The murder rate in Baltimore has skyrocketed since Black Lives Matter activists began protesting law enforcement for the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died in the back of a police van in 2015. Residents are now upset, blaming the murder spike on the lack of police presence in the city, which is ironically exactly what BLM activists called for.
After calls for a police pullback, the murder rate subsequently spiked in Baltimore, hitting a record high per capita homicide rate. In the final week of 2017, the city reached a total of 343 homicides.
In a report from NPR, residents came out swinging over the disturbing climb in murders.
“We wanted the police there,” claimed Rev. Kinji Scott. “We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn’t want them beating the hell out of us, we didn’t want that. We need the front line police officers and we need the heart of the black community to step to the forefront of this discussion. And that’s when we’re going to see a decrease in crime.”
Scott continued, arguing that Baltimore is in need of higher levels of good policing.
“And of course we want to delineate the whole culture of bad policing that exists — nobody denies that — but as a result of this, we don’t see the level of policing we need in our community to keep the crime down in our cities that we are seeing bleed to death,” he said.
Following the death of Gray, Black Lives Matter activists poured into Baltimore, some demanding police officers be disarmed. Additionally, as reported by The Daily Wire, BLM rally-goers wore t-shirts that said, “F*** The Police.” One man even held a sign referencing the potential murder of the six officers involved in the Gray case: “I HATE YAll I WOULD KILL ALL 6 OF U B****ES,” it read.
Protesters also sported t-shirts celebrating Assata Shakur, AKA Joanne Chesimard, a fugitive cop killer.
And, finally, lest we forget the 19 insane demands given to the Baltimore police by activists.
Call me crazy, but perhaps the explicit calls for police disarmament and aggressive police-assassination talk contributed to officers’ hesitation to engage in proactive policing, and eventually the tragic spike in murder. Maybe BLM “solutions” to perceived racial injustice are actually compounding residents’ problems, and sometimes those problems are fatal.