#baltimore news

[wookieonendor]

Baltimore Wine Village comes back to the Inner Harbor!

[rinsedream]

[pancake-loving-pandemi]

[maureen2musings]

Ray Hennessy

[reasonsforhope]

Double dose of articles about how crime is actually plummeting

From the UK:

"Seventy-eight per cent of people in England and Wales think that crime has gone up in the last few years, according to the latest survey. But the data on actual crime shows the exact opposite.

As of 2024, violence, burglary and car crime have been declining for 30 years and by close to 90%, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) – our best indicator of true crime levels. Unlike police data, the CSEW is not subject to variations in reporting and recording.

The drop in violence includes domestic violence and other violence against women. Anti-social behaviour has similarly declined. While increased fraud and computer misuse now make up half of crime, this mainly reflects how far the rates of other crimes have fallen.

All high-income countries have experienced similar trends, and there is scientific consensus that the decline in crime is a real phenomenon.

The perception gap

So why is there such a gulf between public perception and the reality of crime trends? A regular YouGov poll asks respondents for their top three concerns from a broad set of issues. Concern about crime went from a low in 2016 (when people were more concerned with Brexit), quadrupled by 2019 and plummeted during the pandemic when people had other worries. But in the last year, the public’s concern about crime has risen again.

There are many possible explanations for this, of which the first is poor information. A study published in 1998 found that “people who watch a lot of television or who read a lot of newspapers will be exposed to a steady diet of crime stories” that does not reflect official statistics.

The old news media adage “if it bleeds, it leads” reflects how violent news stories, including crime increases and serious crimes, capture public attention. Knife crime grabs headlines in the UK, but our shock at individual incidents is testament to their rarity and our relative success in controlling violence – many gun crimes do not make the news in the US.

Most recent terrorist attacks in the UK have featured knives (plus a thwarted Liverpool bomber), but there is little discussion of how this indicates that measures to restrict guns and bomb-making resources are effective."

-via The Conversation, May 13, 2024

And the United States:

"[The United States experienced a spike in crime rates in 2020, during the pandemic.] But in 2023, crime in America looked very different.

"At some point in 2022 — at the end of 2022 or through 2023 — there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall," said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.

In cities big and small, from both coasts, violence has dropped.

"The national picture shows that murder is falling. We have data from over 200 cities showing a 12.2% decline ... in 2023 relative to 2022," Asher said, citing his own analysis of public data. He found instances of rape, robbery and aggravated assault were all down too.

Yet when you ask people about crime in the country, the perception is it's getting a lot worse.

A Gallup poll released in November found 77% of Americans believed there was more crime in the country than the year before. And 63% felt there was either a "very" or "extremely" serious crime problem — the highest in the poll's history going back to 2000.

So what's going on?

What the cities are seeing

What you see depends a lot on what you're looking at, according to Asher.

"There's never been a news story that said, 'There were no robberies yesterday, nobody really shoplifted at Walgreens,'" he said.

"Especially with murder, there's no doubt that it is falling at [a] really fast pace right now. And the only way that I find to discuss it with people is to talk about what the data says." ...

For cities like San Francisco, Baltimore and Minneapolis, there may be different factors at play [in crime declining]. And in some instances, it comes as the number of police officers declines too.

Baltimore police are chronically short of their recruitment goal, and as of last September had more than 750 vacant positions, according to a state audit report...

In Minneapolis, police staffing has plummeted. According to the Star Tribune, there are about 560 active officers — down from nearly 900 in 2019. Mannix said the 2020 police killing of George Floyd resulted in an unprecedented exodus from the department...

In Minneapolis, the city is putting more financial resources into nontraditional policing initiatives. The Department of Neighborhood Safety, which addresses violence through a public health lens, received $22 million in the 2024 budget."

