Baltimore City had “only” one murder on New Year’s Eve, a man shot and killed several blocks west of the downtown business district and University of Maryland Hospital. The year ended with 344 homicides, nearly 90 percent by guns, the second highest number of homicides in Baltimore City history. And victim number 343 was killed on December 29th, shot multiple times not too far from where I live.
These 344 homicides were exceeded only by the 353 that occurred in 1993. However, in 1993, Baltimore City had 100,000 more residents than today, and gentrification has expanded since then, with upwardly mobile people unlikely to commit murders moving into the City and transforming, i.e. creating large exoduses by the poor and black former residents — large neighborhoods of the city. However, on a per capita basis, 2015 beat all records — 55 murders per 100,000 residents, in the otherwise record year of 1993 the rate was 48.8 murders per 100,000 residents.
These 344 homicides compare to “only” 211 in 2014; also, there were over 630 non-fatal shootings by guns in 2015 compared to “only” 370 in 2014. Nor were these 2014 numbers an aberration — there were 235 homicides in 2013, and 217 homicides in 2012, and 197 homicides in 2011.
2015 started out as a “normal” year as far as murders are concerned. From January 1st to March, the murder rate for these first three months of 2015 was comparable to that of 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. But the murder rate skyrocked following the death of Freddie Gray and the subsequent civil unrest — to 30 to 40 murders a months, a pace that continued until the end of the year.
Nearly 90 percent of 2015's homicides were the result of shootings, in other words, it was guns that killed these victims [NRA — you can go stuff it with your inane slogans!] Counting non-fatal gunshot wounds as well as fatalities, gun violence in Baltimore City climbed 75 percent in 2015.
More than 90 percent of the dead were males, more than half were between the ages of 18 and 30, and more than 90 percent were black. Black Lives Matter, and I submit most strongly that it is a tragedy whenever someone dies by gun violence, whether at the hands of the police or the hands of civilians — the latter exponentially outnumbers the former in my home city.
There will be those who point out that most of the dead — particularly in that 18 to 30 years old group who form the majority of the victims — were members of drug gangs that control so much of my city, and whose turf wars account for so many of the dead. And I would agree with this statement, but there are two problems with it. First, these young men with their guns are not always the best shots, and in 2015 nearly two dozen children, some as young as toddlers, count among the victims. Children are literally spending their childhoods in combat zones.
And the drug gangs are targeting former members who leave the gangs and work to better their neighborhoods and convince boys in the neighborhoods not to join the gangs. Gregory Mongo of East Baltimore joined a drug gang as a young man, carried a gun, was arrested and convicted, and went to prison. But upon release Gregory Mongo determined to work to better his community and not to tear it down. He organized a basketball league for the young boys of his neighborhood and encouraged them to forsake the gangs. He went to the street corners and said to the gang members, “What can I do to get you off this corner?” And for his courage and his decency, he was murdered. And earlier in 2015, a barber in West Baltimore was murdered because he had left the gangs and tried to start a new life for himself. But some gang member walked right into the barber shop, in broad daylight, and shot him dead.
And the emergency room of my neighborhood hospital is being overwhelmed by the nightly arrival of those wounded by gun violence.
But why did 2015, at least post Freddie Gray’s death and the civil unrest, see such a spike of gun violence? And why, according to the January 2nd Baltimore Sun article I’ve already linked to twice, is Baltimore’s “crime spike”, among the “30 largest U.S. cities,” “unparalleled”? There are long term reasons, which do not explain the 2015 spike in gun violence, as well as reasons unique to 2015.
First, the long term factors: Hopelessness pervades these impoverished, rat infested, boarded up neighborhoods. Any child born into one of the non-boarded up houses faces a grim life. This link summarizes the cold economic data:
Median income in Baltimore City: Whites $60,550, Blacks $33,610, with median income in Upton-Druid Heights, focal point of the April 2015 looting, at “well below the poverty line of $13,338 a year.”
Life expectancy in upper class mostly white Roland Park was 83 years, compared to 63 years in Upton-Druid Heights. Residents of Upton-Druid Heights were 3 times more likely to die of heart disease, 8 times of diabetes, 15 times of homicide, and 30 times of AIDS, than comparatively wealthy Roland Park residents.
