It started with mass mayhem, a mob scene and a shooting in Towson early Sunday morning. A broad daylight shooting on Pennsylvania Avenue hours later. Followed up by a murder on Chesterfield Ave in East Baltimore that very night. That's three crime scenes in one day.
Wednesday morning was a man found dead (also murder) on Old York Road, leading up to a double shooting, including a four-year-old boy that night in Waverly. Each of these events found me live-on-scene, reporting via twitter, updating several thousand readers with the latest news of crime and grime on the gritty streets of Charm City.
The incident in Towson was actually broken by me on twitter. Besides myself, there were no reporters ever on scene, at what would become one of the bigger local crime stories of the week. It's not uncommon for me to be first on location or first with the news.
The sheer volume of crime and violence that's taken place in my immediate vicinity all throughout this city is staggering. Whether I'm simply driving down the street and come upon a scene just begging to unfold, or out for a walk and hear sporadic gunfire nearby, people who've followed me over the years know I simply have a nose for the news.
In most cities this would be an eventful week for the average newspaper reporter, but for this reTIRED crime correspondent, it was just a small sample of how hectic things get covering the breaking news crime beat in Baltimore.
To be honest, this has been more or less an average week. Folks in Baltimore have grown so used to a high level of violence, that what seems horrific and terrifying to people living in other places, is now quite routine and normal in Baltimore. In this city, the crime truly never stops and the violence knows no bounds.
The News Comes To Me
People unfamiliar with my crime reporting exploits could be forgiven for thinking I'm some sort of police scanner addicted, always on the go news hound, but the truth is somewhat different. More often than not, minding my own business, I suddenly find myself at the scene of the crime. Might sound unbelievable to some, but I promise you it really does happen that way. At first I had trouble coming to grips with it, but I've learned to accept and embrace it.
The sheer volume of crime and violence that's taken place in my immediate vicinity all throughout this city is staggering. Whether I'm simply driving down the street and come upon a scene just begging to unfold, or out for a walk and hear sporadic gunfire nearby, people who've followed me over the years know I simply have a nose for the news.
It should be made clear, while this week has found me at a number of incidents, I'm still technically retired, so there should be no expectations that this is some sort of return or comeback and that this will continue. No longer a staff writer at a news website, or crew member at a radio station, I'm simply a man with a smartphone, lurking in the shadows. The one, the only, Baltimore Spectator.