A few years ago, the City of Baltimore, Maryland introduced a new, community-led program to combat gang violence and hopefully reduce the city’s spiraling homicide rate. Known as “Safe Streets,” the program dispatched civilian “violence interrupters” wearing distinctive orange t-shirts who would seek to step in when gang members appeared to be preparing to exchange gunfire. The most violent neighborhoods were broken up into ten Safe Streets zones. These unarmed violence interrupters planned to replace firearms with clipboards, dissuading gangbangers from taking up arms. This month, the program celebrated something of a milestone, or at least that’s how the organizers were describing it to the Baltimore Sun. Of the ten Safe Streets zones, three of them recorded a one year period with no homicides. But a closer look at the figures suggests that the success of the program remains…
Three Baltimore Zones Achieve Dubious Homicide Record – HotAir
