The mayor of Baltimore announced his intention to enact a 9 p.m. curfew for people 14 years old and younger after a shooting that wounded two teens the night of April 9.
When police tried to stop the fights, a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old were shot. One of them was in critical condition, and the other was in stable condition as of Monday, WBAL reported.
Two suspects were arrested, police said, including one with a loaded gun who matched a description of the shooter and another who was suspected of having a weapon in a police garage, WBAL reported.
“I want everyone to hear me and hear me clearly,” Scott said. “We are going back to the old days. We will be enforcing a youth curfew as we move into the latter spring and summer months.”
Scott said he has seen young children away from their homes at night too often.
“It’s not just about making sure we are getting them off the street, but making sure that we are supporting them and figuring out what’s going on with them and their families,” Scott said. “It is not normal for [a] person to be that far away from their home and no one knows where they are or cares for them.”
There were more than 31,000 incidents of violent and property crime in Baltimore from April 2022 until April 2023, according to police data. The most common were larceny and aggravated assault.
The overall crime rate was 16.5 violent crimes for every 1,000 Americans ages 12 and older, which is similar to the year 2021 and far below the levels seen in the 1990s, according to the Pew Research Center.
However, the most serious form of violent crime, murder, was found to have significantly risen during the pandemic. The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported about a 30 percent increase in the murder rate between 2019 and 2020, one of the largest year-over-year increases ever recorded.
