Opinion | American Crime and the Baltimore Model – The New York Times

In 2014, there were 211 homicides in the city of Baltimore. The following year, there were 342, an astonishing increase of 62 percent. The murder rate has barely budged since.

What happened? On April 12, 2015, Freddie Gray sustained a fatal injury in the back of a police van. Peaceful protests and then violence ensued. A demoralized, under-resourced and sometimes corrupt police force stopped doing its job properly. Nearly 30,000 residents have since fled the city, whose population is now the lowest it s been in a century.

The story of Baltimore s unraveling was best told by the journalist Alec MacGillis in a searing account last year in The Times Magazine. It should be read again today, against a backdrop of sudden surges in crime that are mainly devastating minority communities. In New York, shootings during the first three weeks in June more than doubled over the same period last year. In Minneapolis, the homicide rate is double what it was this time last year.

via www.nytimes.com

My humble prediction is that the pandemic plus the BLM movement and ensuing protests, riots and so forth will lead to the permanent shrinking of US cities. Except for what brought this about, this is fine with me. I don’t really care for cities that much. I used to like them more, but now I’m old and cranky. I expect this trend will be hastened by President Biden. But who knows.