Charm City, Harm City: Which is it going to be?

The Baltimore Sun

We gave a boy named Deandre a ride home from Patterson Park the other night. It was just about 7:30 of a pleasant summer evening in Baltimore, with a refreshing breeze softly hissing in the trees, and the park absolutely thriving with life.

It was the Baltimore with which you fall in love: Couples attempting tennis on every court along Linwood Avenue, dozens of Hispanic boys and their cousins and uncles playing futbol, yuppies engaged in softball games, guys shooting hoops, boys and girls playing lacrosse, children swinging on swing sets, men and women taking brisk walks with herds of leashed dogs, neighbors chatting on the tree-shaded sidewalks, a corner restaurant full of couples at tables by windows.

Deandre said he lived on Collington Avenue, north and west of the park. I had driven only about 100 yards before we heard the first siren.

The police car came fast from the east, on Baltimore Street. The officer at the wheel swung around traffic, stopped sharply at Baltimore and Linwood, took a quick look to his left and right, then sped off.

By the time we got to Fayette Street, just a couple blocks north, I heard another siren. A second police cruiser made an aggressive maneuver around us and sped off to the east.

Deandre, unshaken, continued to give me directions to his house. When we reached Orleans Street, a third cruiser and an unmarked police car roared past us.

It was a typical night in Baltimore, with families out on the front steps, children gathering around the snowball stands and police cruisers whizzing by on the way to fresh, bloody crime scenes.

Turns out that, as we drove Deandre home the other night, about seven blocks to the east, where Bouldin Street meets Pulaski Highway, police found a 24-year-old man named Jerry Crosby dead in the street, shot in the head.

Crosby was the city's 168th slaying victim this year.

That's about 30 more than last year at mid-July.

Baltimore appears to be headed back to its homicidal form of the 1990s. Since May 1, we've averaged one killing per day, and that pace would put the city on track to surpass 300 homicides for the first time since 1999. There have been more nonfatal shootings, too -- so far, about 100 more than last year.

No wonder more than two-thirds of Baltimoreans believe crime is the most important challenge facing the city, according to a new poll conducted for The Sun.

It doesn't matter that some crimes -- robberies, for instance -- have dropped significantly. Forty percent of those surveyed said they or someone they know were victims of violent crime.

Add to that the number of people affected by crime in other ways -- break-ins, for instance, or stolen cars. (Ever been invited to Circuit Court jury duty? Ever notice the number of hands that go up when the judge asks during voir dire if anyone in the room has been a crime victim?)

We've had a high rate of opiate addiction in this city for three decades -- and it has caused significant collateral damage, the most serious being the shootings and killings.

I've never believed that Baltimoreans just accept this as a fact of life -- distant thunder that does not affect most of us -- druggies killing druggies, and so what?

The shootings and killings heighten fears everywhere, in city and suburb, tarnish the city's national image and keep Baltimore from reaching the potential we want to believe is there and actually see on pleasant summer evenings.

It's the most frustrating thing about Baltimore: New construction and rising property values, along with a new wave of shootings and rising homicide numbers. We get national recognition for tourist amenities and national notoriety for per-capita violence. I sit on a friend's deck, overlooking a lovingly tended garden behind a restored rowhouse, feeling pleased with -- even awed by -- the surroundings, and a police helicopter suddenly sucks the good feeling out of the air.

Martin O'Malley was correct to focus on attacking Baltimore's chronic crime problem when he ran for mayor in 1999. The next mayor needs to do the same -- and more so. It makes no sense for the present or future mayor to veer from the policing strategies put in place by O'Malley.

O'Malley left before the work was done and so did his most effective commissioner, Ed Norris.

But that doesn't mean the strategies were wrong.

Progress was being made. There was generally a more positive feeling about city life just a few years ago and a belief that Baltimore was on the right track. By the time O'Malley ran for re-election in 2003, a Gonzales/ Arscott poll showed that 70 percent of city voters, both black and white, approved of his performance as mayor -- and that had more to do with O'Malley's focus on crime than on anything else. (Certainly not his handling of the city schools.)

Now, 80 percent of Baltimoreans believe crime is hurting the city's economy, according to the Sun poll.

Here's where it gets really tough: Baltimore needs economic development to reduce crime. But Baltimore needs to reduce crime to get economic development.

We're locked into that predicament, and the key to this city's future is finding a mayor who can break that lock.

Otherwise, kids like Deandre will have pleasant evenings forever spoiled with gunfire and sirens, and Baltimore will continue to be the most frustrating city in America, full of charm and harm, constantly taking one step forward and two steps back.

dan.rodricks@baltsun.com

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