The Tragedy of Baltimore: Inside the crackup of an American city.

New York Times ^ | March 12, 2019 | Alec MacGillis

[reaganaut1]

...

In Baltimore, you can tell a lot about the politics of the person you’re talking with by the word he or she uses to describe the events of April 27, 2015. Some people, and most media outlets, call them the “riots”; some the “unrest.” Guy was among those who always referred to them as the “uprising,” a word that connoted something justifiable and positive: the first step, however tumultuous, toward a freer and fairer city. Policing in Baltimore, Guy and many other residents believed, was broken, with officers serving as an occupying army in enemy territory — harassing African-American residents without cause, breeding distrust and hostility.

In 2016, the United States Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division concurred, releasing a report accusing the city’s Police Department of racial discrimination and excessive force. The city agreed to a “consent decree” with the federal government, a set of policing reforms that would be enforced by a federal judge. When an independent monitoring team was selected to oversee the decree, Guy was hired as its community liaison. This was where she wanted to be: at the forefront of the effort to make her city a better place.

But in the years that followed, Baltimore, by most standards, became a worse place. In 2017, it recorded 342 murders — its highest per-capita rate ever, more than double Chicago’s, far higher than any other city of 500,000 or more residents and, astonishingly, a larger absolute number of killings than in New York, a city 14 times as populous. Other elected officials, from the governor to the mayor to the state’s attorney, struggled to respond to the rise in disorder, leaving residents with the unsettling feeling that there was no one in charge.

[cyclotic]

I moved to Maryland in November 2019. The office is in Baltimore. I knew this place was corrupt but could have never imagined how bad.

My first day I was driving to work and heard a news story that the Baltimore Mayor had been convicted of stealing gift cards meant for poor children.

It’s only gone downhill from there. She was followed by Mayor Space to Destroy then by Mayor Clueless.

[VietVet876]

The gift card theft story was several years ago.

[outpostinmass2]

Baltimore was a great and beautiful city. Unfortunately the last series of Mayors and City Council were nothing but corrupt incompetent slackers and imho racists.

---

Not in my lifetime and I am over 50 years old.

[cyclotic]

OK, so I can’t type, and I’m clairvoyant. I moved in November 2009, not six months from now. Good catch.

[Leep]

NYC was once a charming place

...back in the 1820’s.

[wbarmy]

one acquaintance admitted to me recently that he had stopped waiting at red lights when driving late at night. Why should he, he argued, when he saw young men on dirt bikes flying through intersections while police officers sat in cruisers doing nothing?

I read that line and then noticed how often the writer and protagonist complained that the cops were not doing their job.

We all know what would have happened if the cops had stopped the "young men" on dirt bikes. They would have been pilloried in the local press as racists and fascists,

and especially by the person complaining about the police in their cruisers doing nothing.

[PapaBear3625]

Same problem as found in Chicago and probably most other large ciites: as long as “the community” hates the cops more than it hates the gangs, anarchy and mayhem will thrive.

Who is "the community"? To a large degree, they are the parents, siblings, cousins, etc of the thugs. They don't want their precious darlings killed, they only want the police to (somehow) get them to stop fighting each other.

But they are fine with their precious thugs robbing and killing people OUTSIDE the community. And therein lies the problem.

[VietVet876]

I live a half a mile from the Baltimore City line and have been here since the mid ‘70’s. When I moved here from southeastern PA, Baltimore was a nice little city with a small town feel. It had a white mayor—William Donald Schaefer. A white police commissioner—Donald Pomerleau. A white city state’s attorney—Dwight Swisher. All of them were law and order guys who put up with no bullshit. Of course Baltimore had it’s race riots in the late ‘60’s and the blacks seemed reticent to start much trouble outside of domestic stabbings and shootings but nothing to disturb the white folks much. If there were black gangs, you didn’t notice any activity to speak of. Then Schaefer ran for and won the governor’s race in 1986 and the city elected it’s first black mayor who took office in 1987. Kurt Schmoke was a bright lawyer and a real nice guy. Unfortunately, he lost his balls somewhere along the line and the out-of-town drug gangs took over the city in less than a year and that was about all she wrote as far as any charm in the city.

[cdcdawg]

Anyone have that elephant in the room meme handy?

[Shane]

You Sir, are absolutely correct, Baltimore of the 1950’s, 60’s and early 70’s was a great city. But unfortunately it is now a war zone.

[bert]

The story tellers at The Wire told it all like it was but were ignored

Baltimore is Idi Amin’s uganda

[umgud]

It still boils down to something wrong with the inhabitants. I rarely see cops in my area, but that doesn’t mean more crime.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Detroit with Crabcakes as I like to call it.

[super7man]

Even when I was young and read “The Time Machine”, I felt that the Morlocks got a bad rap. If you step back from the story a bit and ask, “Who were the producers?” The Morlocks. Yes, a bit ugly and maybe living underground did not give them the best PR but now look at the Eloy. Beautiful, young, lazy, uncaring, and stupid. The Morlocks put the Eloy to their highest and best use. I would say you were running into Morlocks in appearance, but Eloy in their soul.

[grania]

I remember back to the riots which destroyed Baltimore. The leaders of the chaos were demanding that the police leave. They would police themselves, so they said. How’s that working for them?

[grania]

It goes back to busing and businesses leaving communities. Communities were left with no accountability and no gathering places where people could interact. Those most likely to be positive voices in their community went elsewhere for school, normal daily interactions, and jobs. It’s been engineered re-enslavement of the lower middle class.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Great crab cakes, tho...

[HotHunt]

".... They will accept your free stuff and then bite you in return...."

Reminds me of a time years ago when my wife and I owned a small farm in Oregon. We had a huge vegetable garden with rows and rows of string beans.

We had so many we couldn't handle them all so we advertised in the local shopper publication for "free green beans".

We got quite a few people stop and get their fair share. But one station wagon loaded with a family of the parents and six kids sticks in my memory.

They pulled up to the house, and we gave them, back then, kraft paper sacks from the grocery store to put the beans in that they picked. I told them they could pick all they wanted at no charge.

The parents looked at me in confusion. "You mean we have to pick them ourselves?"

Once they found out they had to work for their "free" green beans, they high-tailed it off the farm and back to their la-la land, wherever that was.

[Rummyfan]

Guy was among those who always referred to them as the “uprising,” a word that connoted something justifiable and positive: the first step, however tumultuous, toward a freer and fairer city.

I can tell you from personal experience the city has become neither fairer nor freer.

[ohioman]

“every crime-ridden, drug infested inner city shithole in the US has been run exclusively by democrats for generations. and yet the same brain-dead morons inhabiting these shitholes elect democrats over and over. And the rest of us are supposed to care....?”

Well said and 100% true!!!