SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS

The Numbers Look Bleak For City Mired In Murder, And No Approach Has
Brought Lasting Success

For the second year in a row, more Baltimore families have suffered
through the murder of a loved one than in the previous year.

The increase, though slight, underscores a troubling trend in
homicides that leaves Baltimore standing virtually alone among major
American cities.

Since 1990, Baltimore's homicide rate, the number of killings per
100,000 residents, has stayed consistently high, while most other
U.S. cities have seen their numbers drop in the years since crack
cocaine-related crime was at its worst.

"Baltimore has a singularly challenging street scene, and that's what
makes it so dangerous and so resistant to crime-fighting steps that
seem like they should work," said David Kennedy, director of the
crime prevention program at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice
in New York. Kennedy studied crime in Baltimore in the late 1990s.

Many cities have felt the effects of deindustrialization, poverty,
the flight of the middle class, struggling schools and drugs. But few
cities, Kennedy and other experts say, have had to contend with those
problems in tandem with unrelenting, multi-generational heroin addiction.

So 2007, like so many years before it, brought killings of all types
- - domestic shootings, robberies that turned unexpectedly violent,
and, most of all, killings related to the drug trade. After a
six-month surge in homicides, the pace slowed in the latter half of
the year amid changes in law enforcement and a handful of new
programs. That, combined with reductions in other categories of
violent crime, produced at least a glimmer of hope.

Nevertheless, frustrated politicians, police officers and residents
of neighborhoods across the city are still left asking one question:
Why hasn't Baltimore been able to stanch the bleeding?

For all of the changes since 1990 - three mayors, seven police
commissioners and crime strategies ranging from sweeping arrests to
targeted enforcement - Baltimore's homicide rate now is basically
what it was then: about 40 killings per 100,000 residents.

And for all of the euphoria in 2000, when the city dipped below 300
murders for the first time in a decade, the feel-good victory was
statistically meaningless: Because of population loss, the city had
simply returned to the same murder rate it had in 1990.

"It's outrageous, what we tolerate," said Baltimore State's Attorney
Patricia C. Jessamy.

With 282 homicides so far this year, and 276 for all of 2006,
Baltimore now posts a homicide rate more than triple the average of
cities of 250,000 residents or more, according to FBI uniform crime
reports. Last year, it was second only to Detroit.

Some rates recede

By comparison, homicide rates in Chicago, Boston, Houston and Los
Angeles are about half now what they were in 1990. Washington, once
dubbed the nation's murder capital, sliced its rate even more. And
New York City has seen the most stunning drop. In 2006, its rate was
about seven killings per 100,000 residents - about one-fourth of its
homicide rate in 1990.

Even Detroit, which most often vies with Baltimore in the media as
the most murderous city in the nation, has seen marked declines in homicides.

Much smaller cities, such as Oakland, Calif., and Newark, N.J.,
continue to struggle in a way similar to Baltimore, and years' worth
of gains in Philadelphia are in jeopardy this year, though that
city's homicide rate remains lower than Baltimore's.

City officials and national experts who study crime trends say there
is no one explanation, instead offering up such factors as the
prevalence of heroin, the breakdown of families and communities,
inconsistent policing strategies and a dearth of jobs and drug treatment.

The city's geography and demography, with thriving neighborhoods
hemmed in by crime-ridden ones, as well as its location along
Interstate 95, a drug corridor between Washington and New York, may
also be part of the equation.

"We're a smaller city, and there's simply a larger percentage of
folks involved in nefarious business," said Richard C. Fahlteich, who
retired last year as a major after 33 years with the Baltimore Police
Department.

"It portends to be a law enforcement problem," Fahlteich said of the
homicide rate. "But having spent 15 years in homicide, I am convinced
that it is a socioeconomic problem."

More than 8,200 people have been killed in Baltimore in the past
three decades, most of them young black men. Police officials say
that many have criminal records and are engaged in illicit activities
- - and that the majority of city residents are at an extremely low
risk of being killed. When it comes to homicides, Baltimore is often
seen as two cities, with its thriving, gentrified neighborhoods
virtually untouched by serious crime.

City officials, including Mayor Sheila Dixon, said there is far too
much attention on numbers - that even one murder is tragic. Dixon
said the city's homicide rate is "not a fair assessment" of whether
Baltimore is safe. While nonfatal shootings are also up slightly over
2006, such other violent crimes as robbery and aggravated assault are
down 8 percent and 4 percent respectively, according to city statistics.

Nevertheless, to many residents and visitors, the homicide number has
long been a bellwether of safety - something fostered by O'Malley
during his first run for mayor, when he pledged to cut murders to 175
by 2002. In a Sun poll this year, residents ranked crime as their No.
1 concern. Fear of crime can drive people out, and a reduction in
population in turn drives up homicide and crime rates.

