Just a few streets away from this meeting is where a 5-year-old girl caught a stray bullet in the head - a bullet fired, police say, by another teen who had escaped home monitoring ordered by state juvenile authorities to keep him in line and out of trouble. That sparked outrage over how the youth broke free and why he had been allowed out of detention in the first place.
Across the city, cops locked up young boys, ages 7, 8 and 11, for stealing a scooter and bicycle parts. That, too, sparked outrage, but not over overzealous cops slapping handcuffs on little kids, but rather on how to deal with young offenders and the lack of proper supervision by parents.
A community leader in Southwest Baltimore, Stephen Herlth, summed it up for me at the meeting: "Parenting has become an endangered species."
He would get no argument on this day in this church.
Pete O'Neal told how his mother kept him on the front steps and in line at their East Baltimore rowhouse. If he did something wrong, Ms. Sally from up the street would be out with a warning: "Aren't you Mrs. O'Neal's son? Time for you to get home."
O'Neal told the kids, "Nowadays, you can't talk to someone else's child. You can't put a hand on them. Ms. Sally wasn't afraid to put a hand on you."
O'Neal, who speaks at these meetings often, told the kids, "In the capacity of my job, I never want to see you again." His job is a cameraman for Channel 2 News, a job he's held for more than a quarter-century, a job that requires him to point a camera at bodies lying in the streets.
He estimates he's filmed more than 3,000 slaying scenes, and despite never stepping foot in front of the lens, he is one of the most well-known media personalities in Baltimore, perhaps the only one with street cred from the cops and the thugs. "Pete on the Street" is what they call him.
"I cover homicides," O'Neal bluntly explained. "I cover people killing each other. I cover murder. I guarantee you, I've been to your neighborhood. ... I have yet to meet a drug dealer who after five years says, 'I made it.' They're either dead or in jail with nothing. ... So I don't want to see you, because if I do, I'm filming you with a bullet in you."
O'Neal reminded the kids that he came from the same mean streets that they did, "and I've been to Rome and met the pope. ... I've been to the White House."
