Despite pleas from the mayor, the police chief and communit leaders to stop the killing, homicides in Baltimore were up 10 percent last month compared with January 1990.
Last year, 305 homicides were reported in Baltimore, a 20 percent increase over the 255 recorded in 1989, police said.
In the Baltimore suburbs, homicide rates either decreased last year or remained about the same as in recent years.
The city's 305 victims included a 50-year-old hospital housekeeper whose son is a suspect in her chain-saw slaying, and a 25-year-old engineer who was robbed and shot to death outside his work place on New Year's Eve as he begged two gunmen to spare his life.
"It seems to be something that is national," city police spokesman Dennis S. Hill said of the increase in homicides in Baltimore. "All the major cities on the East Coast are up. Nobody knows why."
Nineteen U.S. cities recorded record homicides last year, including Washington, with 483 killings, and New York, with 2,200. Baltimore's record of 330 occurred in 1972.
Nationally, there were at least 23,220 homicides in 1990, experts said.
In Baltimore, the number of homicides had fluctuated in the 1980s between 201 and 240 until increasing in the last two years, police said.
"I think that people don't have the principles they used to have and people don't have respect for life," said City Councilman Lawrence Bell 3rd, D-4th. He blamed the availability of drugs and guns and economic conditions for his district's having the highest number of homicides in the city.
In the Western District, the area that Bell represents, police reported 78 homicides in 1990, up from 45 in 1989. The Eastern District was second with 43 homicides last year, up from 36 the previous year, police said.
Last year, the Central and Northwest districts had 39 homicides each; the Southwest 35; the Northeast 26; the Southeast 20; the Northern 16, and the Southern 9.
In 1989, the Central had 32 homicides; the Northwest 31; the Southwest 22; the Northeast 25; the Southeast 15; the Northern 19, and the Southern 37.
"The only big change . . . is in Southern," Hill said. "The rest of them are about the same."
In comparing the districts, police say only that some areas have higher homicide rates because they are more crime-ridden and more populated than others.
