ABC News’ Byron Pitts, a Baltimore native, took a tour of his hometown’s poverty- and crime-stricken neighborhoods. He rode along with DEA Special Agent Todd Edwards who told him that Baltimore is like “Gotham City without Batman.” But of course, Batman is fiction anyway. What Pitts shows us instead are heroes of a different order.
We’re introduced to members of Safe Streets (which has faced difficulties lately), “violence interrupters” with the credibility necessary to defuse disputes between drug dealers before they turn into shootings. We see a church group organize “prayer walks” and act as something of a surrogate police presence, which Pastor Lisa Weah said has been scarce in the neighborhood since the death of Freddie Gray.
We also meet Sean Price, a college-educated Baltimore native who chose to stay in the city to do what he can to help. He told Pitts that he thinks that, rather than a superhero, what Baltimore needs are “a bunch of everyday people just rising to the occasion.” To that end, he has committed himself to mentoring young people in the neighborhood and is currently “in the process of becoming a police officer,” because he figured, “with everything going on now, like, why not me?”
Watch the ABC News story here.
