The next time somebody tries to tell you that Baltimore doesn’t do anything well, you just sit them down, grab a computer, and refer them to this article in the Baltimore Sun. According to FBI data collected last year, Charm City is first in the nation among 500,000 plus cities at producing dead people.
Baltimore’s homicide rate stands at 37 per 100,000 inhabitants, higher than Detroit’s 34 per 100,000 or D.C.’s 31. Among cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, the Old Line State’s largest port ranked third behind what’s left of New Orleans and St. Louis, a city that has been unable to offer proof of its own existence outside of the FBI’s annual homicide study since the nineteenth century.
Still, the city’s 234 murders is actually a twenty-year low. Of course, there were also more people in Baltimore twenty years ago, and anyone who’s ever watched a couple of episodes of The Wire can tell you how easy it is to creatively classify crime in this city. And given Mayor Sheila Dixon’s dubious moral qualities…well, I’m just sayin’. Seriously though, I’m sure the city is much safer than it used to be.
While homicides might not be a marketable export, they certainly help with population control. According to another Sun article, the city’s population has remained relatively stable for the last six years.
