There's Blood On The Streets Of Baltimore, Homicides Flare-Up, Could See Record Year

Out of control gun violence continues to plague Baltimore through mid-Summer, extending a years-long surge in shootings.

As of Tuesday morning, 196 people have been killed, if that was from a gunshot wound, stabbing, blunt force, and or asphyxiation.

Baltimore's revival started in the early 2000s, primarily when Under Armour based their global headquarters in the Inner Harbor. But everything changed when Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, was arrested by Baltimore Police and died in police custody in 2015. Riots broke out shortly after, causing more than $10 million in damage, as cars and buildings burned to the ground, reminding everyone what a mess Baltimore has become.

Since the riots, Baltimore homicides have surpassed 300 each year from 2015 through 2018, and 2019 could soon be one of the worst years ever.

Cumulative homicide trends show 2019 could be following the path of 2017 homicides, which would mean 300-342 murders by year-end.

Homicides ticked higher through spring and have exploded during the summer months. It seems that Baltimore has a gun problem.

A vast majority of the murders occurred in the Southwestern, Western, Eastern, and Northwestern districts (basically the entire city).

Crime statistics published by the FBI ranked Baltimore's homicide rate in 2017, the highest of any large American city. The 342 homicides in 2017 represented a "homicide rate of 56 per 100,000 people."

While homicides in Baltimore continue to gain momentum, killings declined nationally through 1H19. New York City's murders declined 13.5% and Chicago's decline of more than 7%.

Despite being 14x larger than Baltimore, New York has lower overall killings per year.

"I'm not happy about it, and neither should any citizen in Baltimore be happy," Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young said in early July. "It's disheartening to be labeled the most violent city in America."

And with three days (as of Monday) of tweets by President Donald Trump blasting Democratic U.S. Rep. Elijah Cumming for his "disgusting, rat and rodent-infested" Baltimore district," the national debate about race, urban poverty, and homicides becomes mainstream.

What is most puzzling to us is that President Trump continues to tout low black unemployment and the "best economy ever" for these low-income folks, but points out the horrid conditions in Baltimore (something must be amiss in the black unemployment data).

But let's take a step back decades ago, when Baltimore had nearly 1 million in total population back in the late 1950s, ever since, the population has crashed to 100-year lows last year, now around 600,000.

It wasn't Democrats that started the demise of Baltimore, and like many other industrial cities across America, it was the corporate elitist, who reallocated resources and labor out of America over the last five decades to other regions of the world, all to enrich shareholders while American inner cities imploded.

It was the big pharma companies, who in the last two decades pumped millions and millions of legal opioid pills onto the streets of Baltimore - destroying the millennial youth.

Baltimore is a failure of all levels of government, both political parties, after all, it's located just 40 miles north of Washington, D.C.

The more time politicians blame one another, the less time we have in finding productive measures that could lay the groundwork for a potential revival. Coming up with a solution for Baltimore will serve as a blueprint to revive deindustrialized areas across the country. Judging by the progress, this revival is decades out. The "greatest economy ever" is a hoax.

Enjoy reality: "Cause it's ruthless, and don't tell me you're ruthless too. When there is blood on the streets of Baltimore."