BALTIMORE — Wednesday, the Baltimore City Council held a special public safety hearing with city police and other city leaders to discuss crime.
City leaders said overall crime is down but people still don’t feel safe. What’s being done, what’s worked so far, and what they are planning to do in the future to combat crime were the primary topics of discussion.
Leaders like Commissioner Richard Worley said there are also trends they’ve seen recently involving crime in the city.
“Over 2,200 guns seized so far this year and we’re in the 300 ‘s for ghost guns. Right now, we’re about 40 down in homicides and almost 50 down and non-fatal shootings. Robberies, the area that were seeing increase are the street robberies you’ll see they’re up about 4%,” Worley said.
GVRS or group violence reduction strategy was one of the main focuses of the public safety hearing. Earlier this year they expanded GVRS to the southwestern district and they are continuing their plan to expand citywide.
BPD leaders said due to redistricting it’s made it a bit more challenging to collect the data. However, Worley said even though overall crime is down they are still on target with their goals, but they’ve noticed new crime trends recently that people need to be aware of.
“We just had a couple carjackings over the last couple of days. It’s in the northwest where they’re actually approaching young ladies who were at the gas pumps, and they’re trying to steal their vehicles,” Worley said.
Carjackings are still down overall, but stolen auto or stolen auto theft is up 200%. That’s when someone steals a car without someone in it.
Worley said another continuing issue is youth violence, so far this year they’ve had 92 victims which is the total number of youth victims last year.
“Even if you take away the incident in Brooklyn with 13 victims, we’re way above last year’s numbers, it’s still a problem for us. A lot of that surrounds the schools before and after,” Worley said.
Worley also said recently they met with federal partners who’re developing a taskforce just to track the guns being brought in the city, so everyone can know where they were purchased and how they are making their way into Baltimore.
Something else the community can look forward to, is more cops on the streets.
“We can spew numbers out all we want but I think people will feel safe if they see more cops”, Worley said.
