r/maryland • u/DecentGiraffe7 • 9h ago
Baltimore homicides are down over 71% from 2022, YTD.
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u/C_W_Bernaham 7h ago
A huge factor is Ivan Bates has been the State’s Attorney for Baltimore since 2023. He’s been real big on prosecuting repeat offenders, especially repeat gun offenders.
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u/thebarkingdog Anne Arundel County 7h ago
Criminal Defense Attorney's make some of the best Prosecutors.
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u/cornonthekopp Baltimore City 5h ago
Bates has been competent, but it's a bit bad faith to pretend that this is all because of him and of policing, when the safe streets initiative is actually preventing interpersonal issues from escalating into violence before anything happens.
The reality is that there are far less police than the city has had in decades, and those police are making far less arrests too. This massive decline hasn't been some sort of massive ramp up of police effectiveness, it's about connecting people to social services and conflict mediation from people who actually live in these communities.
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u/C_W_Bernaham 5h ago edited 5h ago
I mean when you actually put repeat offenders behind bars with sentences designed to actually keep them there, it makes sense that the police are actually making less arrests. Police can only be as effective as the district attorneys (or states attorney in this case) when they press the appropriate charges and don’t release these people back on the streets in no time.
And I don’t think what you’re saying is necessarily wrong, I’m just saying what you said doesn’t contradict or go against Ivan Bates being an effective SA, because his policies are effective with reducing crime
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u/Maxcactus 4h ago
I have heard that most crimes are sudden outbursts of uncontrolled emotions leading people to kill someone they are interacting with. A lesser percentage of murders are ones that are planned out. In those sudden explosions of violence thoughts about judicial consequences were not foremost. These events are probably more driven by the amygdala than the frontal cortexes.
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u/C_W_Bernaham 4h ago
Well what you’ve heard doesn’t matter when we are talking about repeat offenders, or people who repeatedly commit crimes and have a pattern of criminal behavior that’s well documented.
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u/Maxcactus 4h ago
I bet that repeat offenders for murder is pretty low, though it has happened. The people you are talking about probably don’t start off killing but are likely more generally violent natured. I agree that for people arrested for gun crimes and assault there should be more aggressive punishments.
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u/C_W_Bernaham 4h ago
I don’t know why you’re jumping straight to murder, I didn’t mention murder…I’m just mentioning repeat offenders in general. I think in the instance of Ivan Bates he’s specifically mentioned targeting people who commit repeat gun offenses.
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u/Maxcactus 4h ago edited 3h ago
Is there a connection between general criminality and propensity for violence?I think that when nonviolent criminals are put in the violent ecological of prison they often become more violent in order to survive.
I was addressing the general subject of the article as much as your comment.
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u/C_W_Bernaham 3h ago
General criminality and violence tend to be correlated yes. Especially street level crimes, which can lead to homicides, think car jackings and store robberies. If someone has a pattern of behavior for stealing cars, robbing stores or burglarizing homes, especially when armed, it can lead to someone getting killed. Want to prevent a homicide? Take that person off the streets before they commit one. Why wait? They’ve already shown they have a pattern of violent behavior.
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u/Electric_Sal 7h ago
NYSRPA v. Bruen was also a factor
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u/GunnarGooner 5h ago
Not calling bullshit, just genuinely want to know. Why do you think it is a significant factor? Do you think more potential victims of gun crime are now legally carrying and are actively defending themselves? Or do you think the fact that there are more people carrying is reducing criminals’ willingness to brazenly whip a gun out at someone?
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u/DrunkAndHornyGuy 4h ago
LOL gun-nuts will making up any old bullshit they can to make guns look good.
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u/Natty-Bones 5h ago
Citation, please.
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u/DrunkAndHornyGuy 4h ago
They will never get back to you because they just pulled that house crap right out of their ass. There is no bullshit or lies that a gun-nut won't tell you to spread the gospel of guns.
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u/suture224 7h ago
Baltimore Sun Headline: Baltimore Homicides are Down. Why this is proof Wes Moore is the anti-Christ.
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u/South-Lab-3991 7h ago
What are all those “I stopped going to Oriole games because the city is too dangerous” people living in PasaBurnie going to say now?
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u/PleaseBmoreCharming 5h ago
The amount of families with small children I saw walking from Camden Yards after the game yesterday proved to me that that sentiment is not as widely held as the internet or local TV news leads us to believe.
