The shooting death Wednesday night of a 31-year-old man edges the city closer to its 200th killing of the year. It's an arbitrary number, but it's a symbolic threshold that officials are striving to beat as they proclaim Baltimore to be safer.
The victim, who was killed inside a house in Northwest Baltimore, is No. 196 of 2011. That means no more than three more slayings in the next two days.
It is a countdown that does indeed appear morbid, but Baltimore has had a long fascination with these numbers. Back in the 90s, after 10 straight years recording 300 or more homicides, city officials virtually celebrated going under 300 in the year 2000.
City officials will use the count -- one of the lowest in three decades -- as proof of a safer town. Yet Baltimore's murder rate still puts the city in the top tier of deadly places to live. Many other cities also note drops in murder, and Baltimore has lost nearly 300,000 residents since the 1970s.
Back in the late 1990s, the city counted down the final bodies as they dropped, hoping to get under 300. Then Mayor Martin O'Malley, who himself vowed to get the slaying numbers down to 175, chided the city's "morbid fascination" with the Number 300.
I wrote about the unsuccessful race to beat 300 in 1999, with this scene from a homicide:
"The anxiety about Baltimore's homicide rate climaxed with the 299th killing on Dec. 18. The next day, the wait for No. 300 took me to a shooting scene in the 2700 block of W. North Ave., a few blocks from Coppin State College.
"Familiar yellow police tape encircled the scene, and a crime-lab technician placed markers next to seven bullet casings found on the street and sidewalk.
"I was standing nearby when James Cook, a carpenter, approached me and asked if the victim had died. At that point, the gravely wounded man was undergoing surgery. ``I heard that [Police Commissioner Thomas C.] Frazier wants to keep it under 300,'' Cook said before he walked away, slowly shaking his head.
"A few minutes later, an officer guarding the scene asked the same question: ``Will he be 300?'' A plainclothes detective answered, yes, ``if he dies.'' The officer responded: ``You know that the mayor and the commissioner are standing over him at the hospital, praying, 'Don't die, please don't die.'"
It took another year for The Baltimore Sun say in a headline: "Fewer than 300 homicides at last."
Now, in a much quieter way, the race is on to beat 200, which would be a first for the city in 33 years. Back in 2000, then Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris said that going under 300 is "just a beginning of things to come."
Now, he said, "we look at the next big milestone: 200."
Latest Crime
It took a decade, and we'll see over the next few days if we get there.
