After a break for the holidays, we are thrilled to be back with this new issue of Baltimore Beat.
In this issue, we bring you a story from our partners at The Real News Network.
“Here We Go Again,” the second part of journalist and Baltimore Beat co-founder Brandon Soderberg’s deep dive into the last 30 years of Baltimore’s efforts to stop crime, bursts past the narratives that politicians and some journalists work so hard to create, and takes a hard look at what actually happened.
Co-written by Andrew Friedman, the piece stretches beyond city limits to explain how city leaders like then-Mayor Martin O’Malley and former Police Commissioner Ed Norris took inspiration from New York City’s zero-tolerance policing — and brought it here to Baltimore. The piece tracks the lives ruined by the failed policies and provides statistics that show what police did — and did not — accomplish.
“The policy was based on the New York Police Department’s “broken windows” approach to crime, which encouraged police to make arrests for smaller infractions. Broken windows proponents argued that a police department that did not engage in drastically reducing low-level offense ceded cities to disorder leading to more, sometimes serious, crime,” they write.
The piece gives context to the drop in crime Baltimore saw in 2023. It also gives us the tools we need to hold our leaders accountable.
“In the early 2000s, the city’s political and law enforcement establishments credited slight declines in violence to increased arrest policies under zero tolerance,” Soderberg and Friedman write. “But zero tolerance did not substantively reduce crime. Especially when accounting for the city’s population decline, its reductions were even less significant than police and politicians claimed.”
Also in this issue, Arts and Culture Editor Teri Henderson writes about a groundbreaking new exhibit at the Walters Art Museum, “Ethiopia at the Crossroads.” The exhibit features old and new pieces of Ethiopian art and culture. Henderson writes that it illustrates how everything we touch has roots in Africa and that Black culture spans the globe.
“It spans nearly 2,000 years, featuring 225 historical and contemporary artworks and objects. Some of the objects are from the museum’s collection of Ethiopian art, and others are loans from other institutions and lenders,” Henderson writes.
Film critic Dominic Griffin asks “what is a Black story?” in his review of Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction.” In the film, Black novelist Thelonius “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) struggles with the question of what it means to create Black art, especially in a world dominated by the white gaze.
We’re so glad to be back and with you in this new year. We hope you enjoy this issue.