There are challenges and there are solutions to Baltimore’s problems, and I can tell you personally that there is nothing more satisfying to the human soul than being part of the solution to problems that afflict our fellow citizens.
I have by now written more than 4,500 columns and news stories, feature stories and book reviews for The Baltimore Sun. The column I wrote on June 8, 2005, might have been the most effective one.
By June 8, 2005, I had written hundreds of columns about what might generally be described as Baltimore problems – homelessness, the deaths of children in rowhouse fires, homicides related to drug dealing, the numbing number of drug addicts (one in 10, or one in every 15 citizens, depending on what estimate you believe), and the lack of funding for drug treatment; the city’s nation-leading loss of population, the need for housing for the poor, the need for stronger, smarter leadership in city government.
By June 8, 2005, I and other Baltimoreans had experienced five years of optimism and a lot of good news about our city – modest improvements in student test scores in the public elementary schools, new housing and construction all over town, a leveling off in the city’s population decline, the redevelopment of the west side near the restored Hippodrome theater and University of Maryland Hospital, redevelopment on the east side near Johns Hopkins Hospital, a promising decrease in the overall crime rate and, for the first time in a decade, an annual homicide rate below 300.
But on June 8, as I set about to write yet another column, as I looked at the Baltimore scene to find a subject, I noted these news stories: Violent crime in Baltimore increased in 2004 for the first time since 1999, according to new FBI statistics. Across the country, violent crime decreased 1.7 percent from 2003 to 2004. In Baltimore, violent crime climbed 4.3 percent, and ours remained one of the country's deadliest cities. There was one killing for about every 6,500 residents in Chicago, and one killing for about every 14,550 residents in New York. In Baltimore, there was one killing for about every 2,350 residents.
And this, mind you, was still an improvement over where we had been under a different mayor and police commissioner all through the 1990s.
There were other items in the news that caught my eye.
One, about a family tragedy in Northwest Baltimore, was by a fellow Sun writer and reported this: “Since Jan. 1, 2002, 913 people had been killed in Baltimore. Three of them were Annie Dozier's only sons.”
And there was this: “Two men died, and another was in critical condition, after three apparently unrelated shootings reported in a four-hour period on June 7. The bloodshed continued last night as a double shooting was reported about 9:30 p.m. Police said two unidentified men were shot in the 2700 block of Tivoly Ave.”
– All of that combined for a perfect storm in my mind.
So on June 8, as I set about to write yet another column, I was thinking as a journalist and as a citizen: Why not just ask them to stop? Why not say what we’ve wanted to say all along – will you please stop killing each other and killing our city?
That’s what I did. And I offered to help drug dealers find jobs and get off the corners, and I published my phone number: 410-332-6166.
The phone has pretty much not stopped ringing at my desk since 4:40 am on June 9, 2005. The Sun outfitted me with a cell phone just so I could receive and return phone calls all day, anywhere, at any time.
I don’t have a staff tracking my calls and results – so I will have to go with estimates. Since June 9, 2005, my contacts with people in “the life” number at least 4,000 and is probably pushing toward 4,500. I am talking about men and women, as young as 18 and as old as 56, who have either used or sold heroin and/or cocaine, or who have used and sold those drugs to maintain their habits.
They are in various stages of trouble or recovery – some are sill using drugs, some are in treatment, some are still selling; many have stopped selling because they fear more incarceration or harm, and death, on the street. Many are older, 35 to 45, in recovery, out of prison within the last 24 months, unemployed, or underemployed, and all complain that their criminal records – in the main, non-violent and limited to narcotics charges – are obstacles to steady jobs.
Rather than push dope for $50 a day, they said they wanted a real job. They wanted out of the game because they were too old, too burned out for another prison stint, too fearful of the police and the competition, too embarrassed to face their families. They wanted economic self-reliance in a way that would not land them in the jail or morgue.
Contrary to our impressions, far from all of the people in the life want to stay in the life.
In one telephone conversation after another, enough to fill a stack of legal pads, I heard from guys looking for a way out. Real people. Not people from a frictional television show set in Baltimore. Real people. Here’s what some of them said:
"People think we [sell drugs] to just come outside and be tough or hard. We do it to survive. Right now, there isn't much food in my mother's house."
"I have four children. I got to find some way to help with my family."
"It's time for me to step up to the plate and show our young ones that [drug dealing] ain't cool anymore. And one time before I leave this world I want to hear my mother say she's proud of me, instead of shakin' her head and asking, 'Why you keep selling that poison to your people?'"
For the first time in my career, I wrote to drug dealers and drug addicts, not about them.
I think that was what made the difference.
People who had felt abandoned – or never really part of the mainstream at all – now had a name and a phone number to call, if they wanted some help. All I did was connect people to the information they needed to get on track for something better. I think I built a bridge between one Baltimore and the other Baltimore – that other Baltimore of drugs, crime, high rates of unemployment and family dysfunction and low expectations -- in a way that had not been tried in my profession before.
Some who called for help found jobs with private businesses. Some found work through Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake or entered a job training program. I have referred dozens and dozens of others to job leads and two other Baltimore programs aimed at helping the ex-offender. It wasn't hard to do. It just took time. Guys now call me to give me about job leads. A dozen people from the life enrolled in and have since graduated from a culinary training class.
But this is a complex problem, in Baltimore.
We tried to arrest our way out of the heroin-and-cocaine epidemic for more than 20 years. We filled the old prisons, built new prisons and filled those.
Maryland's prison population has doubled since 1984.
Between 1925 and 1970, the number of men and women incarcerated in the United States averaged about 200,000 per year. Since 1971, the incarceration numbers have risen steadily and significantly. By 2004, we had 2.4 million behind bars, mostly due to the war on drugs.
We took corrections out of corrections, warehoused inmates, and only recognized the need for public funding of drug treatment in recent years. We sent thousands upon thousands of men and women home from prison vulnerable to relapse and unprepared for straight time. We continue to make it difficult for even non-violent offenders to find jobs, and we have a recidivism rate of more than 50 percent.<
Any citizen -- Republican or Democrat or Green, black or white -- should see the need for a major repair here.<
I wrote that column last June 9 because I was sick of all this.
Sick of the waste of human life.
Sick of the cycle.
Sick of drug addicts breaking into our cars and homes, shoplifting in our stores, prostituting themselves, and neglecting their children.
Sick of paying nearly $25,000 per inmate annually, only to have half of them return to prison within three years of release.
What we need is drug treatment on demand.
We have a fierce human problem in our midst - an estimated 40,000 drug
addicts, some 200,000 citizens 16 and older without jobs, between 8,000 and
9,000 men and women returning here from prison every year. Unless Maryland's - not just Baltimore's - employers recognize this long-standing crisis and make an effort to help fix it, even with a limited effort among nonviolent ex-offenders, then this city, and this region, will never hit full economic stride. We will always have in our midst men and women who merely drain government and charitable resources instead of contributing to the community's overall welfare by working, supporting their children and owning homes.
We need to change profoundly the corrections systems and make it, from start to finish, comprehensively rehabilitative.
We need public leadership on the cause of the ex-offender – taken directly and loudly and clearly to the business community -- a stated official belief in the concept of redemption and second chances.
We need a sustained effort to build better communities by breaking the drug-fueled cycle of crime-incarceration-unemployment-crime. It’s one of the great and exciting challenges in our midst. I keep thinking what a better world this will be – better state, better city – if one half of Baltimore steps up and helps the other half. We might be the greatest city in America, instead of the greatest half-city in America.
