#baltimore riots

[gdotkeaton]

Word On Road Pt. IV 📍 BALTIMORE, MARYLAND (Photos By: @gdotkeaton / @art-officivl) One thing I admire about Baltimore is i don’t see a vacant house with out some colors, a mural or powerful image not to far behind. It’s a canvas city.

[jeffwhittle]

We need more Toya Grahams in the world.

[fitfawn]

Crazy to think that 5 years ago I was locked in a baseball stadium because of the riots.

[carenfried]

How to help a Community heal

How to help a Community heal

Chief Melvin Russell of the Baltimore Police Department first met Gary LeBlanc of Mercy Chefs during the civil uprising in 2015, following the death of Freddy Gray. Gary parked one of his food trucks in front of Police Headquarters and promptly prepared and served 4,000 meals a day until the crisis abated.  Their relationship blossomed from there.

Chief Russell describes the civil uprising in…

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[wendynerdwrites]

[dreowyn]

Baltimore suffers steep population decline according to new Census data

Baltimore suffers steep population decline according to new Census data

Heckuva job mayor! Gee, I wonder why… From Baltimore Sun: Baltimore saw another year of steep population losses with nearly 5,300 people leaving the city, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The official estimate of Baltimore’s population now stands at 611,648, down more than 9,000 since the last full Census in 2010. The Census Bureau estimates that Baltimore’s population had…

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[coloradoron]

The Issue of Police Officers Shooting Black Men

The recent rash of black men shot by police is wrong and horrific.  The question that plagues us is “Why is it happening?”  Underlying this question are several others we should consider: ·      Has the number of shootings significantly increased recently? ·      If so, what are the underlying theories of why they are increasing? ·      If not, has the media led a “frenzy” of over coverage that has made it appear that shootings have increased? Fundamental to this troubling issue, regardless of the answers to the questions above are: ·      Why are police officers making the “intense and quick” and irretrievable decisions to discharge their weapons toward black men? ·      Are there extenuating circumstances that happen with higher frequency when black men that are being stopped, questioned, apprehended or arrested? E.g., failing to immediately comply with police orders, resisting arrest, or having a higher propensity to be armed or brandish a weapon? ·      If so, do these circumstances, per typical police training, warrant escalated response that can end in the shooting of a suspect? ·      More controversially, are black men, through their criminal behavior, putting themselves at higher risk than would be seen in the population at large? It is a matter record that black men commit crimes at a much higher propensity than other races. Consider these statistics from Wikipedia: ·      Despite making up just 13% of the population, in the last 30 years, African Americans committed 52% of homicides in the US. ·      In 2002, the black arrest rate for robbery was 8.6 times higher than whites, and blacks were 16 times more likely to be incarcerated for robbery than non-Hispanic whites. Robberies with white victims and black offenders were more than 12 times more common than the reverse. ·      A 2004 National Crime Victimization Survey report which analyzed carjacking over ten years found that carjacking victims identified 56% of offenders as black, 21% as white, and 16% as Native American or Asian. ·      According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in the year 2008 black youths, who make up 16% of the youth population, accounted for 52% of juvenile violent crime arrests, including 58.5% of youth arrests for homicide and 67% for robbery. Black youths are overrepresented in all offense categories except DUI, liquor laws and drunkenness. Are there cultural forces at play that can explain why such highly disproportional crime rates for African Americans?  Tomes are written about this question, but a few interesting facts to consider are: ·      Dropout rates for blacks are nearly 60% higher than for white students; 60% of black dropouts have a criminal record. ·      Unemployment rate for high school dropouts is about 56 percent greater than that for high school graduates. ·      Approximately 70% of black children are born out of wedlock and raised by single mothers or surrogates like grandparents. ·      In 2011, children living in female-headed families with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6 percent, over four times the rate in married-couple families. ·      71% of high school dropouts are fatherless.  Fatherless children have more trouble academically, scoring poorly on tests of reading, mathematics, and thinking skills.  Children from father-absent homes are more likely to be truant from school, more likely to be excluded from school, more likely to leave school at age 16, and less likely to attain academic and professional qualifications in adulthood. ·      A 1% increase in the proportion of single-parent families in a neighborhood is associated with a 3% increase in an adolescent’s level of violence. In other words, adolescents who live in neighborhoods with lower proportions of single-parent families and who report higher levels of family integration commit much less violence. From the conservative website the “Daily Wire” founded by Mr. Ben Shapiro, here are some perspectives on the shooting of black men by the police: 1.     Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015. According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or “were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force.” Some may argue that these statistics are evidence of racist treatment toward blacks since whites consist of 62 percent of the population and blacks are only 13 percent of the population. 2.     Mac Donald writes in The Wall Street Journal, 2009 statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15 percent of the population in these counties.  "The black violent crime rate would predict that more than 26 percent of police victims would be black,“ MacDonald said. "Officer use of force will occur where the police interact most often with violent criminals, armed suspects, and those resisting arrest, and that is in black neighborhoods.” 3.     More whites and Hispanics die from police homicides than blacks. According to Mac Donald, 12 percent of white and Hispanic homicide deaths were due to police officers, while only four percent of black homicide deaths were the result of police officers. 4.     Black and Hispanic police officers are more likely to fire a gun at blacks than white officers. This is according to a Department of Justice report in 2015 about the Philadelphia Police Department. It is further confirmed by a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania criminologist Greg Ridgeway in 2015.  That study determined black cops were 3.3 times more likely to fire a gun than other cops at a crime scene. 5.     Blacks are more likely to kill cops than being killed by cops. This is according to FBI data, which also found that 40 percent of cop killers are black. According to Mac Donald, the police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person. We must remember those police officers are under extreme pressure. They experience uncertain and potentially life-threatening situations.  When it is clear that black men have a higher propensity for crime, and to resist arrest, is it wrong for police to take additional precautions when confronting a black crime suspect? Is some level of reasonable profiling warranted?  Is there such a thing?  It is a matter of opinion and policy, but I believe it is not an issue of racism, more than it is an issue of safety and expediency. The issue of police officers shooting black men is real.  It is dangerous, and we need to understand it in much greater detail. We must deal with it ensuring truth and justice.  All man, regardless of race, should expect to have the safety of not being unjustly shot, without due cause, by a police officer.

[unclesamsmisguidedclub]

Evidence That 'Friends of Democracy' Funded and Planned Baltimore Riots

Evidence That ‘Friends of Democracy’ Funded and Planned Baltimore Riots

A document was found marked “confidential” – it is a clear set of guidelines and instructions written for paid protestors in Baltimore. You may recall LARGE protests broke out in Baltimore shortly after the April 15th, 2015 death of Freddie Gray. There has long been rumor and ‘conspiracy theory’ that all of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizing and rioting was funded by special interest groups,…

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