Constance Fowler sees a change when it comes to crime-fighting in Baltimore. For her, it's not about police overtime or broad shifts in policy, but about the police who show up at her neighborhood association meetings every month.
"They're out there getting in the community. They will stop and talk with you if you flag them down or, if you need them, they're there for you," said Fowler, president of the Carrollton Ridge Community Association in Southwest Baltimore. "They want to free us from what we had through the years before."
Something has changed. Compared to the same time last year, homicides were down 30 percent in the first three months of 2008 and shootings declined 31 percent. Last year began as the most violent in more than a decade, but the first quarter of 2008 was Baltimore's least deadly since 1985.
City and state officials caution that it's too early to extrapolate much, but they say the trends are encouraging and point to a host of factors that they believe have made a difference.
"It really has a lot to do with the strategy that we put in place, where the focus is very targeted on the violent offenders," said Mayor Sheila Dixon, echoing a message that her administration has sounded since taking office last year. "People are seeing as a result some small success, and ... it's giving people a sense of hope and encouragement."
In the neighborhoods, though, many say they don't believe anything has changed or that they figure it won't keep up.
Edith Jordan, 67, and Phyllis Green, 58, residents of the McCulloh Homes in West Baltimore, said they still have to get all their errands done during daylight because they are afraid to go out at night.
Jordan said she feels the public housing complex has become a little safer since the installation of security cameras. But Green jumped in: "It ain't safe up there. They still have shootouts. They shoot in the daytime as well as the nighttime."
Stanley Wood, 53, who lives in Northwest Baltimore, said he doesn't see the police doing any good.
"Seems like they jump on the people who ain't doing nothing but not the people who are doing something," Wood said.
That's exactly the opposite of the city's current crime-fighting strategy. In a move away from the zero-tolerance policy pursued when Gov. Martin O'Malley was mayor, city police have shifted to a more targeted strategy under Dixon, a move that officials say is bolstered by better coordination among federal, state and local authorities and enables them to identify potentially violent criminals and lock them up before they kill.
