The Safe Streets Belvedere area has gone more than a year without a homicide.
Elected officials and community members gathered to celebrate the milestone of 365 days homicide-free in this Safe Streets catchment area, though officials noted that by Monday that period had extended into 379 days.
Leaders applauded the achievement while also acknowledging the work is far from over to make it a reality citywide.
“We know how much work we have done, but we also know how much work remains for us to do,” Mayor Brandon Scott said at a news conference Monday. “It’s not good enough for any of us up here that we have the lowest ever, because we all want to get to zero.”
The moment comes as Baltimore continues to see a dramatic decline in homicides. After eight straight years of more than 300 homicides from 2015 through 2022, the city has since stayed below that mark for the past three years and is on track to experience another record low this year.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that the Safe Streets program has been a major driver of that reduction.
The success is due to Safe Streets being a community-led effort, Scott said.
“We didn’t need federal troops descending on Baltimore City. We didn’t need all the gimmicks,” he said, alluding to President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard into the streets of Washington, D.C. The president has threatened a similar imposition on Baltimore, which Scott has previously called “political theater.”
“We just needed a plan for Baltimoreans by Baltimoreans to be implemented with Baltimoreans, and you can see that has happened each and every day,” Scott said Monday.
Over the past 379 days, the Safe Streets Belvedere team has facilitated more than 120 successful mediations, said Stefanie Mavronis, director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement.
“It is the result of real work being done on the ground by people who care about their community, who put their lives in harm’s way to mediate potentially violent conflict, and who show up every day to build a better, safer future for Baltimore,” Mavronis said.
Mavronis attributed the success to Safe Street workers efforts “to promote peace and safety, and the ability to move in spaces that we in city government or those in law enforcement simply cannot. It’s working side by side with the community to co-produce public safety. Those who do not believe in Safe Streets can say whatever they want, but the work speaks for itself.”
Pastor Troy Randall has seen tangible proof of safer streets in the Belvedere area.
“I can walk up the street without any problems,” he said. “I have seniors that can sit on the porch again and converse with each other and share recipes. I have children getting on my nerves, playing in the middle of the street, throwing the ball. But guess what? They feel safe.”
Adam Rosenberg is the Vice President of Violence Prevention and Intervention at LifeBridge Health, which counts among its facilities Sinai Hospital that serves the Belvedere community.
Rosenberg said he wants to see more generations of Baltimoreans born at Sinai and fewer coming into the emergency room, especially for gun violence.
Toward that goal, Rosenberg said there has been a 52 percent reduction in gunshot wound admissions at Sinai Hospital.
He added their Hospital Violence Intervention Team that of the 946 people who presented bedside with a gunshot or a gun-related injury last year, none came back as a victim of gun violence.
LifeBridge Health has been distributing free gun locks to community members in order to ensure households secure their firearms responsibly.
“One of the reasons we got into this business of working with Safe Streets and preventing firearm deaths is that guns became the No. 1 killer of kids in America, and we agreed they shouldn’t be. And there are currently 8 million children in America living in a house right now with an unsecured firearm. Our teams at Sinai Hospital saw too many kids over this last year who died of an accidental discharge…. This gun lock prevents it from happening.”