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u/Cheomesh Baltimore City 4h ago
You reminded me of a co-worker I had years ago - he had gone down to Fells Point after an thing he had in Towson because I'd made an offhand recommendation to him once. Next time I saw him he spoke pretty highly of the restaurant he'd gone to and actually seemed genuinely shocked that whole families lived there.
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u/PleaseBmoreCharming 3h ago
I think you got me wrong... I'm not saying that I was somehow convinced families weren't spending time in Baltimore or somehow don't exist. I am saying that it's easy for people to assume that unless they see it in person and only watch local news.
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u/Cheomesh Baltimore City 3h ago
Oh, yeah, no I'm agreeing with you - in that I have literally met someone who is like that. Like, it seemed they expected nothing but boarded up homes, corner boys, and an active firefight rather than a bunch of normal people having a pretty normal day in one of the prettier parts of town.
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u/PleaseBmoreCharming 3h ago
Ahh, gotcha! Yeah, it's insane what people will conjure up in their heads given no exposure to things that prove things otherwise. I like to think one by one if we change their minds this area will get a little better and more tolerable.
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u/Cheomesh Baltimore City 2h ago
You aren't kidding; one of my old gaming group members, on hearing I'd moved to Baltimore, immediately followed with "you couldn't pay me to live in Baltimore!". Unprompted, mind. Then again he slept with a gun under his pillow back in St. Mary's so he was clearly not of sound mind.
Oh, and I had the misfortune of reading FB comments once - found some page the algo suggested when I was there for some other nonsense that had old photos of the city (very cool). Found a few that were actually close to me here in SoBo - comments made references to boarded up and burnt out vacants and dope fiends laying all over...neither of which are reality, since I travel those areas quite frequently. Maybe if they were boarded up vacants I could actually afford to buy them though...
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u/JustBadUserNamesLeft 7h ago
You forgot the people in Carroll County who say that they had a friend who was carjacked the second they crossed the city line.
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u/twopacktuesday 7h ago
Someone did try to Carjack me in 2001. It was a manual, so they moved on. Didn’t scare me from going back because I worked downtown at the time.
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u/JustBadUserNamesLeft 6h ago
Props on driving the manual. A dying skill. I have had valets tell me that I need to park my manual car myself.
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u/South-Lab-3991 6h ago
We had a guy in Miami say he can “probably figure it out” when told my friend’s Jeep was a manual.
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u/Ok-Leave-1059 6h ago
Headline from the Sun: Baltimore MURDER rate up over 900% compared to '89"
<A12 makes mention that the 89 in the headline is referring to 1789>
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u/ShitsFuckedDude 7h ago
The whole country is actually at a low right now which is fantastic
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u/Ok-Leave-1059 6h ago
It's definitely moving in the right direction but for context we've moved from roughly Yemen to Pakistan murder rates.
If we can halve our country's murder rate we'll crack the top 100 and have similar rates to such safe countries as Bangladesh, Lebanon, and if we really work hard we can even get it lower than Syria.
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u/MarshyHope 3h ago
Based on this data, the murder rate in Baltimore this year is 6.9 (nice) murders per 100,000 people. That would put Baltimore on par with Paraguay and Russia. For reference, it would also put us below 12 other states include Georgia, Alaska, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, DC, Mississippi, Arkansas, and both Carolinas.
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u/Ok-Leave-1059 2h ago edited 2h ago
Not sure if you're getting download like my comment but I'm guessing the weird gun people are here and boy do they hate it when people point out how similar we are to third world countries
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u/MarshyHope 3h ago
But /u/ziplock13 told me crime was up and cops have been faking data to make themselves look good!
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u/DecentGiraffe7 7h ago edited 7h ago
I don’t really wanna wade into the “why” debate over here, but there’s a couple overlapping narratives. The Free Press has a recent piece that does a decent job of giving all sides their due, so maybe start there. https://www.thefp.com/p/baltimore-crime-rate-drop
E: fellow progressives, ignore the masthead here. This individual article is pretty fair
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u/pedeztrian 2h ago
Allowing the “bike parades” has coincided with a vast decrease in violence over every major statistic. Causation or correlation?
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u/CraftyRub6965 7h ago
Can confirm that many areas definitely feel safer. It’s time for everybody to come back to the Inner Harbor, Fells Point, Powerplant etc :)
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u/Merciless602 6h ago
Out of curiosity what is the homicide rate on surrounding areas.
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u/DecentGiraffe7 6h ago
The rate is much lower in the surrounding counties in the metro area, and those rates are either flat or declining. There’s been suggestion that violence in the city might just be displaced there, but it isn’t borne out by the data.
