Crime in Baltimore

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Main articles: Crime in Maryland and Crime in the United States
Baltimore
Crime rates* (2017)
Violent crimes
Homicide55.7
Rape62.29**
Robbery958.71
Aggravated assault949.7
Total violent crime2027
Property crimes
Burglary1311.2
Larceny-theft2773.5
Motor vehicle theft843.2
Arson42.5
Total property crime4928
Notes

*Number of reported crimes per 100,000 population.

** Legacy definition[1]

Source: FBI 2017 UCR data

The American city of Baltimore, Maryland, is notorious for its crime rate, which ranks well above the national average. Violent crime spiked in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015, which touched off riots and an increase in murders. The city recorded 348 homicides in 2019, a number second only to the number recorded in 1993 when the population was nearly 125,000 higher.[2]

Crime statistics[edit]

In 2011, Baltimore Police Department reported 196 homicides, the city's first time having fewer than 200 homicides since having 199 in 1978.[3][4] That number is far lower than the peak homicide count of 353 in 1993.[5] The drop in 2011 was significant, when measured by the number of homicides, but the homicide rate was in the same range as the late 1980s, when Baltimore's population was 130,000 higher. City leaders credited their sustained focus on repeat violent offenders and an increased community engagement for the continued drop, reflecting a nationwide decline in crime.[6]

Baltimore's decline was short-lived, with 219 and 235 homicides in 2012 and 2013, respectively.[7][8] Baltimore's jump in homicides in 2013 defied regional and national trends.[9][10]

Violent crime spiked in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015, which touched off riots and a crime wave that resulted in an increase in murders. Baltimore recorded 344 homicides in 2015, a number second only to the number recorded in 1993 when the population was 100,000 higher. This was the highest murder rate on a per capita basis ever recorded.[11] Baltimore had seen 211 murders as of August 19, 2015, which equaled the total number of murders that occurred in Baltimore in all of 2014.[12]

On July 10, 2015, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake fired Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, saying his presence had become a distraction in a city that needs to focus on ending a dramatic spike in homicides.[13] The city has taken steps to quell the increased violence by seeking assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies, including embedding FBI agents in the city's police homicide unit.[14] On November 13, 2015, the number of murders for the year reached, and the next day surpassed, 300 for the first time since 1999.[15]

In an interview in The Guardian, on November 2, 2017,[16] David Simon, himself a former The Baltimore Sun police reporter, ascribed the most recent surge in murders to the high-profile decision by Baltimore state's attorney, Marilyn Mosby, to charge six city police officers following the death of Freddie Gray, after he fell into a coma while in police custody in April 2015. "What Mosby basically did was send a message to the Baltimore police department: 'I'm going to put you in jail for making a bad arrest.' So officers figured it out: 'I can go to jail for making the wrong arrest, so I'm not getting out of my car to clear a corner,' and that's exactly what happened post-Freddie Gray." In Baltimore, arrest numbers have plummeted from more than 40,000 in 2014, the year before Freddie Gray's death and the subsequent charges against the officers, to about 18,000 as of November 1, 2017. This happened even as homicides soared from 211 in 2014, to 344 in 2015 – an increase of 63%.[17]

Baltimore's level of violent crime is much higher than the national average. In 2009, a total of 1,318,398 violent crimes were reported nationwide across the United States, equivalent to a rate of 0.4 incidents per 100 people.[18]

Homicides
Year Baltimore,
Number 		Baltimore,
Rate per 100,000 		U.S.,
Rate per 100,000
1977 171 20.7 8.8
1978 199 25.5 9.0
1979 245 31.0 9.7
1980 216 27.5 10.2
1981 228 28.6 9.8
1982 227 28.4 9.1
1983 201 25.0 8.3
1984 215 27.3 7.9
1985 213 27.6 7.9
1986 240 30.6 8.6
1987 226 29.5 8.3
1988 237 31.0 8.4
1989 259 33.9 8.7
1990 305 41.4 9.4
1991 304 40.6 9.8
1992 335 44.3 9.3
1993 353 48.2 9.5
1994 321 43.4 9.0
1995 325 45.6 8.2
1996 333 46.5 7.4
1997 313 43.5 6.8
1998 315 47.6 6.3
1999 305 46.9 5.7
2000 261 40.1 5.6
2001 256 38.7 5.6
2002 253 37.7 5.6
2003 270 41.9 5.7
2004 276 43.5 5.5
2005 269 42.0 5.7
2006 276 43.3 5.8
2007 282 45.2 5.7
2008 234 36.9 5.4
2009 238 37.3 5.0
2010 223 34.8 4.8
2011 196 31.1 4.7
2012 218 34.9 4.7
2013 233 37.4 4.5
2014 211 33.8 4.9
2015 344 55.4 5.1
2016 318 51.4 5.3
2017 343 57.8 5.7
2018 309 50.5 5.7
2019 348 58.6 6.0
2020 335 57.1 7.8
2021 337 58.3 6.9
2022 333 58.4 6.3
2023 262 46.0 5.5

Data Source:[19][20][21][22]

Location[edit]

Homicides in Baltimore are heavily concentrated within a small number of high-poverty neighborhoods. According to a 2016 Baltimore Sun investigation, around 80% of the city's gun homicides are committed in 25% of the city's neighborhoods. For the past few years, the rate of lethal shootings has been increasing in Baltimore and at least 10 other cities, such as Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Milwaukee. In 2016, the Coldstream Homestead Montebello neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore was Baltimore's most lethal neighborhood, with an average of one out of every two shootings being fatal. The citywide average is one in three.[23]

Gang-related crimes are usually clustered in drug territories and mostly affect people involved in drug dealing, particularly narcotics and rival gangs.

