The past year brought about a number of meaningful, positive changes forward to the fight against crime with greater police stability, a new mayor, and noticeable efforts to heal gun violence trauma. Unfortunately, it has not proven to be nearly enough.
2021 has passed, and despite the work done to improve the rate of crime, local residents have witnessed yet another year with a homicide rate of over 300. A popular leader of Safe Streets was murdered, a woman in a church was stabbed to death at age 69, and a city police officer was reportedly shot in the head
Compared to 2020, there were even more nonfatal shootings and homicides. As of New Year’s Day, the police noted exactly 337 killings in 2021 compared to 335 in 2020. With respect to nonfatal shootings during the same time window, 728 were reported in total for 2021 along with 721 for 2020; approximately a 1% net increase.
This marks the 7th consecutive year in a row in which Baltimore, a city with decreasing population, has exceeded a figure of 300 homicides. Beginning in 2015, rates of violence started increasing and have continued in this trajectory ever since.
Such a trend is not exclusive to Baltimore and has since extended to other nearby regions including Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Philadelphia. Unlike Baltimore, these cities observed the highest rate of homicides in several decades.
The pace of homicides in Baltimore has remained eerily consistent. Fortunately, however, city leaders are discovering new reasons to find hope.
For example, the clearance rate of murders has inched higher in the past 3 years, from 32% up to 42% across the time frame. Cory McCray, a local state senator, cheered for a decline in violence in the district of Northeast Baltimore in which homicides reduced from 41% to 27% as of the last week of December 2021. Furthermore, Michael Harrison, Police Commissioner, noted a visible reduction in property crime and street robberies.
“When you put it all together, we have made improvements — we’re just getting started. It is frustrating, but we’re changing the culture of a city.” — Michael Harrison
The commissioner has blamed the violence on the growing tendency of men to use firearms to settle disputes. After a brief argument taking place at a bus stop in January 2021, for instance, two men were charged with manslaughter upon gunning down the driver of a shuttle bus.
That year concluded with heavy violence. As previously mentioned, in November, Evelyn Player, a 69-year old retiree, was found stabbed to death in a church located in East Baltimore. Just days after this, Maliyah Turner, a 13-year-old child, was shot and fatally wounded outside a recreation center in West Baltimore. Over the past 2 weeks, Keona Holley, a local city police officer, was fatally shot just sitting in her patrol car. Although law enforcement arrested 2 of the perpetrators, their motives are unknown.
This continued bloodshed has been noted as a historical problem according to Mayor Brandon Scott with the argument that quick fixes used in the past have only served to worsen the problems plaguing the city today. Groundwork has been laid by Scott for 2022 to establish task forces and allocate monetary resources towards “trauma-informed care” with interventions programs for violence. The goal, he has stated, is to reduce homicides by up to 15%, placing the overall death toll below 290.