Baltimore Crime Rate Surges, 21 Deaths And Counting In Just 26 Days

Baltimore is wild. Crime in the city is rampant, yet leaders fight state crime bills, supporting their police department and citizens often refuse to aid investigations.

For example, Jacquelin Burley was gunned down in a project Sunday, a sunny, pleasant day. She suffered four gunshot wounds to the head, one to the neck and three more to the abdomen in broad daylight.

“Everybody is saying they, of course, didn’t see anything. No one was outside,” sarcastically said one of the victim’s nieces. “I have a hard time believing that being as the weather and the city we live in, and everyone knows when it gets warmer outside, Baltimore City doesn't know how to act.”

Police found a 55-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound to the leg late Tuesday night. Senior citizen Richard Diggs was found stabbed to death by Baltimore police earlier in the day.

Three schools were put on lockdown as police investigated a deadly double shooting Tuesday afternoon. Police officers found a man who was shot at Dukeland Street and Gwynns Falls Parkway, just before 1 p.m. The man died later at a hospital. Police said another man was also shot and found at a hospital.

The public schools are as bad. Undisciplined children face little punishment. At least 28 times this school year, students carried loaded guns to schools. The situation is so bad, police are asked to roam the hallways.

In Baltimore police are not allowed to carry their arms in schools. A proposal to allow officers to be armed while schools are in session died in Annapolis last year.

On Monday, two school policemen arrested 16-year-old Malik Bell at Patterson High School. Bell had a loaded pistol in the waistband of his pants. Bell is a suspect wanted in the shooting of a woman on Feb. 17 in northeast Baltimore.

Baltimore schools police Sgt. Clyde Boatwright said there was a struggle before Bell was arrested. Police did not know Bell had a weapon before seizing him.

“This situation could’ve gone bad really, really quickly,” he told the Baltimore Sun.

That night the city council responded by repealing Police Ordinances prohibiting playing on any street, alley, lane, or other public thoroughfares. The council talked about police harassing children playing in alleys. This was cannon fodder to the most popular talk show host in the city.

“This is what they think about. This is their priority,” WBAL host Clarence Maurice Mitchell IV said on his show. He noted it is an election year and candidates should focus on crime.

“I want [candidates] to know and I don’t hear them [talking about] what they should do on this. I want you to back the governor’s proposals on crime. I want you to say what we are going to do with the police department, what we are going to do with the state’s attorney office. We are going to make sure that anyone associated with these crimes is going to feel the full weight of the law and make it happen. Don’t just get to the next topic. Send the signal.”

Mitchell once represented Baltimore in the state House of Delegates and Senate.

Gov. Larry Hogan’s crime package includes increasing sentences for those who repeatedly use illegal firearms. Democrats are fighting it in the state capitol.