Sandtown-Winchester, Baltimore, is one of West Baltimore's most blighted and problematic communities.[24] In the second half of the 20th century, Sandtown experienced economic depression, housing abandonment, crime, and the effects of the Baltimore riot of 1968.[25] Sandtown-Winchester was the home of Freddie Gray and the scene of his arrest. Following his death, the area was hard hit by riots, including the looting and burning of a CVS drug store off the north-east corner of Sandtown-Winchester at the intersection of Pennsylvania and W. North Avenue.[26]

The area was once considered middle-class. Its residents are largely lower-income African Americans. The neighborhood served as a filming location for the Baltimore-based HBO television drama, The Wire.[citation needed]

Policing[edit]

Main article: Baltimore Police Department

The Baltimore Police Department is staffed by nearly 4,000 civilian and sworn personnel. These include dispatchers, crime lab technicians, chaplains and unarmed auxiliary police officers. During Martin O'Malley's administration as mayor, the department had become 43% African American.[27]

In 2003, the FBI identified irregularities in the number of rapes reported, which was confirmed by then-Mayor Martin O'Malley. The number of homicides in 2005 appeared to exhibit discrepancies as well.[28] Former police commissioner Kevin P. Clark said in an interview that the administration suppressed corrections to its crime reports;[29] however, many of the charges made by the police commissioner now appear to have been politically motivated.[30] The veracity of crime statistics reported by the Baltimore Police Department once again came under scrutiny in 2006, this time from Maryland legislators.[31]

Works[edit]

See also[edit]


References[edit]

  1. ^ "FBI".
  2. ^ "2019 closes with 348 homicides in Baltimore, second-deadliest year on record". The Baltimore Sun. January 1, 2020. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
  3. ^ "Baltimore Sees Lowest Homicide Count Since 1978". WJZ-TV. January 1, 2012. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  4. ^ "Baltimore has fewer than 200 killings for first time in decades". The Baltimore Sun. January 1, 2012. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  5. ^ "46 slayings in 41 days push homicide rate up". The Baltimore Sun. November 11, 1994. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  6. ^ "Baltimore Sees Lowest Homicide Count Since 1978". WJZ-TV. January 1, 2012. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  7. ^ "Baltimore Passes Curfew For Youth". CitiesJournal.com. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  8. ^ "Baltimore Marks 200th Homicide Of 2013". The Huffington Post. November 7, 2013. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  9. ^ "Baltimore's jump in homicides in 2013 defies national trends". Baltimore Brew. January 2, 2014. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  10. ^ "New FBI statistics: Baltimore No. 5 in murder rate". The Baltimore Sun. November 10, 2014. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  11. ^ Rector, Kevin. "Deadliest year in Baltimore history ends with 344 homicides".
  12. ^ "Baltimore records 211th homicide, equaling the total for 2014". The Baltimore Sun. August 19, 2015.
  13. ^ "Baltimore Mayor Rawlings-Blake fires Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts". The Baltimore Sun. July 10, 2015.
  14. ^ "Federal agents to embed with Baltimore homicide cops to quell unprecedented violence". The Baltimore Sun. August 2, 2015.
  15. ^ "Per capita, Baltimore reaches its highest-ever homicide rate". The Baltimore Sun. November 17, 2015. Archived from the original on October 11, 2018. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
  16. ^ Gately, Gary (November 2, 2017). "Baltimore is more murderous than Chicago. Can anyone save the city from itself?" The Guardian.
  17. ^ Gately, Gary (November 2, 2017). " Baltimore is more murderous than Chicago. Can anyone save the city from itself?" The Guardian.
  18. ^ "Estimated crime in 2009". FBI Uniform Crime Reporting. Retrieved March 20, 2011.[permanent dead link]
  19. ^ "Baltimore Homicides". Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  20. ^ Gramlich, John. "What we know about the increase in U.S. murders in 2020". Pew Research Center. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  21. ^ Swift, Tim (July 5, 2022). "Crime data shows Baltimore is on pace for its deadliest year in more than a decade". WBFF. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
  22. ^ "Homicides Continued to Increase in 2021, According to the FBI's Flawed Crime Report". Time. October 5, 2022. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
  23. ^ George, Justin (October 6, 2016). "Some Baltimore neighborhoods condemned to endure a shocking degree of violence". The Baltimore Sun. Archived from the original on January 17, 2017. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
  24. ^ Nick Madigan (June 11, 2008). "Outrage mingled with fear: Community responds after children, 2 and 3, are shot". The Baltimore Sun. Archived from the original on November 16, 2013. Retrieved November 13, 2012.
  25. ^ "Sandtown-Winchester". Live in Baltimore. Retrieved June 28, 2012.
  26. ^ "Wickham: Focus on Freddie Gray's neighborhood". USA Today. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
  27. ^ "Black police officers claim discrimination within Baltimore department". [dead link], The Seattle Times (December 7, 2006)
  28. ^ "Homicide Rate, Police Procedures Questioned". Archived from the original on March 23, 2006. Retrieved November 13, 2012., WBAL-TV (February 14, 2006)
  29. ^ "Ex-Commish Raised Questions During Tenure". Archived from the original on June 14, 2006. Retrieved November 13, 2012., WBAL-TV (February 22, 2006)
  30. ^ John Wagner and Tim Craig, Wagner, John; Craig, Tim (February 14, 2006). "Duncan Rebukes O'Malley Over Crime". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 26, 2010., Washington Post (February 14, 2006)
  31. ^ "State Lawmaker Calls For Investigation Into Police". Archived from the original on February 25, 2006. Retrieved November 13, 2012., WBAL-TV (February 14, 2006)

External links[edit]

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