Pubdate: Wed, 26 Dec 2007
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2007 The Baltimore Sun Company
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Carl Hyman

FEW CITY DWELLERS FACE MURDER DANGER

Now that the city of Baltimore has exceeded last year's murder tally, 
it is time for The Sun and others to admit that aside from the 
relatively few innocent victims caught in the crossfire, the vast 
majority of murders in this city are drug-related, and that the 
murders are a symptom of a largely unaddressed metropolitan health 
problem known as addiction ("277th killing in '07 is grim milestone," 
Dec. 21). In the meantime, the majority of city residents go about 
their business in productive, drug-free neighborhoods and are not 
really impacted by this spike in violence.

It is a gross distortion, a fraud and a copout for the media to 
continually sell newspapers by scaring their largely suburban public 
by implying that the average Joe is subject to random killing by just 
being within the Baltimore's city limits.

There is nothing random about this killing spree, and the impact of 
such articles is bad for commerce, bad for neighborhoods and bad for 
the image of the entire region.

Carl Hyman Baltimore

The writer is a former president of the Tuscany-Canterbury 
Neighborhood Association.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom