On Saturday alone, gunfire crackled in the shadow of the Baltimore skyline three different times.
From Gunther Avenue in Northeast Baltimore over to East Eager Street and then East Belvedere, where
police said a 26-year-old was shot and crashed his car, chased by a gunman in a white vehicle.
It is just the latest pushing the total of nonfatal shootings so far this year to 132, a number compiled in many corners of this city and it is headed more and more that way.
Year to date, nonfatal shootings are up nearly 50 percent, a number of particular concern for Baltimore police.
"We know and look at every nonfatal shooting that we get depending on the circumstances, it is a failed homicide. It is an attempt to kill someone," said Baltimore Homicide Commander Col. Stanley Brandford.
Brandford’s numbers are up too with eight more murders over this time last year, but nowhere near the historic homicide rate of post Freddie Gray 2015.
Still, an increase in nonfatal shootings can be a predictor to homicide trends making it all the more important to increase the current 36 percent solve rate on these shootings before they become more murders.
"We want to make sure we do a very thorough investigation, we want to know what those facts are because not only are we looking to solve the case. We are looking for indication of what is going to happen next," Brandford said.
Detectives working both nonfatal shootings and homicide are now working closely with one another, a change made by Kevin Davis when he became Baltimore Police Commissioner last year.
Often times Brandford says it is the same suspect names that pop up in both types of investigations; trends he says the city's war room is helping to identify.
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