Dan Rodricks: Can you blame a mall for a shooting?

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The people who attacked Baltimore City Councilman Kristerfer Burnett after the shooting in the village of Edmondson on Wednesday morning might not know it, but he has been pushing to invest in this former mall for several years. Before and after the 2015 Freddie Gray uprising and unrest, Burnett was a community organizer who tried to convince the owner to clean up the place and make improvements.

Burnett has served on the city council for six years now, and Baltimore has recorded more than 300 homicides each of those years. So when gunfire broke out among high school students outside a fast food restaurant in the village of Edmondson, some residents, including a man who ran unsuccessfully for city council in 2016 (getting just 661 votes), Burnett lamented the lack of progress. And the councilor and the guy got into a scuffle that the police broke up.

The suggestion, both from Burnett and his critics, is that conditions in the mall contribute to the problems there. Mayor Brandon Scott suggested the same thing: that careless ownership fosters and respects a harsh environment.

Ever since I’ve been alive, the Edmondson Village mall has been a hot spot, Scott said. This community deserves better than that. It deserves better than a mall that doesn’t seem to care from an investment point of view.

Some might think it strange or deviant for officials to refer to conditions at a mall following a mass shooting when those who pulled the trigger are solely responsible for the death of a 16-year-old boy and the injury of four other students.

And yet, this part of the conditions is not far-fetched. The conditions of a place, physical and behavioral, are important.

Before I continue, a pause for a personal note: I hear people expressing dismay that the five Baltimore high school kids were gunned down on the fourth day of the new year, as if the arrival of the new year promised a armistice in the city. turf wars with guns. Sorry if this sounds discouraged, but I see no short-term response to this relentless, random, retaliatory violence. The police are doing what they can, confiscating guns every day, but they can’t keep up. There are too many guns, and too many foolish or angry boys and young men with guns. Baltimore is a violent city in a violent country with far more guns than people.

Specifically, Baltimore is made up of two cities, one where people live comfortably and enjoy an urban lifestyle, where investors continue to develop and redevelop properties at an impressive rate, and another where the last year there were 333 homicides and 699 non-fatal shootings.

Over time, I find it increasingly difficult to comment on the violence, let alone suggest solutions. We have come to a place where firearms, legal or illegal, have become the handy tools for settling scores, answering insults, defeating rivals, getting revenge, or fulfilling violent fantasies and hatreds. That doesn’t even include the use of firearms in suicides.

Again, sorry if this sounds discouraged, but all the boasting of American exceptionalism is turned into a joke when you look at the level of gun violence in this country and the unwillingness to do anything about the massive amount of weapons fire.

Now back to our regular column.

Certain properties are, in fact, associated with delinquency. Using the city’s padlock law a few years ago, police shut down a southwestern Baltimore gas station linked to 16 mostly violent crimes over two years, including two homicides. Residents of northeast Baltimore recently called for the closure of a gas station in the smartly redeveloped Northwood Commons mall after a 56-year-old man was fatally shot there. Baltimore police have scheduled a public nuisance hearing on the gas station for Jan. 25.

The problem in Edmondson Village is different. It’s not about shutting down a particular business. It’s about lack of investment and care. Burnett has been working there for nearly a decade, and his hopes now pin on the mall’s impending sale to a Chicago developer, Lyneir Richardson, known for turning them around.

I note that shortly after Wednesday’s shooting was reported, Governor Larry Hogan tweeted that our hearts go out to the families of the victims of this senseless violence.

I also note that Hogan is the man who, during his first term, ended a major project that could have made a big difference to this day, sparking a rejuvenation of the Village of Edmondson and other neighborhoods in west, creating thousands of jobs and spurring the kind of economic development that crowds out crime and filth.

Shortly after the Freddie Gray Troubles, when Baltimore badly needed a boost, Hogan killed the west-east Red Line light rail system that had been planned for a decade. He returned $900 million in federal funding to Washington and transferred $736 million of state money to road projects in suburban and rural counties. He then frequently blamed city officials for not doing enough to stop the violence here.

So while it is good that he expresses his sympathy to the families of the Edmondson village shooting victims, Hogan does not escape responsibility for the conditions there. Killing the red line and the opportunities it would have created along his path now that that decision is part of Hogan’s legacy, and eight tough years in Baltimore later, looks as bad as the day he did. took.

Baltimore Sun 2023. Visit baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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