Responding to a violent weekend that left three dead and eight injured — one critically — Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III urged residents to keep the city's overall crime declines in mind and not to "dwell on the negative."
Nine people were shot over a period of 24 hours Saturday, and the violence continued with a man killed Father's Day morning and another fatally shot in the back early Monday. But Bealefeld said homicides remained down 14 percent from last year while nonfatal shootings, which plummeted in 2009, were also off last year's pace, albeit slightly.
Nearly halfway through the year, Bealefeld said, police have taken 1,000 illegal guns off the streets and gun crime is down by double digits. That comes amid budget-tightening and deep concern over officers' pensions.
"Based on all the curveballs thrown at this police department in the last year, I think these men and women are doing a damn good job to be down in homicides and nonfatal shootings," Bealefeld said at a news conference Monday. "People have to balance facts against perception."
In recent weeks, shootings have come in spurts. Eight people were shot, one fatally, during the May 22 weekend. Over Memorial Day weekend, 10 were killed in one of the deadliest stretches since Bealefeld took over the department as crime soared in 2007.
This past weekend's violence was concentrated on the east side and appeared to stem from minor disputes, including rival gangs, drug stashes and an argument over a damaged vehicle, Bealefeld said. The commissioner said he had had discussions with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake about improving investigations and intelligence-gathering to head off retaliatory violence, and said he remained concerned about continued violence along the Monument Street corridor, where police began a new initiative last year.
But taking the city's overall crime picture into account, Bealefeld said the city was sustaining and improving on "historic" crime declines of the past few years. The city's homicide total is at its lowest point since the late 1980s, though Baltimore continues to rank among the most deadly cities in the country, behind New Orleans, St. Louis and Detroit.
"We're right where we should be or where I want to be in a lot of areas," said Bealefeld, who struck a more analytical tone at Monday's news conference than his well-known rants against "knuckleheads" and "punks."
Peter Moskos, a sociologist at New York City's John Jay College of Criminal Justice who worked as a police officer in the Eastern District from 1999 to 2001, said Bealefeld was right to underscore the statistical gains.
"I don't know what else the guy is supposed to say. Perhaps a little more righteous indignation would be in order," Moskos said in an e-mail. "But if killings and shootings are still down after last weekend — compared to last year — I think he's got a right to point that out."
But Zelda Robinson and Glenn Smith, community activists who are helping to coordinate the Love Hands Across Baltimore Crusade to stop the violence, said satisfaction with the city's crime numbers would only breed complacency.
"I don't care how low the numbers are — the killings are senseless. They're taking lives and destroying families," said Robinson, president of the West Baltimore Coalition, whose son was killed in the mid-1990s. "We've got to bring back the morality that we're missing in these communities."
"People are frustrated," Smith said. "They don't have jobs, services are being cut and rec centers are closing. It looks bleak for the community. But it should never get to the point where we pick up a gun and shoot somebody else."
The most recent shooting occurred early Monday, in the Southeast District just off Pulaski Highway in the 400 block of N. East Ave. Durell Cartwright, 30, of the 400 block of N. Bouldin St. was found on a sidewalk in a crime scene that extended 30 yards.
Police did not know of a motive for the crime and said there were no witnesses, though court records show Cartwright had a long history of drug convictions. In March 2009, he was sentenced to six years in prison after violating his probation on a drug conviction in which he received a seven-year suspended sentence. It was not immediately clear why he was back on the streets after just over a year.
Police also did not know of a motive in the shooting of a man in the 3100 block of Woodland Ave. in Northwest Baltimore, who was initially reported dead but is now reported in grave condition.
But police said they did have leads in several of the weekend's incidents:
— Four of the victims were struck in a single shooting incident on Saturday night in the 1300 block of N. Montford Ave. A canvass of the crime scene turned up a pair of green dice, indicating that the men were gambling.
A man was shot while riding a bicycle in the 400 block of N. Luzerne Ave. on Saturday afternoon, and police said he is a relative of a suspect in two of the fatal Memorial Day weekend shootings, raising retaliation as a possible motive.
— A man who was shot late Sunday in the 200 block of S. Fulton Ave. had been with a group of men who were shot at earlier in the evening. Police said they do not believe the man was targeted in the first incident but was in the second, in a dispute over a scratched vehicle.
— A man shot and wounded in the 2400 block of Stoddard Alley early Sunday morning deals drugs and was robbed of his stash two weeks earlier, police said. They said he had retaliated by robbing the suspects before Sunday's shooting.
— A Saturday afternoon shooting in which a 23-year-old man was shot by masked men while talking to a woman was believed to be linked to a dispute between neighborhood crews on McCabe and Beaumont Avenues. Eighteen shell casings were found at the scene.
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