"I was like, well, that's sad," she said. Then she heard that a pregnant woman and 2-year-old were shot. "I was like, that's even worse. But my mood wasn't really affected by it. I had to go on with my day. Life goes on. You really can't dwell on it. I couldn't dwell on the fact that my brother died, so I can't dwell on the fact that these people was getting shot."
All last week, Madison-East End might have been the safest part of Baltimore. Police cars constantly cruised up and down the avenues and alleys. Officers stood in pairs on corners and strolled the streets.
But residents say they haven't seen regular patrol officers in years - until Sunday when "what seemed to be a platoon descended," said Smith, the longtime Luzerne Avenue resident.
Mary Bailey, 50, who lives on Madison, said she doesn't expect the police presence to last. "I've never seen so many of them here before. They usually race up and down the streets without getting out."
"The police haven't been here in so long, it's like they've forgotten we're even here," said a 49-year-old woman sitting outside her home of 16 years on Belnord Avenue. "Now they show up."
She didn't want to give her name because "the police will leave us, but the devil will still be here," referring to drug dealing. "You just have to mind your business. I don't ever leave. I'm either inside or sitting right here listening to my music. You gotta kind of police your own house."
Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III recognizes such complaints and is trying to change the way policing is practiced in Baltimore, said Guglielmi, the department spokesman.
"It has become sort of like fast food," Guglielmi said. "Police officers have these big, fast cruisers and speed through. They have PA systems, so they don't ever need to get out of their cars, even to tell people to move along.
"Then they rush off to the next call," he went on. "But that's not good policing."
Part of Bealefeld's strategy is to bolster "community engagement," Guglielmi said, by having officers more often leave their cars and walk the beat.
"We're working on it," he said.
So is Faith Tabernacle, on the spiritual side. Last week, with Ashland calm again, Calloway, the 85-year-old pastor, fielded calls from friends who suggested that the church find a safer home after 39 years. No way, she says. A third of its 200 members live nearby, and the church is not going anywhere.
"People in trouble" need churches like hers, she said. More than that, the mass shooting has not shaken her belief that this is a solid neighborhood worth fighting to support.
"Things that happen in a community do not corrupt the people if they're good from the inside," she said. "They'll yet remain good. We all work together to try to solve the problems. By you standing and doing what's right, sometimes it rubs off on somebody else and changes their ways and helps them be good also."
