Second of two parts
The different-colored uniforms tell the story.
They converge at Mondawmin Mall from Frederick Douglass High School, just a few blocks away and connected with a walkway built over the Gwynns Falls Parkway. They come from Carver, 10 blocks farther south, and from high schools from northwest to northeast and south to north.
It's a transit hub for 11 bus lines and the subway, and a daily afternoon meeting spot for teens heading home from school, their competing white, green, blue and orange shirts filling the parking lot and the bus depots, many milling about waiting for the mall's afternoon curfew to end at 4 p.m.
The place also is a meeting spot for officers from three agencies - the Maryland Transit Administration and city and school police - who try to keep the kids moving while watching for trouble. On Monday, the first day of classes, school systems police Chief Marshall "Toby" Goodwin quickly intervened before trouble could start.
"Get over there," he ordered his officers. "Move that group, they're doing gang signs and everything."
Goodwin estimates that up to 4,000 students pass through Mondawmin every afternoon that school is in session. It is just one of several points where students from different schools, different neighborhoods and different backgrounds are thrown together in what usually is a loud but peaceful gathering, but also one that can quickly deteriorate.
The small group flashing gang signs quickly dispersed, and Monday's first school day ended peacefully for Goodwin, who at 52 is beginning his third year as chief of the 142-member department. He is a product of city schools who spent 25 years as a sheriff's deputy and served a brief stint as a state delegate, chosen by the 40th District State Central Committee to succeed the powerful Howard P. Rawlings after he died in 2003. He withdrew from running for a City Council seat to take the chief's job two years ago.
While principals and administrators get to talk about programs and good students, it falls to Goodwin to talk about and deal with violence, which at times invades city schools but more often occurs outside, around dismissal time, when students from rival neighborhoods and rival schools and rival gangs meet at bus stops and on the volatile streets between school and home.
A middle school student was charged with killing a classmate on school grounds last year - which Goodwin described as a "moment I don't want to live ever again" - but for the most part, he's pleased. "Crime is down, and test scores are up," he said.
