What is Going On in Baltimore?

128 murders in the first 155 days of 2007.

Baltimore is now on pace for over 300 murders this year. As alarming as that number is, perhaps even more frightening is the seeming randomness with which recent murders, and other shootings, are happening.

Just last night, a cab driver was shot in the head in Charles Village, while driving. Just a few miles away, in Dutch Village, a 4-year-old boy was hit by a stray bullet. The bullet wasn’t from some gang fight or drug transaction gone wrong, though. During an argument between two female neighbors, one of them summoned a man nearby to open fire on the other woman. The bullet hit the boy in the foot instead.

On a nearly daily basis, my Baltimoresun.com RSS Feed broadcasts the story of another homicide. And these murders are not concentrated to one or two historically-troubled neighborhoods. They are happening in west Baltimore, east Baltimore, northeast Baltimore, mid-town, all over the city.

A story yesterday, forebodingly titled, “Death on the Streets,” attempted to clarify the situation and comfort the city’s increasingly nervous citizens. Here is a quote from the Baltimore Police Department,

According to Jablow, more than 80 percent of the city’s homicide victims and close to 90 percent of its murder suspects have lengthy criminal records.

“Baltimore is becoming an increasingly safer city for law-abiding citizens but has become an increasingly dangerous city for those that live outside the law,” Jablow said. “We see it over and over with our homicide victims and suspects: They’re people who’ve been arrested, five, 10, 15 times. We have to get these people off the streets for longer periods of time.”

Does this make you feel safer?

Why is a violent criminal, who has been arrested 5, 10, or 15 times on the streets, obviously without being rehabilitated?

The two violent attacks last night were seemingly unrelated to any gang or drug activity. One was labeled a case of road rage, while the other, a neighborly argument. The full blame cannot be placed on the Baltimore Police Department. Why is the first reaction to reach for a gun?

All of this leads me back to my initial question, for which I have no concrete answer. What is going on in Baltimore? And more importantly, what can we as citizens, neighbors, and families do to turn it around? If we wait for the police department or the government to handle it, we’ll see 300 before the end of the year.