BY BRENDA WINTRODE and PAMELA WOOD | Maryland’s Senate race is one of a handful of federal races poised to decide which political party wins control over Congress. That means there’s plenty of polling, as the candidates and other interested parties search for indications of which way voters will go.

Republican former Gov. Larry Hogan and Democrat and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks are vying for the open seat, along with Libertarian Party candidate Mike Scott and independent candidate Patrick J. Burke.

The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.

BY PAMELA WOOD | Maryland’s lone Republican in Congress, U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, is the new chair of the right-wing Freedom Caucus.

Harris has replaced prior Freedom Caucus chair U.S. Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, who lost his Republican primary earlier this year.

The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.

D.C. police are seeking help from the community to identify a man captured on video performing a sex act on himself with a cucumber in the driveway of a home in the city’s Truxton Circle neighborhood near Dunbar High School, according to both a police press release and  police incident report.

“On Friday, September 6, 2024, at approximately 5:00 p.m. the suspect was in the 200 block of N Street, NW.,” the police press release says. “The suspect performed a lewd act in view of the public,” it says. “The suspect then left the scene.”

The police incident report lists the offense committed by the unidentified man as “Lewd, indecent, or Obscene Acts.” The report says  the homeowner called police to report the incident.

The local online publication DC News Now spoke to the homeowner whose security camera video, which she posted on Reddit, shows the man removing a cucumber from what appears to be a lunch box and crouching down and appearing to insert the cucumber in his anus while standing behind the homeowner’s car parked in a driveway.

“I was so disgusted, and freaked out,” DC News Now quotes the homeowner, Catherine Baker, as saying. “I want people, I want my neighbors to know and keep an eye out for this person,” Baker told DC News Now. “There’s a lot of kids, there are high school students, they walk themselves to and from school, but we all have to be vigilant about this kind of thing,” Baker is quoted as saying.

The police report, which identifies Baker as having contacted police to report the incident, describes what appears to be the suspect’s actions as captured on the video, which Baker provided to police. It says the man, identified as Suspect 1, “went on to move from the front of the vehicle to the rear of the vehicle in front of respondent 1’s [Baker’s] window and continued to perform lewd and obscene acts to the cucumber.”

The Washington Blade couldn’t immediately reach Baker for further comment.

She told DC News Now that she had not seen the suspect in her neighborhood prior to seeing him in the video from her security camera. The publication reports that Baker noticed that at one point the suspect appears to notice the security camera as seen in the video.

“It was that eye contact that really unsettled me, because it then continues for longer than one would imagine,” DC News Now quotes her as saying. “And of course, then he saves the cucumber for later, so it really leaves one with a lot of questions that no one wants to have on their mind,” she told DC News Now.

She was referring to the video that  shows the suspect placing the cucumber back in his lunchbox before he walks away from the scene carrying the lunch box through an alley next to the driveway where the incident took place.

The police press release includes two photos of the suspect taken from the video. It says anyone who can identify the suspect or has further information about the incident should contact police at 202-727-9099.

A NSFW video of the incident was posted on Reddit here.