I spoke to one man yesterday while we drove through East Baltimore, the neighborhood he grew up in the sixties. We had sat in a hospital waiting room all day while I read ‘White Girl Bleeds A Lot’ by Colin Flaherty. I discussed passages with him and he became interested in speaking of his experiences as soon as we were out of the hospital setting. A nurse had asked me what I was reading, and then took offense at the title. Bill’s a gentleman."

He nodded to the rows of mostly vacant houses within sight of the glittering towers of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Building and Sheikh Sayed Tower. "This was where I grew up. That was my Grandmom’s corner grocery. We had to lock the doors when the blacks came through, because they would just take everything. It’s a shame, and it’s happening in my neighborhood [Parkville] now.

“We had both convenience stores hit this week at gunpoint. My grandson was robbed at gunpoint last year. My next door neighbor had a gun put to her head last month while she was unloading her groceries—all black guys who are not from the neighborhood. We have our own blacks—these aren’t them.

“The cops know—the chopper is over my house at all hours. Betty, down the street, the thugs kicked in her door the other night—luckily she wasn’t home. She waited all day for the police to get there. When the cop handed her the report he had filled out she checked it, and saw that he listed it as “destruction of property,” no breaking and entering, no burglary. She made him change it and he played dumb—but she knew—we know. I’ve been in this city for sixty-four years and know what the deal is. They’re throwing us to the dogs just like they did when I was a kid in east Baltimore.

He nodded at the Hoodrat training facility to the left of the Edison Highway Bridge and said, “My brother and I were cutting through there one time around nineteen-seventy, when this guy came at us with a big shiny knife and robbed us. We thought we were goners.”

“You heard about Pappas Restaurant being robbed this week?”

“Yes, but no details.”

“Well, I eat there regular. The owner was pistol whipped by this young black guy. The owner is eighty-three. The guy makes off with his money, and my friend, who was eating there and coming out of the bar, chased him all the way down into the city, into West Baltimore, on Greenmount. The entire time he was on the phone to the cops. The robber wrecked his car and the cops got him. Personally, I think my friend was nuts, but I’m glad he did it. Now that they know that the police won’t step in they’re going to burn this city to the ground the next time—it’s coming, I can feel it. The Governor needs to take over the city and bring in the National Guard. That dumb bitch wants a thousand Somalis—seven out of ten of them unemployed men—and just released seven hundred convicted drug dealers. It’s not getting any better.”

This has been the crime pattern in East Baltimore in the 1960s and 70s and Northeast Baltimore now—thugs from the Westside raiding these areas with the guidance of local spotters who have moved in with their mothers on section eight housing vouchers and cruise around on bikes observing white behavior to establish prey and ambush sites. Half of the bus lines connect East and West Baltimore, so this is a simple process, pre-basing support and intelligence networks.