Homicide Rate

With three more murders over the weekend , Baltimore has virtually no chance of continued improvement in the city's homicide rate.  There have been 187 people killed so far this year, as of Sunday. Last year Baltimore saw 196 murders, the lowest total since the late 1970s and, adjusting for population change, the lowest murder rate since the late 1980s.  The city would need to see nine homicides from this point on to match last year's number. But just once since 1970 has the city recorded less than 10 homicides in the month of November or December, let alone nine total to close the year.  A positive takeaway for this year would be a continued decline in the number of non-fatal shootings, which were down 5 percent as of the most recent update on Oct. 27. If that holds, Baltimore would record about 360 non-fatal shootings this year, compared with 651 just five years ago and 419 in 2010.  jfenton@baltsun.com

Police on Tuesday worked to find out more about the backgrounds of the two men wounded and one man killed in an overnight shootout with officers in West Baltimore. The incident took place about 10 p.m. Monday after two officers on foot patrol in the 2700 block of Edmondson Ave. saw gunfire coming out of a bronze sedan, police said. The officers fired on the car, police said. All three men shot were in the vehicle, police said. Police did not know the dead man's identity Tuesday and were running his fingerprints through databases.

The latest FBI crime statistics reports are out, and Baltimore, despite its lowest homicide rate since the 1980s, is still the fifth deadliest city in the nation, and the seventh most dangerous in terms of overall violent crime. It's hard to know what to make of this. Thanks in part to the statistics-driven policing strategies we imported from New York, and in part to a morbid municipal fascination with the daily body count, Baltimore tends to closely monitor the ups and downs of crime and to link the trend to the effectiveness of the police chief or mayor.

Baltimore detectives have taken two men into custody they suspect were involved in a double shooting Monday night that left one man dead, police said Tuesday. The men, whom police did not name, are being held in connection with the death of a 34-year-old man who was shot in a house in the 1900 block of Bentalou St. in West Baltimore. An 11-year-old boy who was also shot is expected to survive, police said. The boy, who suffered a wound in the lower half of his body, ran two blocks to summon officers who were on foot patrol nearby.

Baltimore is 31 homicides behind last year's pace and, for the first time in three years, is not on a record-setting homicide rate. Police and city officials attribute the decline to one of the coldest winters in Maryland history and a series of raids in violent drug neighborhoods.Story on page 1B.

In a detailed study of slayings in Maryland, researchers confirmed that the state's recent wave of homicides was caused by a volatile mix of youth, drugs and handguns -- and contradicted some common misconceptions about the slaughter.The recent homicide rate is "likely" to be leveling off, said University of Maryland Professor David McDowall, a criminologist and one of the study's authors. But the region may never return to levels typical of the early 1980s, before crack cocaine and high-powered handguns boosted its homicide rate about 50 percent.

Baltimore's homicide rate -- which had slowed earlier in the year after the record-setting pace of 1992 and 1993 -- has soared with 46 murders in the past 41 days, mostly from the drug-blighted neighborhoods of the Eastern District.For the year, city homicides continue to lag about 12 percent behind 1993, the city's most murderous year ever with 353 killings. That year marked Baltimore as the fifth-deadliest city in the country in terms of murders per capita.Police report 270 murders this year as of last night, compared with 301 at this point in 1993.

NEW YORK -- The homicide rate here plummeted 13 percent over the first six months of the year, putting the city on track for the fewest slayings in nearly 40 years. A total of 289 killings occurred through June 24 -- 46 fewer than in the same period last year, according to the latest New York Police Department crime statistics. At this rate, the department would log 581 homicides by year's end, the lowest number since 1963 when 548 were reported. The statistics show 253 fewer people have been shot this year, compared with the same period in 2000.

The campaign promise Mayor Martin O'Malley made five years ago was uncommonly specific for a politician. The Democrat pledged to reduce the city's annual homicide rate to 175 by 2002. That didn't happen. To some, O'Malley has still been successful. Crime is down 41 percent from 1999, police say. Shootings, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries - everything but the homicide rate is significantly down. The number 175 was merely a lofty, inspirational goal, many supporters say. And he has revolutionized policing in the city, importing New York City's statistics-driven style that relies on crime mapping and combating trends.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Edwin Melendez Primos died from a gunshot wound in his right ear. Alcidez Bauza Rivera, 31, was found with five bullets lodged in his body. And 20-year- old Jose Almazar Correa was killed after a shootout in a small town near here. Their deaths were notable because they were among 16 people killed last month in the same week and for pretty much the same reason: an expanding drug war that has given Puerto Rico the dubious distinction of being one of the bloodiest places in the United States.

