Hermann does the math so you don't have to: 80 percent of 2011's murder victims had criminal records, as 90 percent of those arrested for murder. I wonder if the trend holds from a few years back in which victims had been arrested more times, on average, than alleged perps.
2012's first shooting victim is 13*
Bernstein to organize prosecutor's caseloads into geographic "zones"*, as opposed to by crime category. Sensible solution, or deck chairs?
A case to watch: MD being sued over racial disparities in school funding
Dickeyville tire-slasher arrested
Er, whut? The city sheriff is going to start seizing the Housing Authority's stuff to pay for the lead paint judgement against them
8 comments:
O.K., so the state and the City have been fairly successful ( on a percentage basis) in reigning in the Jesse James types who have been off the chain with in-your-face criminality.
But crime affecting non-Dillingers is pretty stable, or going up.
So,.. aren't we making Baltimore a better, safer place in which to be a felon and drugdealer?
The purpose of intercriminal violence is business, not pleasure. The objective is to discourage competing sources of CDS. If you lower the violence, you both increase competition at the retail level and suppress the retail price, promoting greater consumption.
Consider the market for heroin, Charm City's drug of choice:
Heroin, which in Baltimore is of higher than average purity, wholesaled in 1984 for $289 in the U.S.. By 1992 that was down to $150, with a 100% retail markup to $300.
By 1996, this had dwindled to a wholesale price of $145 and a retail markup to $210, about 50% profit.
The wholesale price dropped over the next few years to a relative low of $50 a gram in 2002, firming up a bit thereafter as the Afghan invasion cut into physical supply.
Since then, retail has fallen from around $170 to about $130, while wholesale has remained constant and is thought to be dropping a bit in the future as Afghan supplies increase.
(note: all dollar number are inflation adjusted, hence directly comparable.)
Now, Baltimore retail prices are generally lower than the above average for major U.S. centers. If Baltimore streetcorner hoods charge under $125 for a product costing $60, that's less than the markup at Bloomingdale's on lawful goods.
The more successful we are at making the streets safe from interdealer violence, the lower the markup and the cheaper the smack. Thus, the greater is the total unit consumption.
In this respect, that's not a good thing.
Additionally, if we singlemindedly pursue reductions in the interdealer/intercriminal violence, have we really improved the quality of life for the (more or less) law-abiding ???
That is, how many burglaries/robberies go underattended by police because of our focus on gun violence between hoods? Those numbers went up even as gun violence came down.
If sworn officers are going to have to babysit Baltimore's largest cottage industry, the City probably needs to hire a lot more of them if it wants the quality of (noncriminal) life to ever catch up to the rest of the country.
Until then, it's a really nasty place to live in which financially supports small-scale criminality.
- Galt
How are you so sure that heroin is the top selling drug in Baltimore?
I had a long talk with a street dealer a few days ago. He was selling Ready Rock, pain pills and Ecstasy. He wasn't all that interested in heroin. The local drug market is diversifying, and it is also migrating to its client base where the clients reside, and that is not in West Baltimore any more. The client base is migrating to the edge of Baltimore, into Baltimore County and Harford.
If we're going to get nit-picky, I'm fairly certain marijuana is the drug of choice in Baltimore..
As for what Cham said regarding the street dealer she talked to, it sounds more likely that he was simply a dealer who pursued non-city bound clients, who's drug of choice tends to be ecstasy and pills. I think we can still agree that it's abundantly clear that heroine is still the drug of choice in the city.
I would have to think that if you pooled all of Baltimore City's drug dealers, it would be agreed that heroine is still king. But don't be surprised if prescription pills start becoming a more common substitute in the city, like they have in places like Baltimore County and other areas.
Heroine? First you'd have to learn to spell the drug's name before calling it king in Baltimore.
I have no evidence for this, but my guess is 1. alcohol 2. marijuana 3. prescription drugs 4. ready rock 5. heroin.
Here's a "Pro Tip" for MJ.
When you write a title in quotes like "Hermann: 80 % of perps had it coming", you are improperly suggesting the _Hermann_ believes that these people deserved death. You are putting words in his mouth. That's not cool.
You should rephrase the title to indicate that YOU THINK the preps "had it coming".
I THINK most people who don't have Aspergers can _discern_ "that" is not _literally_ what "he" SAID
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