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Nobody knows my name

This time last week I was blacked out which is a crazy thing to say because all it means is: to turn off all electronics. I’m making a small exception for the screens of my phone because I have a lot of writing to do and I want to get a few things done before the next week begins.

אף אחד לא יודע

אף אחד לא יודע שמי

Nobody knows

Nobody knows my name

Nobody knows my name is Daquan Tyrell Pean

The Democratic Party was founded on January 8, 1828 in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Historically Baltimore’s level of violent crime is much higher than the national average. Homicides initially peaked in the early 1970s when the city, like many others in the nation, saw an influx in cheap heroin from Mexico and elsewhere. These numbers declined slowly in the next seven years before increasing again with the advent of crack cocaine.

In 2009, a total of 1,318,398 violent crimes were reported nationwide across the United States, equivalent to a rate of 0.4 incidents per 100 people. 

In 2011, the Baltimore Police Department reported 196 killings, marking the first time the city had fewer than 200 killings since 1978. That number is far lower than the peak homicide count of 353 in 1993. 

Incidentally, I joined the Republican Party in 2011.

The drop in 2011 was significant, when measured by the number of homicides, but the homicide rate was in the same range as the late 1980s, when Baltimore’s population was 130,000 higher.

Baltimore’s decline in the murder rate was short-lived, with 219 and 235 homicides in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Baltimore’s jump in homicides in 2013 defied regional and national trends. Following the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015, the city experienced civil unrest for 17 days with widespread violence, arson, and looting.

On July 10, 2015, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake fired Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, saying his presence had become a distraction in a city that needs to focus on ending a dramatic spike in homicides.

The city took steps to quell the increased violence by seeking assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies, including embedding FBI agents in the city’s police homicide unit.

Baltimore had seen 211 murders as of August 19, 2015, which equaled the total number of murders that occurred in Baltimore in all of 2014.

On November 13, 2015, the number of murders for the year reached, and the next day surpassed, 300 for the first time since 1999.

In total Baltimore recorded 344 homicides in 2015, at that time a number second only to the 353 homicides recorded in 1993 when the population was 100,000 higher. 

At the time, this was the highest murder rate on a per capita basis ever recorded.