Black Lives Matter blamed for rise in Baltimore crime
Despite the news that crime was down in 2016, residents of Baltimore, Maryland are now blaming a lower police presence for the city’s soaring murder rate despite three years of Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists insisting that police be pulled from their neighborhoods.
Baltimore has now experienced higher murder rates for three years in a row after riots and BLM-sponsored protests began rocking the city after the death of Freddie Gray, a suspect who died in police custody in the spring of 2015.
Following the riots and protests, police morale has collapsed, recruiting new officers has grown difficult and city officials began plans for a smaller police footprint in response to complaints of residents and protest leaders.
Crime Scene Tape photo/edited pic from FBI.gov
No longer are black leaders are blaming cops for the spiraling murder rate, but say that the police pullback has put them in danger.
“We wanted the police there,” Rev. Kinji Scott, a Baltimore activist insisted. “We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn’t want them beating the hell out of us, we didn’t want that.”
Scott claims only the progressive activists wanted cops to be eliminated: “…That represented our progressives, our activists, our liberal journalists, our politicians, but it did not represent the overall community. Because we know for a fact that around the time Freddie Gray was killed, we start to see homicides increase. We had five homicides in that neighborhood while we were protesting.
“What I wanted to see happen was that people would be able to trust the relationship with our police department so that they would feel more comfortable. We’d have conversations with the police about crime in their neighborhood because they would feel safer. So we wanted the police there. We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn’t want them beating the hell out of us, we didn’t want that.”
Scott also blamed the city for not fostering a community atmosphere between police and the neighborhoods.
“The primary thrust nationwide is what President Obama wanted to do: focus on building relationships with police departments and major cities where there had been a history of conflict. That hasn’t happened. We don’t see that. I don’t know a city—Baltimore for certain—we’ve not seen any changes in those relationships. What we have seen is that the police has distanced themselves, and the community has distanced themselves even further. So the divide has really intensified, it hasn’t decreased.
“And of course we want to delineate the whole culture of bad policing that exists—nobody denies that—but as a result of this, we don’t see the level of policing we need in our community to keep the crime down in our cities that we are seeing bleed to death.”
The Freddie Gray case raged on for months and months after he died on April 19 after suffering a fatal spinal injury while in police custody. Like Ferguson, $33 million of George Soros money has been linked to the riots in Ferguson – more here, some protesters were paid to perpetuate the chaos. From that time in April of 2015 to the mistrial of William Porter to the clearing of Brian Rice.
Freddie Gray
