By A.F. James MacArthur Ph.A.L.
It's been said that numbers don't lie. I'm inclined to believe that. But conversely,, people lie all the time, and they use numbers to do so. Just look at any of the Fortune 500 companies that overstated their profits. Can you say Enron?
Investigative Voice reports the city has thousands of deaths, with some being possible murders, but they remain unclassified, therefore off the books. How interesting, you guys found a clever way to artificially keep the numbers down. This year, besides the known murders, nearly 200 bodies were found already. Think maybe our actual count could be higher? Have we collectively become that naive to not know the smell of a rat when we smell one? Especially one that's been chewing through a rotting corpse?
Come on people! Everyone is under pressure to produce lower numbers, by any means necessary. If you can't solve murders, can't prevent and reduce them, how about simply not report them? Make them go away, as if nothing ever happened.
The sad state of journalism in this one newspaper town could not have been put on better display than today's Baltimore Sun. Right there in a big bold headline, we're told that crime is down. Seriously folks, are we really expected to buy into this crap? It should have said, CITIZEN REPORTING OF CRIME DECREASED.
When is the Sun going to do a story on how much crime in the city is never reported to the police? Will they do a follow up piece, on how much crime is told to police, who then refuse to actually file a report? If these lies were not involving life and death, maybe I wouldn't be so passionate. But damn it, quit lying to us already.
Baltimore is as violent as it's ever been. We have street gangs growing exponentially in power and strength, and our teeny little under manned, under funded gang unit has very little intelligence on the situation. The fact that the gangs work the entire geographic area without respect for jurisdictions is another story. Local police departments don't even talk to each other about criminals who make the rounds crossing jurisdictional borders.
If crime is truly in such a steep decline, tell me why the jails and prisons remain overcrowded? Enough already, tell us the truth Bealefeld, we can handle it. Mayor Dixon, you know better. We all want to see Baltimore improve and become more desirable to outside investors, tourism and potential new residents. Being dishonest and playing games with the numbers is not the way to Achieve this, or maybe it is....
You guys may be onto something. Just look at Chicago and New Orleans. Two of the most known corrupt cities in the country, and both get 10 times more tourism than Baltimore. I think I get it now. Ingenious! Let's sink deeper into the foul putrefaction of collective dissolution, it just may bring us great dividends in return.
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