Something Went Wrong In Baltimore

It has been a bloody year in Baltimore, that much everyone knows, but as The Economist shows, something changed dramatically after Freddie Gray's death in April...

On November 14th the police department reported the city’s 300th homicide in 2015, a total not seen since 1999.

The surge in killings in the majority-black city of roughly 623,000 began after the death on April 19th of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who was fatally injured while in police custody. Since Mr Gray’s death the city has recorded 244 homicides, a 78% increase over the same period in 2014, representing more than 100 additional deaths.

Criminologists and city officials disagree as to the causes:

• Some say police have deliberately pulled back from poor, black neighbourhoods, a theory that the police disputes.
• Others blame an influx of drugs from pharmacies looted during the April riots.
• A third theory is that a decline in trust between the police and the policed has had deadly consequences: fewer residents talk to the police, which leads to fewer murders being solved, which - by lowering the odds of being caught - results in more murders.

Whatever the reason, the killing continues. Just hours after the 300th murder, police reported a shooting in the city’s Westport neighbourhood, the fourth homicide of the day. The total for the year now stands at 305.

Comments

[surf@jm]

And if the race hustler Obama ran for a third term, he would get 80% or more of the vote in those neighborhoods......

Stupid is as stupid does.......

[tritumi]

born on 33rd st and went to school in west baltimore, lived on maryland ave and also 42nd at greenmount, delivered mail all over the city and know the hoods where simon filmed The WIre intimately.

my view aligns with the notion that the Great Society was pacification to co-opt the rise of legitimate black power, creating a cadre of black politicians equally beholding to and dependent on white donations for their entree into the permanent political class.  

the destruction of opportunity defined as outsourcing and insourcing, both labor arbitrage, removed the lower rungs of self- and generational improvement.  this necessitates dependence for survival.

add crack, courtesy of certain powers amply documented (thanks, m ruppert).  all downhill from there.

social justice? start with the hanging of those responsibie for and profiteering in narcotics.  they are the contemporary slave owners.

[fowlerja]

I left my heart in San Francisco but I left my life in Baltimore.

[hendrik1730]

Sorry guys, but blacks making up 15% of the Chicago population sign for 95% of the homicides. Baltimore is a black city. I rest my case.

[SweetDoug]

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The question needed, isn’t the observation of the increase in murders, but who are being murdered, which will reveal who are doin’ da murderin’!

Thug on thug? Random? Who knows?

Until this is examined, it’s sheer speculation, but this examination will reveal the genesis.

It’s astonishing that all the professionals aren’t pursuing this, in such a manner.

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V-V