-via NPR, February 12, 2024

[petersong3]

Baseball time...⚾️🍟

Tiempo de béisbol...⚾🍟

#MLB #ArizonaDiamondbacks #AtlantaBraves #BaltimoreOrioles #BostonRedSox #ChicagoCubs #ChicagoWhiteSox #CincinnatiReds #ClevelandGuardians #ColoradoRockies #DetroitTigers #HoustonAstros #KansasCityRoyals

#LosAngelesAngels #LosAngelesDodgers #MiamiMarlins #MilwaukeeBrewers #MinnesotaTwins #NewYorkMets #NewYorkYankees #OaklandAthletics

#PhiladelphiaPhillies #PittsburghPirates #SanDiegoPadres #SanFranciscoGiants #SeattleMariners #StLouisCardinals #TampaBayRays #TexasRangers TorontoBlueJays #WashingtonNationals

[reality-detective]

An alternate angle on the Francis Scott Key Bridge shows what appears to be a large explosion, which you can see 👀 from the other angles I posted. Something reeks like a possible Black Swan Event?

Does it seem like a barge bumping into a pillar would cause the whole bridge to collapse? 🤔

[mysharona1987]

[blueskittlesart]

CLASSES CANCELLED TOMORROW <3 <3 <3 I FUCKING LOVE MARYLAND'S PUSSY ASS REACTION TO SNOW I AM NEVER LEAVING THIS STATE

[petersong2]

Baseball time...⚾️🍟

Tiempo de béisbol...

#MLB #MilwaukeeBrewers #ChicagoCubs #BaltimoreOrioles #CincinnatiReds #ColoradoRockies #PittsburghPirates #SanFranciscoGiants #PhiladelphiaPhillies #WashingtonNationals #LosAngelesDodgers #NewYorkMets #TampaBayRays #DetroitTigers #NewYorkYankees #LosAngelesAngels #ClevelandGuardians #TexasRangers #KansasCityRoyals #SeattleMariners #HoustonAstros #BostonRedSox #MinnesotaTwins #ChicagoWhiteSox #StLouisCardinals #SanDiegoPadres #ArizonaDiamondbacks #MiamiMarlins #OaklandAthletics #AtlantaBraves #TorontoBlueJays

[transit-fag]

a win for baltimore rail transit!

screenshot from The Baltimore Banner website

Oh wow, that's really good!!!

[podartists]

Icterus galbula | Tyrannus tyrannus | Icterus spurius

Plate XXX | Die Nordamerikanische Vogelwelt (1891)

[pancake-loving-pandemi]

BARCS - Medical Care Fund

[destiel-news-network]

On the third anniversary of the Suez Canal incident, no less.

(Source)

[reasonsforhope]

"Three years ago, Araba Maze was reading a book to her niece on the front stoop of her Baltimore home in a perfectly ordinary fashion.

But as the pages turned, the number of local children gathered around for “stoop storytime” increased until Maze had to take notice. ‘What are they doing?’ she thought.

When she had finished reading to them, they asked her to read another. “Go home and read,” she said. “We don’t have any books,” they replied.

Little did she know, but those fateful minutes of reading time launched Maze’s career as a librarian and influencer who champions a cause of getting books into the hands of urban children with no access to libraries.

Now known as Storybook Maze, she started work at the nearest library, which wasn’t that near since her neighborhood is one of the worst ‘book deserts’ in Baltimore. Using her training, she began to curate collections of books and get them into the hands of children using three creative methods.

The first is a free book vending machine. Using her extreme popularity on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, she gathered funds to install a book vending machine for kids on the street in 2023. Through her efforts in opening pop-up bookstores, she’s distributed over 7,000 books to children.

Throughout the process, she routinely hosted more ‘stoop storytimes’ where she would read to children throughout the city, driving publicity through her social media channels.

Now, Storybook Maze is attempting her largest project yet—a book trolley. With the goal of raising $100,000 on GoFundMe, she hopes to have a colorful children’s train that will toot-toot its way through the book deserts of Baltimore, providing as many books as can fit in the carriage cars.

“This book haven on wheels aims to break down barriers and provide access to books that traditional libraries can’t reach,” Maze writes. “As the wheels of the Book Trolley turn, so do the pages of countless stories waiting to be discovered.”"

-via Good News Network, May 8, 2024 (GoFundMe is still running as of now! $30k/$100k!)

-video via StoryBookMaze, November 10, 2023

[exmanifest]

Psst! Here! An unhinged little Soren and Fennel doodle. For the new year. For good luck. (P.S. don’t think too hard about why Fennel is missing an arm. I noticed it on the original template and thought it was funny enough to leave in.)