After the April death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died from injuries sustained while detained by the Baltimore police, the city had its worst riots in more than four decades. Now, the city is waiting warily as legal proceedings against the six officers charged in Mr. Gray’s death move through the courts. But Baltimore is also in the throes of another crisis: A sharp increase in homicides that, by the end of the year, left the city with the highest per-capita murder rate in its history.
Residents, analysts and policymakers here are divided over the precise cause of the surge in homicides. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake fired the city’s police commissioner, Anthony W. Batts, over the summer, calling for change during a surge in crime.
Below are some of the key figures from a violent year. (All data comes from Open Data or the Baltimore Police Department unless otherwise noted.)-
55The per-capita murder rate, a city record, for every 100,000 residents
By the end of the 2015, 55 people had been murdered in Baltimore for every city 100,000 residents. Before 2015, the highest per-capita murder rate in Baltimore came in 1993, when the figure was 48, according to a compilation of uniform crime report data prepared by the Maryland State Police.
Baltimore has a population of 622,793, according to the most recent estimate by the U.S. census.
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344The number of Baltimore homicides in 2015, a 63 percent increase over 2014
In 2014, Baltimore had 211 homicides, which the Police Department said was the city’s second-lowest number since 1972. By the end of 2015, the number of homicides rose to 344. That was not the overall record: the city had 353 homicides in 1993, when its population was larger. Experts say per-capita homicide rates are a better measure than overall annual totals.
“I’m surprised that it was such a dramatic increase,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist at the University of Baltimore. “Nationally, crime is violent crime is going down but there are selected cities where it’s gone up,” he said.
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Why did homicides in Baltimore spike in 2015?A search for explanations
Experts have not pointed to a single, dominant reason for this rise in homicides in Baltimore, nor have they definitively established any kind of causal link between the unrest in April after Freddie Gray’s death and the increase in killings. Some pointed to pre-existing disparities in the city. Others in Baltimore suspected that the police stood down after the unrest associated with Freddie Gray’s death — an assertion the department has categorically denied.
“People got this misconception that after the riots police weren’t present or visible, but I can tell you in the neighborhoods we were in, we didn’t see any less presence than there were before,” said James Timpson, a community liaison for Safe Streets, a city-run anti-violence program.
“We had a lot of shootings that happened in broad daylight in the middle of the day,” Mr. Timpson said. “I think it was just people thinking that, their thought was that it would be easier to get away with it.”
Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore’s health commissioner, said that the looting of pharmacies during the unrest may have led to an increase in drugs on the streets, which then increased violent conflict — a theory that the police also raised.
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72 percentThe increase in nonfatal shootings in 2015
There were 637 shootings in Baltimore in 2015, a 72 percent increase from 2014, when there were 370 shootings.
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93 percentThe share of homicide victims in Baltimore who were black
Statistics show that 320 victims of homicide in Baltimore were black, 19 were white, three were Hispanic and two were listed as other. There were 22 women killed.
In all, 322 adults and 22 juveniles were killed in 2015, including 10 children under the age of 10, and 12 children and teenagers from 10 to 17. Ninety-one of the homicide victims were from 18 to 24 years old, 133 were from 25 to 34, and five were 60 years old or older.
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30.5 percentThe percentage of homicides solved by police 2015
Kevin Davis, the new Baltimore chief of police, has announced fresh initiatives to catch violent criminals. One program embedded 10 federal agents in the Police Department’s homicide unit. The city also established a so-called war room, where representatives from several agencies, including the F.B.I., the Drug Enforecement Administration, the city’s State’s Attorney Office and the homicide unit were convened to devise ways to stop the violence.
Overall, the percentage of homicides solved by the police, known as the clearance rate, fell to 30.5 percent in 2015, down from 45.5 percent in 2014 and from 50.2 percent in 2013.
“When you have a lot more murders, you clear a lot less,” said T. J. Smith, the director of media relations for the Police Department. “Unfortunately, many of our victims are involved in the illegal drug trade or involved in illegal activity. It makes it much more difficult to solve those cases,” he said. -
87 percentThe share of 2015 homicides committed with firearms
Firearms were used in 300 of Baltimore’s homicides in 2015 , most of them handguns. Knives were used in 27 homicides, and 17 slayings were by other methods.
Mr. Smith, the police chief, said officers in Baltimore seized “upwards of 20 percent more guns last year, in 2015, than in 2014.”
He added, “That’s usually indicative of a drop in crime” noting that it is uncommon for a rise in gun seizures to coincide with a jump in homicides.
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45 homicides in JulyBaltimore’s deadliest months in decades
From January through mid-April, the city’s monthly homicide totals were near the same pace of recent years – there were 58 homicides in the period in 2015, 50 in 2014 and 59 in 2013.
On April 19, Freddie Gray’s death touched off protests and civil unrest in Baltimore. In May, the city had 42 homicides — which at that point, was among its deadliest months in decades. There were 29 homicides in June and another 45 in July. For the rest of the year, Baltimore averaged 31 homicides a month.
