5-Year-Old’s Homicide Case Marks Baltimore’s 300th Murder in 2021
It is the seventh straight year the city has reached the grim milestone that critics blame on a federal consent decree and State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s recent reform initiatives.
Landwebs
An investigation into the death of a 5-year-old girl by Baltimore homicide detectives marks the 300th homicide in the city this year and the seventh straight year the city has reached the grim milestone, reports the Baltimore Sun. There were 335 killings last year and a peak of 348 in 2019. The city had not experienced more than 300 homicides a year since the 1990s when there were regularly more than 300 killings but the population was higher. The city’s deadliest year was in 1993 when 353 people were killed.
Some critics have blamed the unabated violence on a federal consent decree that mandates sweeping police reforms to protect residents’ constitutional rights, saying it has cuffed the police, while others have blamed State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby for enacting a policy not to prosecute certain low-level crimes in the city. Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison has blamed what he calls the city’s “culture of violence” that causes people to settle disputes with guns, and Mayor Brandon Scott has pledged to take a more holistic approach to solving violence through a recently launched focused deterrence program where at-risk individuals are targeted for services such as housing and employment assistance to keep them from committing crimes.