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u/Merciless602 3h ago
I've heard that as well and was just curious if the data showed that, good to know. I do live in a area adjacent to the city and I do feel like the crime rate has gone up based on the community pages and law enforcement conversations.
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u/pedeztrian 2h ago
Seems like allowing, what some would call ”bike parades”, others, “groups of delinquents riding bikes and disturbing the peace”, has significantly reduced crime in every marketable statistic. Causation or correlation? Hrmmm… either way, I’ll take the noise over me or my neighbor suffering violent crime any day.
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u/Remarkable-Self2268 1h ago edited 56m ago
Being excited that Baltimore‘s homicide rate is still high Nationwide because of the past being even higher is ridiculous. I’ve been at Baltimore city resident for the last 10 years, it is still extremely dangerous.
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u/InsuranceImmediate25 1h ago
Is his one of those where they just recategorized something as not murder anymore in like 2023?
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u/bigwavedave000 8h ago
Excellent, i’m curious if this is to increase police presence or social factors or what are the contributing factors.
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u/Solarpanel20 6h ago
Mostly it’s increase security/camera systems, which is helping every city across country. This improvement is great, but it’s not isolated to just Baltimore.
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u/Aguyinde 6h ago
Hopefully that means violent crime is down too!! Homicides don’t always mean crime is down. New lifesaving medical strategies and treatments are always changing. There have been reports directly correlated with the two. It’s one of those things that can be manipulated.
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u/DecentGiraffe7 6h ago
The overall basket of violent crimes is down yes, though it depends on the individual crime: assault is up YOY, carjacking continues to decline, etc
Non-fatal shootings are not currently an FBI category, but they are reported to them as aggravated assaults. Fortunately BPD itself breaks them out because it’s something people are interested in, and what we see is that the decline in non-fatal shootings tracks pretty well with the decline in homicides. They’re both down big from the peak.
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u/lmxbftw 6h ago
It would be weird if the number of non-fatal shootings was up while homicides was down. Like, people were just aiming worse?
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u/Aguyinde 5h ago
It happened in Detroit in the 90s-00s I believe, things like different CPR techniques, tourniquets in the field, and medics carrying blood and giving it while enroute to the hospital can greatly change the outcome from dead to being able to get to surgery.
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u/lmxbftw 5h ago
That's genuinely really interesting, thanks!
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u/Aguyinde 5h ago
Not trying to create any type of argument just want people to be aware that a lot of this data can be skewed and to look at the whole picture. Not just one snippet, that is all.
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u/Cheomesh Baltimore City 4h ago
People surviving shots more reliably - quicker access to help will determine that above anything else.
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u/Sea-Bed-1332 5h ago
Good work, they need to get the remaining rotten individuals that make Baltimore unsafe and put them in their place
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u/HillarysBussy 7h ago
Ammunition is really expensive
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u/Therearenogoodnames9 Anne Arundel County 7h ago
This is what I was thinking when I saw this. Gotta pick your targets wisely because you might not be able to afford more.
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u/Dry-Site-8764 6h ago
The year is still young. There’s still room for improvement. Wait till the weather gets really nice outside. We’ll see what happens.
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u/DecentGiraffe7 2h ago
Maybe. I hope you're wrong.
For what it's worth, people have been making this point or variations of it every year since 2023.
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u/Sterlings-Dad 7h ago
Who cares about the homicide rate? It is who is being murdered. If it was only criminals killing criminals at 3 am in bad neighborhoods I certainly don’t care. It’s when innocent people are murdered that I care. I’d willing let 100 known and repeat criminals be murdered instead of 1 law abiding citizen being assaulted
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u/DecentGiraffe7 7h ago
One of the folks who catalogs the individual homicides actually has a column for whether the victim had a violent criminal record, so you can see for yourself how many fit your scenario. https://chamspage.blogspot.com/2026/01/2026-baltimore-city-homicide-list.html
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u/South-Lab-3991 7h ago
You sound like one of those “scared to go into the city” people, so I’m not sure why you’re so worried about it.
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u/ZigZagLax44 7h ago
Others have said this is thanks to the Police Commissioner and State's Attorney, I also want to give some kudos to Mayor Scott and many local leaders for their work with youth groups. Channel 5 on Youtube did a great video about it: https://youtu.be/XQs59YY-e2I?si=X_Pw_UUo6oZeFvGu