Residents are simply afraid

tims are now more likely to die. Gun violence in Baltimore — and in cities across the nation — is concentrated in poor, predominantly black areas. In the past five years, according to a Sun analysis, 80 percent of homicides by shooting were committed in about onequarter of Baltimore’s neighborhoods.

Residents of a few select neighborhoods are condemned to endure a shocking degree of violence. As in Coldstream Homestead Montebello, some neighborhoods saw shooting victims die at a higher rate than the citywide average of one death for every three shootings.

And that’s in a city that ranks as one of the most lethal in America.

The years have brought a devastating and under-recognized shift in Baltimore. Criminals are increasingly aiming for the head and shooting victims repeatedly, often at close range, using higher-caliber guns with extended magazines that enable them to fire more bullets. It’s a new degree of ruthlessness that’s shocking veteran police detectives and making it tough for trauma surgeons to keep up.

The odds for gunshot victims got worse in at least 10 of the nation’s largest cities last year — an overlooked trend behind a surge in shootings and homicides in urban areas around the country, The Sun found. The violence is often confined to certain impoverished areas, such as southeast Washington D.C., Chicago’s south side and the north side in Milwaukee.

Colter, police and criminologists see a potent mix of forces at play — here and across the country.

Retaliatory shootings play out over years — not only among rival gang members but among families and friends. The no-snitching ethos is well-established and systematically enforced. The relationship between some communities and the police has fractured, leaving police with fewer clues to solve crimes and parents desperate to try to solve homicide cases. Children grow up exposed to violence, becoming more likely to commit violence.

“It’s just a culture that they’re in,” said Daphne Alston, co-founder of Mothers of Murdered Sons and Daughters United. She said killers aren’t born, but shaped by their circumstances.

“Poverty went into their gun, homelessness, bad parents, bad schools, bad communities, bad church, everything went into those guns — everything that they’re not getting goes into those guns, and that’s what they shoot,” Alston said.

But many residents believe gun violence defines the city more than it should, pointing to multibillion-dollar waterfront developments, national attractions and major league sports teams. Over the past five years, in one-third of the city’s 280 neighborhoods, including many of the wealthiest areas, not a single person died in a shooting.

Still, the power brokers, from police to politicians, know the high homicide rate threatens economic vitality and efforts to draw new residents. And they are scrambling to stop it.

In the violence-torn neighborhoods, many residents are simply afraid. Sometimes they are too frightened, or too accustomed to the sound of gunshots to call 911. In a few cases, shooting victims lay in the street all night until someone stumbled upon the body the next day.

Some seek comfort in a growing number of ministers who focus on helping residents heal. Over and over, Colter finds distraught people looking to

Colter felt he was able to provide a little peace to Harper’s mother, who had cancer and would follow her son to the grave within a few weeks. At the memorial service, Colter told Harper’s mother that he sensed her son, who had a criminal record, wanted redemption just before he passed away.

No one has been arrested in the deaths of Miller or Harper, and police don’t know the motives. Colter knows many people are without closure. The Unitarian minister often recites an old prayer with those who have lost someone to violence: “Thou who are known by many names ... thou who are known and expressed in many ways, it’s to thee we come . ... Our request is to make yourself known to us in this hour.”

He always prays for one revelation: an understanding why so many are gunned down.

The same question that haunts Baltimore.

Neighborhood violence

Overlooking Lake Montebello and a golf course, Colter’s neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore once ranked as one of the city’s wealthiest. In the 1800s, William Patterson — whose name is on the Southeast Baltimore park — entertained friends with champagne and strawberries on his lush lawn.

In the next century, the city became the first in the nation to pass a law establishing segregation block-by-block. After legal segregation was abolished, unscrupulous real estate agents convinced white residents to sell low by stoking racist fears. African-Americans, limited in where they could live, bought Coldstream Homestead Montebello homes at a markup. Since then, the enclave for working-class black residents has seen a slow decline and a shift to more subsidized housing.

Today, the area known as CHuM looks like any of Baltimore’s progress-stalled communities where boarded-up vacant homes sit next to rowhouses with neatly kept postage-stamp yards and blooming flower beds.

Mark Washington, executive director of the community association, said partnerships with residents, police and city officials have helped make improvements, such as exercise equipment along Lake Montebello and a new picnic pavilion to replace one that burned down. He pointed to one corner where drug dealers were evicted and a store that attracted loiterers was shut down.

But Washington and others are not blind to the gun violence in the neighborhood.

On one block since May of last year, a man and a woman were fatally shot multiple times. An 18-year-old was shot in the head. Another man was shot in the arm and buttocks but survived.

On Colter’s own block, police charged a 23-year-old resident with murder in 2014. A bullet grazed a 16-year-old girl last year, and in August detectives arrested a 26-year-old resident in a homicide.

“They are up-close shootings,” Colter said. “If they’re driving by, they’re going to jump out and come up and storm your porch or your house, and if you run, they’re going to chase you down.”

Remembering the cries of a man stabbed to death several homes away at midnight a decade ago, Colter sighed. “Oh mercy,” he said, “I call them death screams.”

Other Baltimore neighborhoods also witness a disproportionate level of gun