Baltimore, Look What You Made Me Do

A few days after expressing my desire to dispel the myth that Baltimore was a post-apocalyptic Mad-Max deathtrap, we had to go and exceed last years murder rate. By this time last year there had been 105 homicides, while this year we're up to 116. City officials are so scared, they briefly considered making U.S. history, and not the good kind. Fortunately, our legislators had the good sense to outright reject the proposal, and I applaud them for avoiding what would have been a Constitutional substantive rights disaster... the media's favorite kind.

Does this mean I'm moving out of the city and going to school in North Dakota? No, I still maintain that Baltimore is safe if you know what you're doing. I love Baltimore, it's just not the most user-friendly city there ever was. There's a bit of a steep learning curve, and unfortunately you don't get a lot of opportunities to make mistakes. For those of you moving to Mobtown in the near future, I'd suggest palling up to someone who has lived her for awhile. Learn which neighborhoods are safe, and which neighborhoods are safe enough to travel through to get to the safe neighborhoods. As you can see from this 2007 murdermap, Baltimore has a definite clustering effect going on:

It makes the city look like a dartboard where whoever's tossing seems to be unable to hit the bullseye, doesn't it? I wonder why that is? Anyway, if you want to play with the murdermap yourself, you can check it out here. Until then, UMD Law class of 2010, check this map out; it's a zoomed in view of the area around our campus:

Are you feeling safe, yet? Until next time... stay to the right of MLK Blvd.