A troubled life

Farron Tates, released to his mother, Bridgette, is accused of killing a man at the building above. (Sun photo by Monica Lopossay / March 11, 2008)

The 15-year-old's punishment after being convicted as a juvenile in January was to go home with his mother - a woman convicted three months earlier of buying drugs.

Six weeks later, Farron Tates became the first teenager to be arrested on a murder charge in Baltimore this year. He was arrested last Thursday and has been charged as an adult.

Farron's life followed the criminal trajectory of Baltimore's most troubled children: He lived with a parent who used drugs, stopped attending school in the fourth grade, said he smoked marijuana every day, carried a loaded handgun at age 13 and told authorities he turned to drug dealing as a way to make money.

But he's also typical of the young offenders whom the juvenile justice system sometimes returns to questionable home environments - at times without knowing all of the relevant information.

"Do I want to know if a parent is on probation? The answer is flat-out yes," said Judge Edward R.K. Hargadon, head of the city juvenile court. "It is the duty of the parties to provide us with that information. We can't be doing independent investigations."

Linda Koban, a juvenile master in Baltimore for seven years, said she left the bench three years ago out of such frustrations.

"I was making decisions on such faulty information. It's scary because things like this can happen," she said, referring to Farron's case.

Department of Juvenile Services workers gather information about youths who are arrested and prepare reports and courtroom representations for juvenile judges or masters. In Baltimore, about 2,000 kids are under the supervision of the Department of Juvenile Services at any given time.

There's no formal criminal background check or parole and probation check of the adults in their lives, said Tammy Brown, a department spokeswoman. Instead, caseworkers rely on interviews with the adults.

That system isn't perfect.

Last spring, Davon Qualls was arrested twice as a juvenile on drug charges. First he was released to a woman who didn't know the teen's real name and then to a 26-year-old man he called his "homeboy," Davon's great-aunt said. Davon, 17, was shot to death Sept. 4, a five-minute walk from where the juvenile judge had sent him to live.

In Farron's case, a January DJS report for Farron's juvenile master states that his mother, Bridgette Tates, has no criminal or drug history.

In fact, Bridgette Tates had been arrested Oct. 3 near Pimlico Race Course with two pink-top vials of crack cocaine and pleaded guilty Nov. 29 to drug possession. She was sentenced to 18 months' probation, until June 2009.

No mention of the arrest or probation was made at Farron's two juvenile court hearings in January, a Sun review of the recorded proceedings shows.

Aside from her recent criminal history, there were other signs that Bridgette Tates was struggling as a parent - some of which were documented in the Department of Juvenile Services report and raised in hearings Jan. 3 and Jan. 22 before Master Bradley O. Bailey.

Bridgette Tates had skipped a Jan. 3 hearing, delaying her son's sentencing by almost three weeks. The DJS report for the master, dated Jan. 16, warned that Farron "has no boundaries and seems to do as he pleases without regard to societal norms and rules." His mother, the report said, "is not providing adequate supervision or care for her son."

Farron grew up in Northwest Baltimore, where his mother lives in a Park Heights apartment. His two sisters live in nearby Pimlico.

His mother and two sisters - both college graduates, according to their mother - declined to comment, saying that Farron's lawyer, Michael Lee Kaplan, had advised them not to. Kaplan also declined to comment.

Expelled from elementary school for "throwing trash cans at the principal," according to his mother's talks with a juvenile master, Farron passed his days on streets lined with blue-light police cameras and shuttered rowhouses, by his own admission smoking marijuana and selling drugs.

Early one afternoon in September 2005, four city police officers patrolling the alleys near the Pimlico racetrack spotted a boy who should have been in school.

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