Thirty years ago, the city had 109 fewer homicides and almost 200,000
more residents, making the homicide rate about half what it is now.
But the city had already begun losing thousands of residents - most
of them middle-class - each year, a trend that accelerated after the
race riots of 1968.

Layered on top of that, said Kennedy, the criminologist, was a
continuing heroin problem. For reasons that remain unclear, he said,
the nation's first heroin wave of the late 1960s and early 1970s
never dissipated here, as it did in most other cities.

Then came the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and early
1990s, accompanied by a tide of blood. In 1990 alone, there were
2,245 homicides in New York, 983 in Los Angeles and 472 in
Washington. That year Baltimore had 305, the beginning of 10
consecutive years of 300-plus murders.

At Baltimore's peak, 1993, there were nearly 50 killings per 100,000 residents.

Crack problem

Within a decade, most cities had brought the crack problem under
control by arresting street-level drug dealers responsible for
shootings, according to criminologists. Homicide rates began to turn around.

The rate dropped in Baltimore, too, but not nearly as much as in other cities.

"Baltimore is really a special case," said Chuck Wexler, director of
the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank.

While all cities deal with drug addiction problems, which most
experts agree feed the homicide rate, heroin has had a
"disproportionate impact" on Baltimore, Wexler said. State officials
estimate that the city has 30,000 heroin addicts in need of treatment.

"Doing something about homicides means doing something about the
addiction issue, heroin in particular," Wexler said. "There are very
few cities where heroin plays as significant of a role."

Though police officials say it is difficult to assess the motive of
most killings, about 78 percent of this year's homicide victims and
known suspects had a history of drug arrests.

In a joint interview this month at police headquarters, Dixon and
Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, both Baltimore
natives, said drugs have played into the city's homicide rate in
another way - by breaking apart the family structure.

"There's a whole different makeup of the family now, with alcoholism
and drug addiction," the 54-year-old Dixon said, contrasting today's
Baltimore with the one she grew up in.

Jessamy and others wonder about a violence-begets-violence effect.

Children here grow up with so much death and chaos, Jessamy said,
that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and deal with it
by acting out. Men age 24 and younger are driving much of the violent
crime in Baltimore, according to statistics.

The mayor and commissioner also said they believe the state needs to
stop looking at Baltimore in isolation. People from adjoining
counties come into the city, buy drugs and contribute to crime, they said.

"The thing that beguiles me is everyone's focus on public safety
stops at the border," Bealefeld said. "People outside the city take a
pass on our crime, yet every day they're driving here to buy drugs in
front of our kids as they walk to school. That has a demoralizing
effect, and it does deteriorate our neighborhoods."

Sheryl Goldstein, director of the mayor's Office on Criminal Justice,
points to guns and their easy availability as one reason for
Baltimore's continually high homicide rate. In Baltimore, unlike New
York and other cities, she said, most of the guns used in crimes are
coming from in-state.

Many plans

Edward T. Norris, a former New York police commander, was Baltimore's
police commissioner from early 2000 to late 2002 - the three years
with the lowest homicide rates since 1989.

After his departure, Norris said, the quick succession of police
chiefs and inconsistent crime-fighting strategies hampered further
reductions in the homicide rate.

"Baltimore - you talk to the officers here, and they feel like we're
turning left, right, left," said Norris, who served six months in
federal prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion but has since
returned to Baltimore as a radio talk show host and occasional
crime-fighting adviser. "Instead of continuing with one program, it
changes all the time."

City officials say there is reason for optimism and that despite this
year's increases in homicides and shootings, Baltimore may be poised
to begin seeing some of the drops experienced by other cities.

Through the first six months of the year, the city was well on track
to reach 300 homicides for the first time since 1999, but the last
six months have been significantly less deadly.

From mid-July to mid-December this year, there were 15 fewer
killings than during the same period a year earlier, according to
police statistics. Nonfatal shootings during the same period this
year were down by about 100, as Dixon pushed to focus more attention
on repeat gun offenders. For all of 2007, overall violent crime is
down 7 percent and total crime is down 9 percent.

"We've seen some promising trends over the second half of the year,"
Goldstein said. "I hope there can be some guarded optimism that we'll
stay in that direction the next several years."

And two programs that have helped cut violence in other cities,
Operation Safe Kids and Operation Safe Streets, are slated for
expansion in Baltimore, said Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua Sharfstein.

Crime experts say that there's no reason Baltimore can't experience
the major drops in homicide rates of other cities.

"It's about identifying the groups that drive the violence in the
communities," Kennedy said. "And it's about working with law
enforcement and social services and the community to change that behavior."