baltimoresun.com — In the age of Obama, a Democratic mayor should have great influence with a Democratic president and members of Congress. The mayor can't be effective without all that. Everywhere she goes, everything Sheila Dixon does—it's all under a cloud now, more than ever.
Dec 6, 2009 View in Crawl 4
demaskeeDec 6, 2009
Baltimore is a sewer. They deserve her.
juslenDec 7, 2009
Maybe I am wrong, but I think you missed David's point. I took it as a direct insult to the Democratic Party. "Their absolute best" being a criminal. At least that was my take.
gangsterunicornDec 7, 2009
its all in the game
demaskeeDec 7, 2009
I live 40 minutes away from Balitmore in another sewer, the Southeast side of DC. Baltimore has tried to revamp some of the harbor area however, even that area can't be kept safe at night. Just got onto WTOP's website to see all the gems coming out of Baltimore each day.
johnnysoftwareDec 12, 2009
Baltimore's basic crime stats say it has about the same number of people and violent crimes as: Boston, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_ ...</a>However, Baltimore's city high schools graduation rate is 34% and the city earned itself the reputation as the "heroin capital of the U.S.". Not much better than the title nearby D.C. earned itself, the "murder capital of the U.S.".Baltimore does have a lot of potential, though. The Harbor Place is beautiful. And adjacent to it is a wonderful neighborhood called "Little Italy" where you can find delicious Italian food.Washington D.C. has gotten steadily more dangerous in one of the nicest neighborhoods, Georgetown - from the early 1980's going forward. In the 1980's, they were pulling made-up no parking area scam raking in huge fines. Lots of criminals and corruption too - it was Barry's main era. D.C. became the murder capital of the U.S. He remarked at the time it was beginning to be as bad as Dodge City. The head of Dodge City law enforcement took exception to that remark and pointed out there had not been a murder in his city for I think a hundred years. DC was averaging more than one murder per day.In 1990's, the D.C. city police force was volatile, violent, and not too well trained - they rushed a lot of candidates through police academy training. It clung to its record as the most dangerous city in the U.S.: 69 murders per 100,000 people - 10x the murder rate per capita along the east coast of the U.S. where it rests.<a class="user" href="http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/murder.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/murder.html</a>By 2000, D.C.'s Georgetown was having armed hostage situation in children's clothing store (police detoured traffic), hit-and-run murders (police detoured traffic), etc. Several years after that, armed robberies started happening in stores on the main, most lit and crowded streets. A few years later, Georgetown college girls walking a couple blocks from campus grounds to their housing were accosted by a robber who shot one of them in the arm, even though they cooperated with him, gave him there money, and had an escort from the university with them. So even the good part of D.C. was not so good anymore.The drug/murder crime spilled out of Baltimore into surrounding towns. In the 2000's, residents who had recently come from - or still lived in Baltimore, were involved in drug-deal-gone-wrong murders in far flung suburbs.Both those cities in that mid-Atlantic region have taken a nosedive over the past several decades. D.C. did get a reformer mayor but by the time he finally got elected, there was a ton of work to be done. Baltimore should take a lesson and get the best turn-around mayor they can find.The tricky thing is, what do you do to turn things around economically in a city where 2/3 the adults people lack a high school education? They have to fix that so that kids can get legal, productive, safe jobs in the community instead of joining gangs. The gangs are invading the suburbs from the cities, which is a kind of urban sprawl nobody expected or wants.
johnnysoftwareDec 12, 2009
It sounds like Baltimore IS heading down the same path as D.C. Very similar crime stats and population size.D.C. is pretty much on the path to becoming like NYC. An NYC resident described their city by saying, "It's New York City. Crime is a way of life" or words to that effect when a MAC-10 shooting "aggressive" CD vendor among throngs of christmastime shoppers was killed by police. That happened because he started to spray a street with bullets. It was an effort on his part to kill a cop who wanted to write him a ticket.It would be a shame if Baltimore got to be that way but it will if it does not change its course.