Free Republic

A Baltimore police officer shot and killed a man who was wielding a knife in West Baltimore on Sunday, according to Baltimore Police Department Commissioner Michael Harrison. That man, Tyree Moorehead, was the creator of the city's "no shoot zones." As an activist, he spray-painted that message across the face of Baltimore—from block to block and from neighborhood to neighborhood. His father, Carlton Moorehead, confirmed to WJZ that his son had been killed by an officer while in the neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester. Moorehead had been holding the knife while assaulting a female on the ground near the intersection of North...

It is so sad to see @VictorBlackwell & @CNN turn the light currently shining on #WestBaltimore into a race issue. This could result in a positive change. @RepCummings could help get his district in order. Listen to one of his constituents explain the "rats & rodents" problem.

In an alley where a teenager became one of Baltimore’s latest bodies to fall, Erricka Bridgeford whispered prayers and directed smoke from burning sage in a gathering intended to transform spots where people are slain into a kind of sacred ground. The spiritually minded activist began to cry, letting her tears fall on asphalt where the 17-year-old boy she didn’t know was fatally shot the night before. She called out “You matter! You matter!” in a raw voice that came from somewhere deep inside her 5-foot-2 (155-centimeter) frame. Over the past year, the African-American woman from West Baltimore has become...

Two years after someone fired 18 bullets into his body, we finally know the reason Gregory McFadden died such a brutal death at the age of 27 in West Baltimore. He turned his back on a guy. It was disrespect, a malady that inflames the male ego and makes young men do terrible things. Disrespect has been around for centuries, of course, but its consequences have been particularly lethal in the age of the high-powered handgun. Killing someone because he disrespected you is a phenomenon that no amount of police power or community vigilance can seem to stop. Some interventions...