26 killings in 25 days: Baltimore police search for solutions to year's lethal start
Harm City still punching above its weight class.
-Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy, it is the weather. We have not been hit by snow and have even had some days in which the hos of Baltimore have been able to show off their T&A in hopes of netting some welfare-Generating DNA! If we have a hot summer—lookout crackerjack! BTW, we have had a 20-agent Federal Task Force in Harm City since July 2015. Representing six agencies they have helped with murder closures and drug busts. An armored column drives through Baltimore every morning at 4:30 a.m. to kick in a drug den door and all that has done is convince hoodrats to go into armed robbery instead! The ripple effect is that every time a drug den goes down that leaves a niche for a replacement and the new kids on the block slug it out for the new position, the casualties being taken by many of the younger set members who work corners. Even with a tacit agreement among a number of gangs to shoot the legs of corner boys instead of popping the head—13-15 year-olds have been bailing for armed robbery and crackerjacking gigs. My hope is that the Christian wing of Trump's administration will push the Drug War and generate unheard of levels of crime in Harm City, which would be good for our site traffic!
Huzzah!
If the concern is for preventing black on white crime—which has skyrocketed in Baltimore—then certain areas of Black Baltimore should be left completely un-policed while beat policing is implemented in white areas.
-James
“Twenty-six people have been killed in the year's first 25 days. Police Commissioner Kevin Davis tried to assure residents that the department is doing everything it can, allocating more officers to patrol and redeploying gang and other special units to areas of the city where violence is the worst. "We're all very aware of the violence plaguing our city," Davis said at a wide-ranging news conference at police headquarters. "We absolutely acknowledge and condemn the violence occurring in the city of Baltimore."
According to the most recent police crime statistics, total shootings are up 44 percent compared to this time last year, while homicides are up 50 percent for the period. Carjackings, a major problem for police in 2016, are up more than 60 percent. There have been at least 39 reported carjackings in 2017.”
26 killings in 25 days: Baltimore police search for solutions to year's lethal start
Justin George
January 25, 2017
baltimoresun.com |
As Baltimore struggles with a deadly start to the year, the mayor and police commissioner on Wednesday called on help from the community, other city agencies, prosecutors and even the president to help slow a pace of one homicide a day.
Twenty-six people have been killed in the year's first 25 days. Police Commissioner Kevin Davis tried to assure residents that the department is doing everything it can, allocating more officers to patrol and redeploying gang and other special units to areas of the city where violence is the worst.
"We're all very aware of the violence plaguing our city," Davis said at a wide-ranging news conference at police headquarters. "We absolutely acknowledge and condemn the violence occurring in the city of Baltimore."
According to the most recent police crime statistics, total shootings are up 44 percent compared to this time last year, while homicides are up 50 percent for the period. Carjackings, a major problem for police in 2016, are up more than 60 percent. There have been at least 39 reported carjackings in 2017.
Baltimore's most recent homicides came Wednesday.
In East Baltimore around 3:15 p.m., officers found a man at the intersection of North Patterson Park Avenue and East Preston Street with fatal gunshot wounds. At 8 p.m. officers found a man with gunshot wounds in the 100 block of S. Conkling St. He died at a hospital.
"This is not the new normal," Davis said. "We continue to fight out of the place we're in."
During her weekly news briefing Wednesday, Mayor Catherine Pugh said the city's violence problem extended beyond the Police Department's control. She called on the black community to find solutions to the killings, the victims of which are overwhelmingly African-American.
"This is not about just policing," Pugh said. "It's about community. When you think about people walking into a barbershop and shooting people point-blank. ... There's something terribly wrong going on in our communities that people think it's OK to pick up a gun, shoot people and kill people."
The past two years have seen an unusual surge in violent crime that traces back to the unrest that followed the death of Freddie Gray from injuries sustained in the back of a police van in April 2015. The number of homicides in Baltimore jumped from 211 in 2014 to 344 in 2015 — the most per capita in the city's history.
Last year, Baltimore ended the year with 318 homicides. Many major cities have also seen increases in violent crime, most dramatically in Chicago, which had 762 homicides last year.
President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday on Twitter that he might send in "the feds" to help Chicago. Davis was asked Wednesday whether he thought Trump could help here. The commissioner said if he had "30 seconds" in an elevator with the president, he would ask him to double the number of federal law enforcement agents in Baltimore. He would also ask Trump to send more prosecutors to the U.S. attorney's office to help with city crime.
In a report issued Wednesday, an association of police chiefs of the nation's major cities also called for more federal resources to combat a surge in violent crime nationally.
As for what his own agency is doing, Davis broadly outlined a strategy where police are focusing resources where crime is worst and closely monitoring 132 "trigger pullers" — persons of interest detectives believe are responsible for shootings or homicides. Davis intimated that many of those trigger pullers might be under arrest in other jurisdictions.
Davis said he would like to revisit a long-standing "handshake agreement" his department has with prosecutors that requires detectives to check with the state's attorney's office before they arrest homicide and attempted homicide suspects. Such an agreement is uncommon.
The agreement was made because too many cases were being dropped by prosecutors within months of suspects being charged. Some felt police were making premature or wrongful arrests, while others argued that prosecutors were not doing enough to secure convictions.
