Baltimore’s police commissioner sacked amid city’s climbing murder rate
IN THE heart of the world’s superpower, there’s a city that’s gripped by fear. Even the police are afraid of doing their job.
A CLASSROOM of second-grade students at a school in Baltimore, in the US state of Maryland, were receiving devastating news.
Their classmate Tony Browne, a happy seven-year-old who loved riding his bike and visiting the beach, had been shot in the head, along with his mother Jennifer Jeffrey-Browne, 31, at their home on a quiet street in the city’s southwest.
Baltimore police officers discovered the two bodies as they responded to reports of a shooting on May 28. Jennifer was found in the living room, Tony was in his bed. Police have been unable to comment on a motive or possible suspect.
A woman’s horrified screams rang out in the street as the bodies were carried from the crime scene, the Baltimore Sun reported. A man yelled out at officers over the police tape, saying they must be lying. Jennifer and Tony couldn’t possibly be the victims.
Shaken relatives have told the media they couldn’t think of anyone who would want the pair dead. A police spokesman described the unknown killer as “an absolute coward”.
John Enkiri, the principal of Baltimore International Academy, where Tony attended, described the boy as “a gentle soul”.
“He’s always smiling when you entered (the classroom),” he told the Baltimore Sun.
“I was always impressed by his mother’s love for him. He was everything to her. She was everything to him.”
Mr Enkiri said teachers had struggled to explain Tony’s death to his classmates, who were full of questions about what happened to their friend.
Likewise, Baltimore’s authorities are also struggling for answers.
The deaths of Jennifer Jeffrey-Browne and Tony Browne brought Baltimore’s May murder toll to 38, making it the city’s deadliest month in 20 years.
By the end of June there had been a 48 per cent increase in homicides over the same period last year.
Baltimore’s 2015 murder toll sits at 156, well above the national average. More than half of this year’s murders were committed after riotous clashes between locals and police in April, which led to a state of emergency.
Welcome to Baltimore: one of the most dangerous cities in the United States.
This is the city that provided the grisly setting for crime dramas such as The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street, and the real-life location for the murder of Hae Min Lee, the case popularised in the ultra-famous podcast Serial.
In Baltimore, violent crime is on the rise and the public’s trust in the police force continues to plummet.
Earlier this week, the city’s embattled police commissioner Anthony Batts was fired, following the shooting deaths of three people at a university campus on Tuesday, and persistent criticism over how he handled the April riots.
“We need a change,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said, adding the difficult decision was in the best interest of Baltimore.
“The people of Baltimore deserve better and we’re going to get better. As we have seen in recent weeks, too many continue to die on our streets.”
Many say the spike in murders is part of the fallout from the riots in April.
Like Ferguson, Missouri, the year before, Baltimore became the flashpoint for tensions between police and African American communities when a black man, Freddie Gray, 25, died as a result of injuries sustained in his arrest on April 12. Six police officers have been charged over their part in Gray’s arrest.
The death sparked days of violent protests and looting. National Guard troops were deployed as authorities struggled to control the unrest, and a state of emergency was declared within the Baltimore city limits. At least 20 police officers were injured and about 250 people arrested.
In the wake of the riots, the US Attorney-General agreed to an intensive probe into Baltimore’s police department and whether it used excessive force, discriminatory policing and unconstitutional searches and arrests.
In May, police commissioner Batts admitted his officers feared getting arrested for making mistakes.
“There is a lot of levels of confusion in the police organisation,” he said.
“There are people who have pain, there are people who are hurt, there are people who are frustrated, there are people who are angry.
“There are people (police officers), and they’ve said this to me, ‘If I get out of my car and make a stop for a reasonable suspicion that leads to probable cause but I make a mistake on it, will I be arrested?’
“They pull up to a scene and another officer has done something that they don’t know, it may be illegal, will they be arrested for it? Those are things they are asking.”
The president of Baltimore’s Fraternal Order of Police, Lieutenant Gene Ryan, said in a statement that the rise in the murder rate was partly a result of growing confidence among criminals.
“The criminals are taking advantage of the situation in Baltimore since the unrest,” he said.
“Criminals feel empowered now. There is no respect. Police are under siege in every quarter. They are more afraid of going to jail for doing their jobs properly than they are of getting shot on duty.”
Out on the streets, residents say the police presence has largely disappeared.
Donnail “Dreads” Lee, 34, lives in the West Baltimore public housing complex where Freddie Gray was chased down and arrested.
“Before it was over-policing. Now there’s no police,” Mr Lee, 34, told AP.
“People feel as though they can do things and get away with it. I see people walking with guns almost every single day, because they know the police aren’t pulling them up like they used to.”
Another West Baltimore resident, Antoinette Perrine, said she barricaded her door and reinforced her windows to deflect gunfire after her brother was shot dead at a nearby basketball court in May.
“It’s so bad, people are afraid to let their kids outside,” Perrine told AP.
“People wake up with shots through their windows. Police used to sit on every corner, on the top of the block. These days? They’re nowhere.”
Earlier this week Baltimore police called a press conference to say they’d had a very busy weekend — they’d solved six non-fatal shootings and made arrests in three recent homicides.
Deputy police commissioner Kevin Davis — the man stepping in as police commissioner after Batts’ sacking — said developments in the cases were thanks largely to tips and information from the public.
“None of these cases, whether they are juveniles or adult victims of murders or adult victims of non-fatal shootings, can be closed at the rate they are being closed right now in Baltimore without the assistance of the community,” he said on Tuesday.
“Our community is stepping up. Our patrol officers are stepping up.”
But it hasn’t always been easy for Baltimore residents to assist with police investigations — or even report crimes.
People in many Baltimore neighbourhoods, as in a number of other US cities, have long been held under a cone of silence known as “Stop Snitchin’”. It’s an attempt by criminals to stop potential informants or witnesses from cooperating with law enforcement.
This code in minority communities has been facilitated by the breakdown of trust in the police and authorities, with criminals using sophisticated methods to bribe, intimidate and harm witnesses into silence, The Atlantic reports.
One of the most horrific examples of consequences of “snitchin’” also happens to be one of the most horrific homicides in Baltimore’s recent history.
In 2002, an East Baltimore mother-of-five, Angela Dawson, complained to the police on multiple occasions about drug activity and other crime in her neighbourhood.
The local criminal element fired back, firebombing the Dawson family home in retaliation.
The Dawsons survived that attempt but a second firebombing attack soon after claimed the lives of Angela, her husband Cornell and their five children, aged eight to 14.
Drug dealer Darrell Brooks was convicted of the crime and is serving life without parole.
Years later, the Dawson Family Safe Haven was built on the burnt-out site where the Dawsons used to live.
It was designed as a place children could attend an after-school program and avoid running into danger, organiser Pamela Carter told the Baltimore Sun in 2012.
“Standing here now you can hear children laughing and talking,” she said.
“Out of that tragedy you can hear something positive.”
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