Northwest Baltimore closes one of most violent weeks; law enforcement agencies send units into neighborhoods

Three law enforcement agencies are sending officers this weekend to the Baltimore police’s Northwestern District, as the area closes one of its most violent weeks in recent years.

Nine people were shot, three fatally, on Monday and another two people were shot Thursday in the northwestern area of Baltimore, which includes the Howard Park, Langston Hughes, Central Park Heights, Woodmere and West Arlington neighborhoods.

Baltimore’s special operations unit, Maryland State Police and Maryland Transportation Police are posting across the Northwestern District, Baltimore police’s Chief of Patrol Col. Richard Worley said Friday.

So far investigators have not been able to find any connections between the shootings, which Worley said was unusual given the proximity.

According to police data, 106 people have been shot in the Northwestern District this year. That’s slightly higher than the 96 shootings recorded in the district around the same time last year.

The most people shot in the Northwestern District during a Monday-through-Friday period was previously nine people in 2018, according to Open Baltimore. The database contains complete crime statistics dating back to 2014.

Resident and community leader Sean Stinnett believes there’s a perception in the community that nothing is getting done to address persistent crime, he said Friday.

“It’s just frustrating,” Stinnett said. “Things are escalating, but I don’t see a change in strategy coming from the police department.”

Stinnett, who serves as president of the Northwestern District Community Relations Council, feels that police have not communicated well recently with residents. And several weeks ago, he drove around areas of the district where open drug and prostitution markets exist and lamented the lack of law enforcement he saw.

Worley agreed that police have a responsibility to keep the community informed and said officials will need to address Stinnett’s concerns if communication is not happening. However, crime in the Eastern District has put a strain on department resources.

“I don’t have much more I can send there. We were getting hit pretty hard in the Eastern,” Worley said.

Still, Stinnett thinks the community itself also bears a responsibility to initiate change.

“I think it’s a lot of neglect,” he said. “We, the community, have neglected ourselves.”