Homicides in Baltimore are up more than 40 percent in 2015 over the previous period last year. The city has experienced 100 homicides to date, compared with 71 at the same point last year -- a trend that bucks a national decrease in violent crime in most major cities in recent years. The overwhelming majority of these homicides -- 87 of the 100 -- involved a black victim, 80 of whom were males. And the largest number, 22, occurred in the Western District -- that's more than all the homicides in the district in all of 2014. Nonfatal shootings in West Baltimore were up 175 percent year-over-year, according to the Sun.
But while crime is up dramatically, arrests are down. Arrests in the city were 40 percent lower in the weeks following Gray's death and the riots than the same period in the two previous years, according to an analysis of police data by The Wall Street Journal. Even before Gray's death, arrests in Baltimore were down 22 percent in the first three months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014...
Yes, Gray's life mattered. Black lives matter, as protesters remind us following every such incident involving the death of a black man at the hands of police.
But so, too, should the 87 black lives (and 13 others) lost on the streets of Baltimore this year. By focusing almost all of our national attention on the horrific death of one black victim while in police custody, we avoid the larger problem of violence within the black community. Worse, by making the police out to be the greatest threat to the black community, we risk allowing criminals to go unchallenged within those communities.
Justice for Freddie Gray would best be served by better policing in the neighborhood where he lived -- not by less policing.
http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2015/05/22/justice-for-freddie-gray-n2002841/page/full
