The City of Baltimore has continued to diminish the number of homicides it has and hitting the lowest number since 1975.
The first half of the year in the city saw 68 people killed by homicide. There were 165 nonfatal shootings, which was a 19% decrease from June of 2024, city police said.
“We have to institutionalize the efforts we know are making a difference so that we’re not just seeing one, two, or three years of reductions, but rather sustained decreases in violent crime for the foreseeable future,” Stefanie Mavronis, the director of the Mayor’s Office for Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE), told the Baltimore Banner.
MONSE is in charge of Baltimore’s Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan, which aims to reduce all gun violence by 15% a year in the city.
Despite the lower numbers, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott says the number of people killed was still much too high.
“Our work is far from over. 68 lives lost to violence is 68 too many,” Scott said in a statement. “While we acknowledge the historic lows we are experiencing, we must simultaneously acknowledge that there is much more work to do and our success makes me commit even further to doing it.”
The drop in homicides has done little to improve the public’s relationship with the police, who have had three people die while involved with interactions that involved Baltimore Police officers in June alone.
