Baltimore's Annual Homicide Count Surpasses 300 for the First Time in 16 Years

The city’s 2015 homicide rate currently sits at 47 per 100,000 people.

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Complex Original

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Following Saturday’s fatal stabbing of a 27-year-old man and the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old man in Baltimore, the city’s annual homicide count surpassed 300 for the first time in 16 years. "Unless we come together as an entire community we are just going to continue to watch this happen," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake tells the Baltimore Sun. "It weighs on my mind every waking minute and it weighs on my mind when I’m asleep." In addition to passing 300 homicides in a single year for the first time since 1999, Baltimore’s 2015 will also go down as the city's deadliest year on a per-capita basis.

"Baltimore city is just out of control with respect to the murder rate," Governor Larry Hogan said during a recent WBAL interview, adding that he considered the spike in violence "atrocious." Sadly, the further these numbers are crunched, the more dire the situation in Baltimore starts to seem. According to theSun, the city’s 2015 homicide rate currently sits at 47 per 100,000 people. The total number of reported shootings is also up "nearly 80 percent" compared to the same period last year.

Baltimore is currently preparing for the first of six trials for the police officers charged in the arrest and subsequent death of Freddie Gray, a startling case of police brutality that inspired a wave of protests and potentially policy-altering discussion all across the nation. As previously reported, the Department of Justice is also currently conducting an investigation into allegations of police brutality and other potential abuses of power within the Baltimore Police Department.

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