Unemployment among males ages 20-24: Whites 10%, Blacks 37%
Abandoned buildings 16,000, abandoned lots 14,000, with one-fourth of homes in Freddie Gray’s Sandtown neighborhood boarded up.
Absent fathers are the rule. Rats dart back and forth, occasionally in daytime, always at night. Children, including Freddie Gray, are poisoned by lead paint. The public schools suck, and our Republican Governor has not helped by cutting $20 million from state funds earmarked for Baltimore public schools, despite a half billion dollar surplus in the state budget that Governor O’Malley left him, and despite demands from the state legislature that he spend this money. And our Republican governor has not helped to create jobs in the impoverished neighborhoods in east and west Baltimore by cutting the Red Line. Baltimore’s two rail lines run north-south and northwest to downtown, those living on the east and west sides away from rapid transit, even if they can get a crappy low paying job in McDonald’s or Walmart, must spend hours each day riding and waiting for buses, some transferring and waiting for buses two or three times to get to work and back home.
One can see for oneself by driving or walking through neighborhoods such as Sandtown and Upton, seeing all the boarded up row houses and boarded up former stores. Driving through at nighttime is eerie and scary — the darkness created by the lack of lights from the vacant homes can be terrifying — but young men congregating on the street corners make it even scarier. And you just want to drive out of there lest a turf war gun battle breaks out and you get hit by a stray bullet and become part of the statistics. And thanks to the NRA and SCOTUS and lax gun laws in neighboring Virginia and underground gun dealers who sell to anyone, guns are too damn easy to obtain, and guns are everywhere.
The fact is that a boy born in these impoverished neighborhoods has a high probability of joining the drug gangs, starting as a lookout before he even reaches his teen years, obtaining and using a gun early in his teens, dropping out of school, and dead or in prison by age 25.
Short Term Factors: Baltimore City police blame the spike of shootings in part on looting of the CVS Pharmacy at Pennsylvania and North Avenues, and other pharmacies, which resulted in a mass release of stolen prescription opioids that wound up in the hands of the drug gangs. A massive cycle of killings and retaliations over possession and turf soon took hold.
Second is the so-called Ferguson Effect where police, in response to the criticism, including much criticism here on Daily Kos, have responded by a slow down, essentially refusing to do their jobs. In Baltimore, the criticism over the arrest and death in police custody of Freddie Gray was followed quickly by the looting and then by the prosecution of the six police officers involved. We already had too many police staying in their patrol vehicles, driving through “hostile” neighborhoods much as armed U.S. Marines drove humvees through hostile Baghdad, venturing out of their cars only to make arrests. The argument has been made — and I tend to believe it — that police, since April of 2015, have ceased trying to break up the gangs congregating on street corners, have ceased stopping and frisking them for guns, have, in effect, turned their backs and covered their heads while drug gangs shoot it out, killing one another, but occasionally killing an an innocent bystander, possibly a child or two, or an ex gang member trying to do good for himself and his community.
Short Term Solutions: While the police force is roughly evenly split between white and black officers, too many of the white officers live in the exurbs, some even across the state line in Pennsylvania. For years, local right wing hate radio, when we have had Democratic governors, has promoted Pennsylvania as “tax paradise” — a haven from the tax and spend libruls. Then the right wing radio jockeys point to the “exodus” to Pennsylvania as proof of the failure of “librul Democrat” rule. One need only to ride one’s bike north on the bike trail through bucolic northern Maryland, then you hit the state line with development as far as the eye can see, homes right up to the Maryland-Pennsylvania line. The idea of Baltimore city police officers commuting every day from this out-of-state community, commuting for hours twice a day in tie ups on Interstate 83, is disturbing. Our police officers should be a part of our city, and have a personal stake in our city.
Second, at least a part of our police force should get out of their cars, be assigned to community centers, and patrol the neighborhoods on foot. In other words, become a part of the community, meet and befriend the members of the community, maybe join the local kids in shooting some hoops. To me walking the beat, chatting with and getting to know the people you are serving, possibly getting tips from the people, and acting on these tips, would be more effective policing, and maybe more disruptive to those young men on the street corners, than the police continuing to isolate themselves inside their patrol cars.
These ideas do nothing to solve the long term crisis of the pathology of urban poverty, but at least they might get our annual homicide rate back down to the low 200’s.