Three Baltimore Zones Achieve Dubious Homicide Record - Jazz Shaw

A few years ago, the City of Baltimore, Maryland introduced a new, community-led program to combat gang violence and hopefully reduce the city's spiraling homicide rate.

Known as "Safe Streets," the program dispatched civilian "violence interrupters" wearing distinctive orange t-shirts who would seek to step in when gang members appeared to be preparing to exchange gunfire. 

The most violent neighborhoods were broken up into ten Safe Streets zones...

• Of the ten Safe Streets zones, three of them recorded a one year period with no homicides. 
• But a closer look at the figures suggests that the success of the program remains marginal at best.
• 70% of them (a very significant majority) were unable to make the same claim. In fact, three or four of the worst saw almost no decrease in killings at all. As for the three that did record zero homicides, they didn't all do it in the same calendar year...
• At least five violence interrupters have been killed by the same gun violence they sought to prevent since the program launched, with the last one coming in July of this year.