Baltimore's mayor wants people to be more responsible, and the police commissioner wants people to be more accountable, and I couldn't agree more.
So let's start trying to understand why somebody would steal at least four teddy bears that were part of a public memorial for this year's victims of homicide.
I, for one, had thought I'd lost the ability to be outraged. Who could - who would - steal teddy bears?
Each was attached by a wire to the railing at the entrance to the city branch headquarters of the NAACP on West 26th Street. Each bear had a laminated name tag of the victim, along with when and where he or she died. They were under a clear plastic tarp, and there were 80 of them.
The bears are Faith Bocian's project. She's a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art; she was assigned in a class to make a public display and chose to highlight violence. Her mother is a city paramedic, and Bocian was moved by tributes she saw at homicide scenes that used teddy bears to memorialize the dead.
She unveiled her project May 12, and relatives of victims went from bear to bear looking for the names of their loved ones, stopping and crying when they came across a name they recognized. Now, Bocian will have to return, scour through her list and figure out which ones are missing.
Who could have done this?
"Times are hard," Joseph Armstead, one of the city NAACP vice presidents, told me. "Maybe a junkie would figure he could get a bag of dope for four teddy bears. A person with some crazy thinking might think that a baby would like one. Or maybe somebody anti-establishment wanted to destroy the piece. Who knows?"
Armstead called city police, and within minutes, Michael Gordon and B.D. Dow of the Northern District showed up in two patrol cars. Gordon said that when the call came out, he thought a tribute to a single death had been ruined. "Then I saw all this," he told me.
Gordon inspected the display and found the names of four victims he had either responded to when they died or whose deaths happened on his post when he was off. One was Juan Johnson, a 14-year-old killed back in January. "Shot in the head," Gordon recalled, telling Armstead that another youth is suspected in the killing.
The officer promised to keep a closer eye on the display. "Who would have the indecency to do something like this?" Gordon asked. "Some people are just ..."
Armstead finished the sentence: "Ignorant. Sick. Addicted. Need help."
