200 people have been murdered in Baltimore this year. It’s August.
Murder in Baltimore claimed its 200th victim yesterday - with a 27-year-old man being shot to death today, not far from where I grew up. When I saw the words “the Alameda”, the news instantly struck a nerve. I was raised a few blocks away from the scene of the crime.
Police did not identify the victim in the killing Monday in the 2700 block of the Alameda, near Clifton Park in Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello.
A corpse with no public name, no public face, no hashtag by which to be memorialized. An anonymous human life taken in the dark of night, another life lost to “Bodymore”. Someone whose life should have mattered, but didn’t.
The man was declared dead at the scene, police said, and officers set up a temporary partition around his body in the alley as they investigated.
What were his aspirations? Was he stuck in that neighborhood? If so, why? Was he trying to get out of a cycle of addiction? Was he struggling to find a new job? His nameless body will never give answers. And another criminal decreases the black population by one.
When I was at the #FreddieGray protest in Baltimore, I heard impassioned pleas from Black Panthers and gang members alike, calling for the black community to police itself. With the then-nascent gang truce in place, they said, they could focus on protecting the black community from police brutality and crime.
How has it gotten to this point - that murder is up by double-digit percentages every month? While we (especially the conservatives among us) can point fingers at the mayor in disdain over “stand down” orders, or at officers themselves, or policies drawing down police numbers - where are the noble neighborhood watch groups promised at the protests?
How did such a good message get so quickly forgotten? The unity from the #BaltimoreUprising is perhaps the greatest asset that Charm City has. Sitting just out of camera range, just below the surface, is a city that rebuilds. A city that bounces back. Citizens of Baltimore can come together, because they have done so many times before. Right now, we need to see gang members putting down their weapons and coming together like they did for #FreddieGray. We need to see the gang truce back in effect, community organizations stepping up, and murders being prevented by the community, not investigated by police.
It shouldn’t take a police officer’s brutality or a hashtag to make us realize the value of our own lives and communities. Bring back the truce, bring back the unity. The peace will follow.
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