Homicides in Baltimore last year paralleled 2008's two-decade low, while the city saw a sharp drop in nonfatal shootings. All told, about 130 fewer people were shot compared with 2008, even though four more were killed.
Law enforcement officials say the decline in overall shootings is part of an encouraging trend that saw total gun crime drop by 16 percent, including aggravated assaults involving guns, street robberies and carjackings. More than 2,600 guns were taken off the streets by city police, with 1,100 people arrested on gun charges.
"In the last 2 1/2 years, we've certainly made all of our people understand that if they could do nothing else but catch a guy with a gun, they're making the city safer," Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said. "There's been a notable reduction in nonfatal shootings, but we can do better."
The city's increase in 2009 from 234 to 238 victims put it virtually alone among other large cities as homicides continued to fall across the country. Amid shrinking public safety budgets and a severe economic recession that some experts predicted would spur a jump in crime, other large cities battling high homicide rates - including Washington, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Oakland, Calif. - saw measurable drops. New York was poised to record its lowest total in history, while New Orleans, the city with the top per-capita homicide rate, saw a modest reduction. Detroit police refused to provide a number.
Throughout Maryland, killings fell about 11 percent, fueled almost entirely by sharp declines in the D.C. metro region, according to preliminary Maryland State Police figures provided by the governor's office.
"I have to focus on Baltimore, and it's important to stress that we've seen two years of sustained and historic progress in the city," Mayor Sheila Dixon said.
An analysis of Baltimore's numbers shows that, similar to prior years, the city's victims were overwhelmingly black (88 percent), and both suspects and victims were likely to have criminal records. Eighty-four percent were shot to death, and 15 victims included in this year's total were shot or wounded in prior years, including one man who was shot in 1988.
If there was a major demographic trend, it was that the victims got older. For years, victims under age 25 have represented as much as half of the city's homicide victims. But in 2009, they made up just 37 percent, the lowest figure in at least 12 years, according to available figures compiled by the Police Department's homicide unit. More victims were 35 and older, including a doubling of victims between the ages of 50 and 85.
The year got off to an ominous start. Nine people were slain in the first five days of the year, seven of them under age 22. The victims included 16-year-old Trevayne Ricks and 15-year-old Mayresa Craft, who were together when they were shot in an apartment building near Good Samaritan Hospital. The next day, 17-year-old Andre Thorpe was fatally shot in East Baltimore's Madison-Eastend neighborhood.
By the end of the year, 15 juveniles had been killed, down from an average of 25 per year between 2004 and 2008. Overall, 40 percent fewer juveniles were wounded in shootings, and officials say an increased focus on juvenile offenders may be paying off.
James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University who has researched demographics of homicide victims, advises against drawing conclusions from large one-year swings of any crime statistic, however.
"I've looked at years with a big jump and a big decline, and the higher the jump or the decline, the more likely it was to go the other way the following year," Fox said. "You don't solve the crime problem, you only control it, and when you stop paying much attention to it, it can return."
For the decade, the city's results were mixed. In 2000, killings dropped below 300 for the first time since the 1980s, and the past two years have represented the lowest two-year total since 1987-1988, even adjusting for a population decline of about 100,000. But Baltimore never came close to former Mayor Martin O'Malley's goal of 175, and three consecutive years of declines to start the decade were an afterthought by 2008, when the total had crept back up to 282 during the second year of Dixon's tenure.
Total violent crime dropped 38 percent since 2000, one of the highest declines in the nation - a statistic questioned by opponents during O'Malley's run for governor. In a recent interview, he said only New York and Los Angeles have achieved a larger decline since 2000.
"Too often, we look at how much more we have to go rather than how far we've come," O'Malley said last week.
Despite the reductions, city officials continue to battle the perception that crime is out of control - whether it's the city's depiction on television shows such as "The Wire," or its high rates compared to other cities.
High-profile crime in areas such as the Inner Harbor, Midtown and Hampden drew attention to areas not typically associated with crime and had officials scrambling to reassure residents and tourists.
