Time to stop Fear City's bloodletting

Gregory Kane of the Baltimore Sun highlights the problem and offers some solutions. The murder rate in Baltimore is one of the highest in the nation. Interesting to look at the top cities in the U.S. with the highest murder rates...all Democratic machine controlled. Someday, someone will do the math and vote the machine out of business.//JW sends.

SO, IN LESS than eight hours, on one horrific day in the life of Fear City, five people met their ends at the hands of those wielding firearms.

The carnage started around 6 a.m. Thursday, which isn't even the crack of dawn in these parts at this time of the year. A man and woman were found inside a house. Both were shot in the head. Less than two hours later, another woman was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head.

It wasn't even noon when police went to the 2100 block of Aiken St. and found 56-year-old Willie Covington dead of a gunshot wound to the back. Shortly before 2 p.m., a woman was found with a fatal gunshot wound to the head in the 5700 block of Chinquapin Parkway.

The first four victims were killed in East Baltimore, the last in Northeast Baltimore. But the bottom line is that all five died in Fear City, where criminals who should be in prison roam the streets and kill, it seems, for the sheer hell of it.

That assertion goes against the assessment of acting police Commissioner Leonard Hamm, who, along with many others, has my utmost respect. But I'm not with him in his claim that the upsurge in Baltimore homicides - 26 so far this year - is the result of the department's turning up the heat on drug dealers, which forces them to be more aggressive and murderous in collecting drug debts.