BALTIMORE (WMAR) — Since Friday, 21 people have been shot in Baltimore. At least 2 have died and others remain in critical condition.
Many of the shootings involved multiple victims, with ages ranging from 15 to 60.
“It’s so sad to understand that people aren’t placing value on life,” said Knicole Mosby Taylor, executive director of Empowering Minds of Maryland's Youth.
Taylor said she’s outraged, but not discouraged.
“It gives me that drive to go harder,” said Taylor.
Mayor Brandon Scott said this violence is not about police deployment.
In multiple instances, officers were on foot in the area and people still carried out these shootings.
“When we catch these folks and we will, we have to make sure that there are real consequences and real rehabilitation for people, because this is not always about what police are or are not doing. When people are shooting people in front of the police or when police are on their block, it’s clearly something much deeper than that,” said Scott.
Taylor said this underscores what the focus should be on: mental health.
“People want to point the finger. ‘This leader is not doing their job. This persons not doing their job.’ I don’t think it has anything to do with that. We have to get to the root cause because babies are not born with a gun in their hands,” said Taylor.
Her nonprofit Empowering Minds of Maryland's Youth works to give kids the tools to deal with anger and she wants to see mental health checks being done on a larger scale.
“Frederick Douglass said it best: ‘It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men’ so if we get to our babies and we give them that mental health now, they understand who to deal with their anger outbursts and they understand their triggers,” said Taylor.
Baltimore Ceasefire is holding a citywide event January second called Reclaim Baltimore, where neighbors are signing up to perform Sacred Space Rituals in the areas where people were killed this year.
