Murders continue
We're five days into the New Year and it looks much like the old.
Seven slayings on Baltimore streets. It's too early to start projecting the body count for 2009, but this doesn't bode well. Last night, another youth fell to gunfire, a 16-year-old boy, and another candle will be lit at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation. Then, this afternoon, we learned that a 17-year-old shot in the head on Friday has died. Now the church as two more names.
On New Year's Day, the church had its annual vigil in which they lit a candle for each city homicide victim 18 and under, and then blew out the candles one by one as part of a somber ceremony. There were 43 candles. Now, just a few days into 2009, there's already one more candle to be lit this coming Sunday.
Reporters are still gathering information on the victims, and I'll have more to report later on the circumstances. I'll also update you on the church servives; the reverend, Jan Hamill, asked parishioners to fill out cards noting how they planned to help Baltimore's children this year. They wren't required to sign their names -- the pact is between them and God -- but Hamill said she'd let me read through them and report back to you on their ideas.
Last week I met with the commander of the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit, Maj. Terrence McLarney, a longtime "murder police" who expressed frustration over his unit's clearance rate but also noted many factors that makes these recent years differ from the past -- gang violence, witness intimidation, strong mistrust of cops and a young detective unit (of 48 detectives, one-third has 15 or fewer months experience). I also published the city's analysis of 2008 slayings. At this time last year, there were two slayings.
Last week, I published a blog with some comments from a reader, Patrick R. Lynch, who works on Pulaski Highway in Baltimore. He sent me a longer version of his letter on violence over the weekend and I'll share it with you this morning:
The Baltimore City recently released a report pertaining to how many youths were murdered in Baltimore city. The report took my breath away. Forty-three lives lost to violence in 2008. Forty-three youths' lives laid to waste.
I particularly remember reading about one of those murders. It only occurred a few weeks ago. A fourteen year old youth was doing the "good neighbor" thing before Christmas, delivering grapefruit to an elderly neighbor. Imagine this young man's mother, patiently waiting for her son to return home. Waiting for what? Certainly not for word that her son had just become the most recent addition to the police blotter listing. Just imagine the mother's angst when she learned this young man was never going to come home again. Pathetic. It makes any feeling human being want to vomit.
The genocide of our youth (many committed by other youths) is indicative of the downward spiral of our city. Have we as a society become inured to the murders of our youth (as well as adults) to the point where we now accept it as a by-product of existence/survival in the big metropolis? How can this template for city living be shattered and another template put into place that shows our youth the inherent value in all of us? When has murder been relegated to the status of that of being only a bit more dangerous than volleyball?
Ignorance and lack of education foment much of the violence that we see in our city. It is incumbent that the mayor, the police commissioner, and the clergy in Baltimore come up with more aggressive measures to attempt to get through the youth of the city. Organize and market outdoor rallies that focus on taking back our neighborhoods and counseling the youth. Even one life saved would be most beneficial. The alternative is to watch our city continually (and perhaps exponentially) expire to wanton vigilantism. Perhaps offer the youth who are contemplating harming another to verbalize his or her feelings to a counselor or minister. Talk them off that figurative "ledge" Come up with a slogan that is catchy to the youth, something that might make want to take a second look. Lure the youth by offering handouts (for guns, perhaps). Many of these youths do not have an adult figure in their lives they can talk to or confide in. Provide them with adults (perhaps those who live in their own neighborhoods) with whom they can talk out their frustrations, anger, displeasure, etc. before they choose to pull the trigger that renders yet another juvenile lifeless.
Organize neighborhood rallies if necessary; the theme being to snuff out youth violence. Go door to door and seek out the youths; ask them to put their potential feelings of violence toward another "out there". Getting one juvenile to talk it out would be a great moral victory, would it not? It just might be a life-saving measure.
I was born and raised in Baltimore County but am very proud of the city, ever since as a youth I would visit my maternal grandmother and walk down to Greenmount Avenue to "whiff" the fumes of the passing buses. I loved going to the city, and still do as a middle-aged father of two teen-aged sons.
As adults, we cannot stand by indolently on the sidelines. We need to take a long, hard look at ourselves as responsible human beings and ask "how can I help"?
I truly dread to think of what will become of our great city if we don't take a stand against violence, particularly as it pertains to our wonderful youth, the torch bearers of the next generation.
