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Winter Storm Hits Maryland, Part 3
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Baltimore's Homicide Rate Passes 200
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CBS
Six people killed over the weekend pushes Baltimore's homicide rate past 200.
But as Pat Warren reports, Commissioner Fred Bealefeld is looking beyond the numbers to the cause.
Adele McRae wondered if she was hearing what she thought she was hearing.
"I heard about five gunshots and wasn't sure if that was exactly what I'd heard, and then was considering calling the cops and then maybe a minute later, heard the sirens," she said.
What she heard was the shooting Saturday of a 45-year-old man in a wheelchair, shot while his 67-year-old mother was delivering his groceries at his Lemmon Street home. His mother was also wounded. Anthony Peter Swann later died of his wounds.
"I'm surprised I've lived here for two and a half years, I've never had anything like this happen," said another neighbor.
Murders like that of Swann have happened 201 times in Baltimore this year, a homicide number Commissioner Bealefeld considers no more or less important than any other.
"The number 200 is just as important as the number two, the number three, and the number one," he said.
In other words, it's not like police wait to get to 200 to turn their focus on preventing homicides.
"We work every day to try to keep a zero on that page. We're just working every day to throw up those zeros," Bealefeld said.
The death toll so far this year is eight more than this time last year. That's 201 homicides so far this year, compared to 193 this time last year, and 262 the year before that.
"We're below a 20-year average, we're below the 10-year average, we're below the five-year average for homicides in Baltimore. So we've made significant inroads over the last two-and-a-half years and more importantly we're sustaining where we were," Bealefeld said.
Despite the public safety improvements, there have been nine homicides in Baltimore in the past four days.
According to police statistics, violent crime overall is down in the city.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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