Davis said detectives believe that if they could jail more suspects under a lower threshold of proof, fearful witnesses would be more likely to cooperate with police, strengthening the case in the end.
Asked about the agreement, a top aide to Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby said that Mosby has requested a meeting with Davis to discuss driving down violent crime.
"As always, we will work cooperatively with the Baltimore Police Department," Rhoda Washington, Mosby's chief of external affairs, said in a statement.
Davis also said officers have been encountering an unusually high number of juveniles during carjacking or stolen car investigations who were in the company of older males. He said young adults are "preying" on juveniles, persuading them to commit major crimes knowing the "apathetic" criminal justice system will be lenient in its punishment.
He said parents need to be more aware of whom their children are associating with and whether they are going to school. All city agencies need to help provide struggling parents and families with all types of assistance, Davis said.
He said representatives of those agencies would be special guests Thursday at a weekly meeting of police commanders to discuss city crime trends.
"The reality is these kids are growing up in situations that most of us don't," said Lt. Col. Osborne Robinson, chief of patrol.
Pugh authorized the department last week to hire 100 officers to fill positions that her predecessor had frozen to save money. Police are now looking to hire 226 officers in all to help cover patrol shortages.
"We've got to get a handle on this. This is outrageous to me," Pugh said of the violence. "We're killing our own people in our own streets. We have a problem."
Baltimore Sun reporter Luke Broadwater contributed to this article.
twitter.com/justingeorge
Call me crazy, I wouldn't blame anyone. I was a Habitat for Humanity project super in Watts, South Central, Compton and everywhere in between like a dumb ass. Through that I became enamored of the Youthbuild program, the real gangbangers, crips, bloods, rolling 40s and 60s, MS13, Venice Shoreline Crips, V-13, SM-13 and everything else. I was actually more gangsta than them when it came down to getting shot at. I was jaded. The dumb ass that emptied a Mac 10 at 14 of my students and me......I didn't duck, I didn't run, I fuckin' walked towards him as he threw his little BMX bike and his gun over a fence and ran like hell, cuz that nigga Rube.....me, was going to tear his fucking heart out and eat it raw while he died in my hands comprehendingly. you dig? I'd been shot at so many times in Watts I wouldn't even duck. I wouldn't throw myself on the ground, I wouldn't run. I read a book on an upturned 5 gallon bucket, having a smoke, eating my lunch, and reading a book. I suppose I had a death wish. I don't wish to live forever, you couldn't pay me to do it, so stuff your technology where the sun don't shine. My whole point in bringing this up, is, in talking to my, 'at promise' youth, they said the white man stole everything. the white man uses guns. the white men are gangsters, so how is this code of life for you, filtered through your bullshit bible for me, make me turn the other cheek, not steal, be nonviolent. bull fucking shit. give me the gun give me adventure, give me the life. 8 bucks an hour and kissing your ass everyday. fuck you, give me the life. i learned far more from them than i could ever impart to them. funny thing is dindus in the office, lazy mofos, screwed them all out of high paying construction jobs cuz they wouldn't leave their desks. oh, over to A-hole foods, across the street 10 bucks an hour. i had marvelous students. a lot fell by the wayside. one shot the ear off of someone in an argument. others were killed at the bus stop on the way to my school. so i understand.....kill whitey
Thanks for this great comment, Ruben.
Ruben, if I had been born black in Baltimore City I would be hunting humans.
When people asked me what if I had been born black it never takes me any time to answer. And, had I been born white in Baltimore City, instead of in Baltimore County, I'd be dead or doing life in prison, with no regrets other than the failure to kill more than I did.
Ruben Chandler reply is exactly the reason I feel the way I feel. I've not always felt this way, a WN first, Whites first. I was a brain wharped individualist who, while not completely blind to race, tried to see everyone as individuals. This attitude is a fail if all the other races only see race. If everyone else is playing identity politics then if you don't the same then you're on the losing side.
Now Ruben is, I assume from what he wrote, being shot at by Blacks and Hispanics and...the problem is Whitey. How you going to argue with that kind of logic. It's pointless.
I believe there is a widespread glitch in the admonishment to,"turn the other cheek". I interpret this to mean that you shouldn't immediately move to violence at every provocation. Does it say,"turn the other cheek forever"? No it doesn't. I see it as tempering yourself and not being quick to anger. This is not only morally correct it's tactically correct as when you are struck by someone many times they have the upper hand.
Some say "turn the other cheek" means pacifism but I think it means take the first blow, retreat, then sneak around and destroy your enemy altogether.
I bet, though I can't prove it, that the rise in violence is because they are letting people out of jail that formerly would have been locked up. When Regan was in office people had enough of crime so they stated locking up people for any and all violations of the law. This has changesd and they are reducing charges and letting people out early. So it's just the same bunch over and over. If every time you committed a violent crime they put in the "Western Permaculture Plantation" program for a long time violence would plummet as all these people would be under control. I also see robbery and theft as a violent crime. If you're in the house or car or whatever the potential for violence is high. You, by robbing and stealing, put yourself in that position.