It didn't take homicides to draw some of the most troubling headlines of 2009: Five-year-old Raven Wyatt was critically wounded after being struck in the head by an errant bullet during a Southwest Baltimore gunfight; 12 people were shot, none fatally, during an East Baltimore cookout in July; and two men were shot but survived after violence erupted inside Harborplace and a downtown hotel.
In October, appearing on WMAR's "Square Off" for a segment on violence, Dr. Thomas Scalea called the city's violence an "epidemic," just moments after Bealefeld had rattled off statistics showing crime was down.
"The violence is getting worse, in my opinion; it's not getting substantially better," said Scalea, physician-in-chief at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. "The guns on the street are more deadly, and it's every day for us."
But authorities say collaborative efforts have helped get a handle on the city's most violent offenders. Partnerships with state and local agencies have brought prioritized warrant service and increased scrutiny of offenders on parole and probation. The U.S. Attorney's Office has also made a gun crime a priority, working with authorities to identify candidates for federal gun charges, which carry lengthier sentences.
"I think we have a clear mission, and it's been working," Dixon said.
In 2010, city police plan to focus on improving shooting and robbery investigations, Bealefeld said. Low clearance rates for nonfatal shootings lead to retaliatory violence, he said, while robberies touch a wider array of city residents and visitors than homicides.
"People from around this area can make a case to say, 'I [hear about] the homicides and shootings, but I'm not buying crack, I'm out of those areas where these cases occur. But I stand a pretty good chance of getting robbed in Charles Village, the harbor, Little Italy,' " Bealefeld said. "The robbery thing crosses all the spectrum of people from tourists to residents to affect a lot of lives. And that really is not getting as much attention as it should."
State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said prosecutors are pushing for changes in how robbery investigations are conducted, saying too many fall apart because police fail to gather basic evidence for a successful prosecution. They want more detectives investigating robberies and collaborating with prosecutors.
"We all want to get these people off the streets and keep them off the street as long as possible. Better cases help us to do that," Jessamy said. "If what we have isn't good enough, then it's not good enough and we can't go forward. But we can make recommendations so when the next case comes in, we have a better shot at trying to protect the public."
Bealefeld said Jessamy raises valid points, but he also bristles at the notion that the burden for meaningful convictions rests on the police. He says excuses about a pinched court system, with postponements and swamped prosecutors, are less valid these days, as police have reduced arrests by focusing enforcement efforts.
"We hear about the overtaxed, overburdened criminal justice system," Bealefeld said. "The reality is, this police department in the past two years has made a concerted effort not just to arrest fewer people, and we've arrested 3,000 fewer adults this year than last and 1,000 less juveniles.
"The police department still has a long way to go in a lot of areas, but so do other people."
The issues are nothing new. Prosecutors say police turn over shoddy investigations that leave them with few options. Police push back against prosecutors, saying they don't work hard enough for convictions and allow cases to crumble amid what seem like endless postponements that fatigue reluctant witnesses and victims.
Both sides agree that judges don't deliver tough sentences, favoring suspended sentences or imposing time served.
Though Bealefeld has maintained a civil public relationship with Jessamy and city judges, his frustration with the court system bled over at times throughout the year. In December, Bealefeld visited the scene of two police shootings on opposite sides of the city to tell television cameras that weak sentencing was plaguing the city.
"In this city, where people are getting shot in broad daylight, bad guys with guns have to go to jail," he said after a convicted murderer was killed by police near a South Baltimore courthouse after shooting two people. "I don't know how much more action you could expect or demand from the law enforcement officers of this city."
U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, whose office has been praised for working with police and local prosecutors, said progress is clear, if perhaps a little slow.
"It took a long time for a failed criminal justice system to result in a homicide rate rising so high, and now that we've got things operating better, it will take [some time] for the murder rate to drop more significantly. You can't expect a huge impact on Day One."