The sweltering month of July opened in many U.S. towns with parades and fireworks — celebrations of American independence.
In South Baltimore, three young men marked the holiday by firing their guns in the air, setting off a violent shoot-out, police say, that left two men dead and another injured.
A day later, a 1996 Chevy Blazer was sent crashing into a utility pole on the 2600 block of East Preston Street, after its driver, Kenneth “Sid” Baker, was fatally shot.
The very next day, a 45-year-old suspected prostitute was strangled on Old Frederick Road, while on Gleneagle Road, a 28-year-old woman was allegedly smashed between a truck and a telephone pole by her boyfriend.
From domestic murders to gangland killings, the homicides in Baltimore kept coming — 22 in all — throughout the month of July.
The surprising thing?
It’s the lowest number of killings in July for the city in seven years.
“The two biggest areas where we’ve made the most dramatic result is on the homicide issue and the nonfatal shooting issue,” said Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld.
Indeed, the number of murders for the year is down more than 30 percent — from 191 to 128.
The same is true of shootings, which have decreased from 446 to 342.
But Bealefeld has another concern, one he says is the department’s focus for the second half of 2008: reducing robberies.
The crime has risen citywide by 3 percent — from 2,357 to 2,434, with the Northeastern District hit hardest.
“We see our shooting clearance rate going down,” Bealefeld said at a meeting of the city’s criminal justice leaders. “What we see in a lot of these cases as a motivating factor are robberies.”
Among other initiatives, police will be focusing on clearing unserved robbery warrants, the commissioner said.
“If we’re really going to sustain long-term results, we’ve got to get this robbery situation under control. That’s where my focus is going to be, especially through the last half of this year.”
‘Still on the street’
Marge Shipley knows the cost of Baltimore’s homicides all too well.
Her son, Carl Lackl Jr., a witness in a city murder case, was gunned down outside his Baltimore County home last year.
His offense? Trying to do the right thing by agreeing to testify about a murder scene he happened upon while getting lunch one day.
Federal prosecutors recently filed motions to seek the death penalty against the man who allegedly ordered Lackl’s hit.
“He was a good person who had a good mind and did what he felt was right,” Shipley said of her son. “He was a little bit dumbfounded to see something like [the murder scene]. He saw the man throw the gun up on the roof. Carl ran over to help the guy who got shot. Look at what it cost him.”
Through the tears of losing her son, Shipley keeps coming back to one question: Why were men with violent backgrounds allowed to kill again?
“I can’t figure out why these guys were still on the street,” she said as she reviewed the criminal records of her son’s alleged attackers. “The system keeps letting these guys go.”
Baltimore police and prosecutors, along with state officials, are trying to address that very issue.
Statistics show 50 percent of about 13,000 inmates released from prison each year are back in jail within three years, having committing more crimes.
At the Baltimore Police Department’s Watch Center, officers working under the state’s Violence Prevention Initiative have issued warrants for 208 of the city’s highest-risk offenders, statistics show.
Police also recently targeted the worst juvenile offenders, knocking on 1,158 doors from May 27 to June 27 to reduce the number of unserved juvenile warrants from 860 to about 500.
“For whatever reason, there had not been great levels of cooperation in the city and state,” State Juvenile Services Secretary Don DeVore said. “In the last year, there’s been enormous progress in some of the programs. … It’s only a beginning. It’s not where we want to be. But it’s a lot further than we’ve ever been before.”
Meanwhile, a team of veteran Baltimore homicide detectives has been investigating the stranglings of five women killed in the city since April.
Sidney Ford, executive director of You Are Never Alone — an outreach group for prostitutes that has raised awareness of the killings — has said she’s been “extremely impressed” with the department’s response.
“They’re taking these crimes very seriously,” she said.
‘Farm team’ for gangs
Doug Ward, a criminologist at Johns Hopkins University, said it’s not just luck that has caused Baltimore’s homicide rate to go down.
“A lot of the initiatives the mayor and the Police Department are doing are positive, getting the most violent offenders off the street,” he said. “It’s a little early to say whether it’s sustainable over the long term.”
The reason permanent change will be hard to come by, Ward said, is the police are limited in what they can accomplish until the socioeconomic conditions in some areas of Baltimore change dramatically.
“By themselves, the police can’t prevent the so-called ‘farm team’ of young kids who are going to fill the gangs,” Ward said. “I still wish we had more youth prevention, more police athletic leagues, more reduced teen pregnancies and more childhood education. All the things that are going to prevent gang activity.”
Bealefeld said his agency is enforcing curfews, trying to divert teens from the streets to community activities.
“We’re doing a lot more on the curfew effort throughout the city,” he said. “It really isn’t designed as a punishment tool, as much as it’s designed as a preventive tool to keep at-risk juveniles from being victimized by violence.”
The Police Department is making gains in homicides and shootings while being short on officers, said city police union President Paul Blair.
“We’re still 300 police short in the city,” he said. “People are fed up. They’re leaving. We’ve made no dent in shortages.”
The rank-and-file also is not getting enough credit for its role in lowering the murder rate, he said.
“That’s why the homicide rate is down. It’s not the command staff doing it,” he said.
Still, as criminologists look around the country, to Boston, New York and other major cities, Baltimore remains one of the most violent.
“At what point are murders acceptable?” Ward asked. “What’s the acceptable level for Baltimore? In some areas, one murder a year is an alarming amount. Why not in Baltimore?”
