Baltimore Police recorded 71 homicides from January through May, a marked decrease compared to the same period last year and the second fewest homicides tallied in the first five months of a year since 1970, according to a review of police data. For eight years, starting in 2015, the city was plagued with high rates of violence, regularly recording upwards of 300 homicides a year despite seeing decreases in population. But in 2023, the city recorded 262 homicides, a 20% decrease and the largest single-year reduction going back to 1970, the earliest year for which there is available data, the Baltimore Banner reports. So stark is the continued decrease in homicides — Baltimore is down nearly 50% compared to the same period two years ago — that even the White House has taken notice. At an event Friday in Northwest Baltimore, a Biden Administration official hailed the city’s progress as a model for others to follow. Violent crime decreased nationally in 2023 compared to 2022, but perhaps no city saw as significant a drop in homicides as Baltimore.
“This is happening everywhere,” Rob Wilcox, deputy director of the newly created White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, said of the decrease in killings. “But the place that it’s happening with the most acceleration are places like Baltimore.” Wilcox, who previously worked for Everytown for Gun Safety, said Baltimore is “greatest success story, I think, in the country.” Nonfatal shootings also continue to drop precipitously in Charm City. So far this year, there have been 181 shootings where a person was injured, compared to 251 through the same period last year — about a 28% decrease, according to police records. That drop is larger than the one recorded in 2023, where the city saw about a 6% decrease in nonfatal shootings. There have actually been fewer than 71 people killed in the first five months of 2024; a Banner analysis of crime data posted on the city’s OpenBaltimore website shows 67 homicides over the same time period, though entries for two victims are missing in the the database. Police count homicides differently based on a number of factors, including when the death was ruled a homicide, and do not necessarily base the tally on when a crime takes place. Four victims in BPD’s total were harmed in previous years, but their deaths were ruled a homicide this year.