Mayor Rawlings-Blake, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, and Baltimore PD interim Commissioner Kevin Davis were to share information with the Commission and with each other as an integral part of the process.
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Ten federal agents will join the Baltimore police homicide unit, commanders announced Sunday, after the city followed its deadliest month in decades with a night in which 10 people were shot – seven of them in one incident.
The 45 July homicides equaled the mark recorded in August 1972, which is the most on record in the city in more than 40 years. Forty-two people were killed in May after the unrest over the death of Freddie Gray, 25, from a spinal cord injury in police custody.
“We’ve got to take a different look at things”, DEA spokesman Todd Edwards said, “whether it’s fresh eyes or just looking at it in a different way”.
As of Sunday, the department’s “clearance rate” for closing homicide cases was 36% – significantly lower than its 46% average.
Davis said officers have confiscated about 20 percent more guns on the street this year than at this point last year.
Davis said the increase in homicides was not unique to Baltimore: other cities across the country, including St Louis, Chicago, New Orleans and Milwaukee, are also experiencing severe homicide spikes. Davis also said the influx of prescription pills – 32 pharmacies were looted during the April 27 riot and almost 300,000 doses of prescription medication stolen – has contributed to Baltimore’s spiking violence. “Having [federal agents] embed with our homicide detectives and literally be on the streets of Baltimore, boots on the ground, is what we need right now”.
Black people are not a monolithic group, but what we are facing is something that’s extreme – and that’s poverty, that’s homelessness, that’s higher rates of joblessness, that’s law enforcement invading our communities day in and day out – and we are uprising. “And we will continue to punch back as collaboratively and creatively as we can until we can break through this”.
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