.

Gov. Martin O’Malley ordered the state flag be flown at half-staff until sunset Thursday in memory of Findley, a 10-year veteran of the county police.

White was one of four people taken into custody by police after the truck was found at a nearby apartment complex shortly after Findley was killed. The three others were questioned and released, according to Officer Henry Tippett, a county police spokesman.

White received medical and psychological assessments that jail officials said did not uncover any problems. He was placed in maximum security cell because he was considered a “high profile offender.”

Guards checked him every half hour. At 10:15 a.m. he was sitting on the side of his bunk and was alert, according to a timeline provided by jail officials. But fifteen minutes later, he was found unresponsive.

There have been several problems recently at the county jail, including a former police corporal convicted of murdering a man who was found with a handcuffs key. The county’s director of corrections was fired in early June when four handguns went missing from the jail armory.