April 17th marked the first homicide in Baltimore City where the victim was not a black male. Melonie Hamber of 2000 E. Hoffman Street, a two girl old black girl, was murdered by her father, Tyrone, who police indicate beat her to death with a belt. We simply cannot express our sorrow that a young life could be taken so viciously or express our outrage that a person could be so cruel to his own daughter.
Meanwhile, the homicide count is now up to 52, after a particularly lethal weekend and two recent terrifying murders in the Waverly area near the junction of Greenmount Avenue and 33rd Street. If there’s anything good in the statistics is that the overall murder rate is down from last year, but given this still projects to be 169-170 murders compared to 238, Baltimore is still a killing zone for black male citizens. While the city has crossed the threshold that it is no longer more likely than not someone will be murdered on any given day, that the murders focus so significantly on just one element of the city’s population screams for effective action.
The drug trade, lack of employment, absolutely dreadful preparation and discipline in schools, the gang culture, fractured family structure and apparent indifference of society as a whole has created what appears to be a class of disposable citizens who are doomed to failure at such a young age.
We will not presume to have the answers, but we truly believe that when these murder victims start off in a dysfunctional, incompetent school system that neither gives them the educational background and skills required to succeed in the world nor instills effective values followed up with fair but firm discipline, and as such are at a dreadful disadvantage to explore the wide range of positive possibilities for their lives. City high schools are incubators for gangs and misadventure.
The city and state can only do so much but what they are doing is not working. To put it on the communities themselves does not answer the problem either as their resources and know how is so badly fractured. It will take the larger community, a metropolitan approach where all of us see we have a stake in improving this horror not through massive handouts but identifying those resources that are the most effective and helping them achieve their goals. How many groups like ACORN have posed as helpers for such communities while pursuing a corrupt agenda of their own of no benefit to the communities they are charged with helping?
Meanwhile, the homicide count is now up to 52, after a particularly lethal weekend and two recent terrifying murders in the Waverly area near the junction of Greenmount Avenue and 33rd Street. If there’s anything good in the statistics is that the overall murder rate is down from last year, but given this still projects to be 169-170 murders compared to 238, Baltimore is still a killing zone for black male citizens. While the city has crossed the threshold that it is no longer more likely than not someone will be murdered on any given day, that the murders focus so significantly on just one element of the city’s population screams for effective action.
The drug trade, lack of employment, absolutely dreadful preparation and discipline in schools, the gang culture, fractured family structure and apparent indifference of society as a whole has created what appears to be a class of disposable citizens who are doomed to failure at such a young age.
We will not presume to have the answers, but we truly believe that when these murder victims start off in a dysfunctional, incompetent school system that neither gives them the educational background and skills required to succeed in the world nor instills effective values followed up with fair but firm discipline, and as such are at a dreadful disadvantage to explore the wide range of positive possibilities for their lives. City high schools are incubators for gangs and misadventure.
The city and state can only do so much but what they are doing is not working. To put it on the communities themselves does not answer the problem either as their resources and know how is so badly fractured. It will take the larger community, a metropolitan approach where all of us see we have a stake in improving this horror not through massive handouts but identifying those resources that are the most effective and helping them achieve their goals. How many groups like ACORN have posed as helpers for such communities while pursuing a corrupt agenda of their own of no benefit to the communities they are charged with helping?
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