Posted on 12/15/2018 6:54:34 PM PST by Kaslin
Yesterday, the Baltimore Police Department confirmed that another body dropped on the streets of Charm City had brought their 2018 murder total to 297. The unnamed victim was a known gang member, described by police as “a former Public Enemy No. 1” and had been acquitted of a firebombing over the summer. Given the city’s recent history, the odds of there not being at least three more killings over the next sixteen days are not encouraging, to put it mildly.
If this plays out as expected, it will represent four years running where the death toll has exceeded 300, and that’s during a period of time when the city’s population has been declining. But as the Baltimore Sun reminds us, things weren’t always this bad.
Baltimore had fewer than 300 homicides a year from 2000 through 2014, when the number was 211. But in 2015, the year of Freddie Gray’s death and ensuing unrest, homicides surged to 342. In 2016, the total remained over 300. Last year, amid declining population, 342 killings represented the highest number of killings per capita.
The violence has left broken families and damaged communities. Throughout Baltimore, streets are dotted with stray crime scene tape left from past shootings, or collections of deflated Mylar balloons and stuffed animals memorializing the dead.
“It is in some ways very discouraging. There are times where there are arrests made, we see things decrease and spike, but often times it seems like a steady stream,” said City Councilman John Bullock, who represents parts of West Baltimore.
There was a time during the spring and early summer when I’d begun to hope that things were turning around. Community groups sponsoring “murder-free weekends” had actually managed to stop the killing for up to four days at a time. (If you live in a more rural or suburban area, four days without a killing may sound like nothing at all, but for Baltimore, it’s nearly a miracle.) The overall numbers coming into the heat of the summer were still bad, but not as bad as last year. Sadly, the period of July through October saw Baltimore making up for lost time.
What, if anything, can be done to end the madness? New York City has managed to cut their homicide rate to less than half of Baltimore’s, despite having a population literally fifteen times as large. The heart of the problem isn’t the criminals and the gangs. Every city has those. It’s the responsibility of the municipal, county and state governments to keep their people safe. In Charm City, they are failing at the job.
Still, the latest mayor is working on programs which show at least some promise. Rather than trying to tackle their crime problem across the board, they’ve begun selecting individual neighborhoods for additional resources and the use of reformed criminals who know the streets and attempt to intervene in disputes before they turn deadly. Dubbed the “Safe Streets Program,” Baltimore is adding three more such neighborhoods to the roster in 2019.
The Baltimore mayor’s office chose three neighborhoods for new Safe Streets sites, expanding the reach of a popular program that uses reformed criminals to intervene in disputes before violence breaks out.
The sites are expected to open next year in Northeast Baltimore’s Belair-Edison, South Baltimore’s Brooklyn and Madison-East End in East Baltimore — neighborhoods that between them have seen 53 shootings that resulted in 21 killings this year.
It’s an unconventional approach to be sure. And some might plausibly argue that a program only supporting individual neighborhoods is unfair because what about the rest of the city? Well, I can sympathize with them, but the city has repeatedly proven that their crime problem is too big to tackle on a broad scale… at least with the people who are currently in charge. So saving some lives is better than none, I suppose.
But as the funerals continue, residents of Baltimore should remember one thing. Their own elected representatives have continually voted against tougher sentencing for gun crimes and other measures which might have helped stem the violence. In the end, the only people who can save Baltimore are the voters who go to the polls each year.
They’re house neggehs. Who cares? Not the Democrats who run Baltimore.
Leftists running Baltimore have done everything in their power to do two things:
First, remove all underpinnings of political support for police doing their jobs, and
Second, to reduce the presence of police in the neighborhoods that need it most.
If a policeman is out on the street and they get into a tussle...they are on their own. They KNOW they are alone, and can expect no support.
The city government pulling back support a few years back and just gave the rioters “space to destroy” was astonishing. Insane, but...they did.
On the twelfth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
12 drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a milking
Seven swans a swimming
Six geese a laying
Five gold rings, badam-pam-pam
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
And 300 homicides in Baltimore
Change the Fiscal Year date for the body count to November 1.
In the meanwhile, Baltimore City has time to sue the Trump Administration over illegals.
That's GREAT news! Not "grim" at all.
Maybe this wouldn’t happen if only Baltimore would enact reasonable, modest, common-sense gun control.
All federal welfare and social programs should be abolished.
Lived in Maryland for 5 years now and haven’t been to Baltimore in 4 years.
Not missing a thing.
God, I hate this state.
The last two sentences say it all. It’s the politicians, all Democrats, who are soft on crime and always have been.
I was born and raised in Baltimore and we rarely had much in the way of murders or serious drug problems (heroin, yes but that was about it as compared to the various “cocktails of death” they have today.
They haven’t had an effective mayor since Donald Schaefer yet many of his anti-crime/make Baltimore great again programs were defeated or diluted by the white old-line Democratic machines coupled with the rising Black political machines who were just as corrupt as the old white guys were. (My mother and uncle were on the Mayor’s Commission for Culture and the Arts, and ran into these old establishment, entrenched “privileged” people who could have cared less for the arts (the great Baltimore Symphony, the Lyric Theater, etc).
It will take another 20 years for Baltimore to recover from what the Freddy Grey riots and propaganda machine did in terms of damaging an already sick and decaying city. All Democrats. Jack Pollack is spinning in his grave.
I've lived in the People's Republic of Maryland much longer. This state has a few redeeming features, but not all that many. Baltimore after dark has been far more dangerous since the mayor endorsed rioting, but it's never worth seeing in the daylight either. Our politicians are corrupt socialists who disgust me. And our hospitals are top notch.
I grew-up in Montgomery county. Left for 30 years and then came back.
Loved it when I was a kid. Can’t stand it now.
Even Nancy (D’Alesandro) Pelosi fled Maryand. And now she’s effing up California.
No riots, no burning, no concern when black lives don’t matter to blacks. I am glad the police have taken good advice and ignore these neighborhoods unless they have to call in the clean up crews. Reap what you sow.
Lived here my whole life. We have a Republican governor who does all he can to bash Trump at every opportunity - so I’m sure the national party will be pushing him to run in 2020.
Excellent point.
Fantastic hospitals and universities. And many in my family study and work in town I worry about their safety every day. Such a shame because in the late 1980’s Baltimore was really turning around. Now we don’t even attend weddings in Baltimore.
The author has reversed the cause and effect.
Broken families and damaged communities have produced violence.
Baltimordor.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
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