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Baltimore: An Update
Well, since the events of Freddie Grey fame, Baltimore has developed a “new normal.” Police are essentially on half-strike — they don’t feel loved by the City (I cannot imagine why not), and they don’t want to risk doing anything that gets them in trouble. So the net result is that the Mayor’s own “crack” anti-crime unit has resigned, the Feds are moving in, and crime is going through the roof, since police don’t want to do much.
Please note that the police in Baltimore City have not, for at least a decade, been very good to start with. So we have moved from 20% to 10% or lower. They won’t make arrests or file crime reports if they can possibly help it. Bad for the stats.
In my neighborhood and community, we have had, in the last week alone, a pair of armed holdups on the street (three blocks from my house), several house breaks, and 14 cars broken into, with some stolen.
The open question is whether the police are ever going to be remotely effective again, or whether this ends up being the trigger for the local Shomrim and equivalents to grow into a more comprehensive community-protection role.
Published in General
My neighbors have their curtains drawn. They aren’t seeing anything.
Maybe because they’re afraid to see you in your underwear….
Didn’t see a link at Baltimore Sun.
Here is the blog entry.
http://www.copinthehood.com/2015/05/deadliest-month-in-baltimore-ever.html?m=1
Interesting discussion in blog comments section.
We are better at saving lives medically so homicide rate numbers deflate over time.
Better number would be shootings, but stats are harder to come by.
http://www.copinthehood.com/2015/05/deadliest-month-in-baltimore-ever.html?showComment=1433012938130&m=1#c8438983732999166296
Which makes the crime even worse than the numbers suggest, yes?
re #66
I believe so.
The homicide “megastatistic” (I doubt anyone else calls it that, but I like it) is artificially lowered because we are able to save more lives medically than we used to.