I’ve lived in three of the most dangerous cities in the world: Los Angeles, Detroit and Baltimore. But, it is Baltimore, where I was born and raised and where I currently reside, which tragically endures at the top of the murder list.
This week USA Today, citing crime statistics from police departments around the nation tagged Baltimore with the nefarious title, “the nation’s most dangerous city.”
As much as the designation sucks, we earned it.
“Baltimore is the big city with the highest per capita murder rate in the nation, with nearly 56 murders per 100,000 people. At 343 murders in 2017, the city tallied the highest per capita rate in its history,” USA Today wrote Feb. 19.
Sean Yoes (Courtesy Photo)
There is only one big city in America, which had more homicides than Baltimore in 2017; Chicago with a population of almost three million people, had 650 homicides in 2017, but that was still down from 762 homicides in 2016.
Perhaps, frequent readers of this column remember me previously citing the most astonishing comparison; New York City, with a population of about 8.5 million had 290 murders in 2017, versus Baltimore, with a dwindling population of about 615,000 recording 343 homicides.
But, after reading the USA Today story, I discovered Baltimore also outpaced the second largest city in the nation, Los Angeles, which had 286 murders in 2017.
I remember living in L.A. in the late 1980’s when the crack epidemic rolled over the “City of Angels,” like a satanic tidal wave, fueling a myriad of murders. L.A. was notorious as, “the home of the drive by shooting,” depicted in a slew of movies from, “Colors,” to “Boyz in the Hood.” Not any more.
Another California city, San Diego, with a population of 1.4 million had 31 homicides in 2017. That means in 2017, Baltimore endured more murders in the months of January (32), May (38) and July (34) than San Diego experienced in all of 2017. Let that sink in.
Further, there are about two dozen U.S. cities with larger populations than Baltimore, which had less murders in 2017.
Clearly, we have to do something different. Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh says that we are.
“We read the USA Today piece…but, what we want you to know is that ever since November we’ve been trending downward in terms of crime,” Mayor Pugh said during a press conference, Feb. 20, with newly appointed Baltimore Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa by her side.
“From Nov. 1st to today, you’ll see that we are trending downward in every single category. And I think that we’ll end up in 2018…I’m not a magician, but I’m very clear that the direction that we’re taking is going to get us to where we need to go,” Pugh added, before she alluded to the aforementioned success of Los Angeles and the correlation a strategy being implemented in Baltimore.
“Who would have known that today Los Angeles would be the poster child for violence reduction…I think when I was sworn in, in Dec. of 2016, one of the things I said was that we were utilizing the model from Los Angeles, because we had done some research and looked at how they were able to sustain violence reduction over a long period of time. So, we chose the Los Angeles model,” Mayor Pugh said.
Perhaps bolstering Pugh’s claims, for 12 glorious days this month, “nobody killed anybody,” to paraphrase the mantra of the Baltimore Ceasefire movement, which started the streak of 12 days with no homicides on Feb. 2.
“Are we satisfied yet? No. Are we trending in the right direction? Yes,” said Pugh.
Sean Yoes is the Baltimore AFRO editor and host and executive producer of the AFRO First Edition video podcast, which airs Monday and Friday on the AFRO’s Facebook page.