Why didn't Jules Witcover use President Barack Obama's quote to the effect that "control measures as I have presented would most likely have not affected Newtown" ("Obama settles for half measures on gun control," March 19)? And another question: How much will the homicide rate go down in Baltimore with the Nanny-Governor Martin O'Malley's new gun control laws? Let me help you - zero. But good citizens will pay more and be fingerprinted. That's a big whoop! The disingenuousness is palpable.

As details continue to emerge about the killing of Reeva Steenkamp by the Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, one fact appears to be certain: The man known as the "Blade Runner" did fire four bullets through a bathroom door in his South African home, killing his girlfriend. Thus, it might appear that this will be an open-and-shut case when Mr. Pistorius goes before a judge in a trial that will inevitably become a media spectacle in South Africa and beyond on the scale of the O.J. Simpson trial.

Baltimore County police reported 23 homicides in 2012 with all but three cases solved. The county's average homicide clearance rate was 89.8 percent from 2007 through 2011, above the national average of about 65 percent, according to a statement from the department. In 2012, 12 victims were killed in domestic-related incidents, while three were killed by acquaintances, three were killed in non-random, drug-related incidents, the statement said. In five cases, police had not found a clear relationship between the victim and the suspect.

Baltimore was unable in 2012 to sustain a significant milestone — the first drop below 200 homicides in a generation — but officials see reasons to remain optimistic that declines will resume. As the Police Department's leadership changed, the city recorded 217 killings, about 10 percent more than the 197 in 2011, but still the second-lowest homicide rate since the late 1980s. Police statistics released Tuesday show that total crime and most categories of gun violence continued to decline.

With three more murders over the weekend , Baltimore has virtually no chance of continued improvement in the city's homicide rate.  There have been 187 people killed so far this year, as of Sunday. Last year Baltimore saw 196 murders, the lowest total since the late 1970s and, adjusting for population change, the lowest murder rate since the late 1980s.  The city would need to see nine homicides from this point on to match last year's number. But just once since 1970 has the city recorded less than 10 homicides in the month of November or December, let alone nine total to close the year.  A positive takeaway for this year would be a continued decline in the number of non-fatal shootings, which were down 5 percent as of the most recent update on Oct. 27. If that holds, Baltimore would record about 360 non-fatal shootings this year, compared with 651 just five years ago and 419 in 2010.  jfenton@baltsun.com

Two women died in separate shootings Thursday in Baltimore. The killings pushed the total of homicides for the year to 165, 11 more than at the same point last year and making it unlikely the city can improve upon last year's 35-year low of 196. Twenty-five people have been killed this month, nearly one per day. A 19-year-old woman, identified Friday by police as Nana Mensah of Randallstown, was shot in the head while seated in a car parked in...

Baltimore was unable in 2012 to sustain a significant milestone — the first drop below 200 homicides in a generation — but officials see reasons to remain optimistic that declines will resume. As the Police Department's leadership changed, the city recorded 217 killings, about 10 percent more than the 197 in 2011, but still the second-lowest homicide rate since the late 1980s. Police statistics released Tuesday show that total crime and most categories of gun violence continued to decline.

As details continue to emerge about the killing of Reeva Steenkamp by the Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, one fact appears to be certain: The man known as the "Blade Runner" did fire four bullets through a bathroom door in his South African home, killing his girlfriend. Thus, it might appear that this will be an open-and-shut case when Mr. Pistorius goes before a judge in a trial that will inevitably become a media spectacle in South Africa and beyond on the scale of the O.J. Simpson trial.

The state medical examiner's office has taken the rare step of classifying a 24-year-old woman's recent drug overdose death as a homicide, one of several recent killings being investigated by Baltimore detectives. Though there are hundreds of drug overdoses each year in Baltimore, investigators typically have little insight into the circumstances surrounding such cases. As such, the medical examiner's office declines to assign a manner of death, leading the state to have a high rate of deaths deemed “undetermined.” “If someone injects a toxic substance into somebody and kills them, everybody would call that a homicide,” said David Fowler, the state's chief medical examiner.

If the "stand your ground" laws are so bad for the country, as you say in your editorial, why is the homicide rate in Miami and other Florida cities so much less than in Baltimore ("A chance for justice," April 13). More than twice as many people, many of them black youths, are killed each year in Baltimore than in Miami. Where is the outrage? Letting only the bad guys have guns does not seem to work. William Vail, Glen Burnie