Tag: #murder

Aside

Back in 2017, I received a message from one of the automated bots I’ve deployed to the web to look for information for me to consume. As I was working on my doctoral dissertation on homicides in Baltimore, one bot reported that a firebombing had occurred in Baltimore, killing two teens.

The main suspect in that firebombing (and a shooting at the same location a few days before that) was Mr. Antonio Wright, a 27 year-old Black man. After being named “Baltimore’s Public Enemy Number One,” Mr. Wright turned himself in to the authorities. Throughout his arrest and trial, he continued to assert that he was innocent.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Wright was found not guilty on all counts. Because of his background and this incident, Mr. Wright was advised by his lawyer to move out of the area, start anew somewhere else:

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The sad story of Mr. Greene

 in Blog

Back in 2016, Robert Ponsi was bicycling through a neighborhood in Baltimore when he was suddenly attacked by a group of teenagers. From WBAL: “Robert Ponsi was found with multiple stab wounds at Venable Avenue and Old York Road around 9:10 p.m., police said. He was pronounced dead at 3:51 a.m. at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Homicide detectives said someone was…

Epidemic Curves and Homicide Counts in Baltimore

 in Blog

One of the tools that we use in the investigation of outbreaks is the epidemic curve, or, as we say in the biz, the “epi curve.” An epidemic curve is a simple graphical representation of the number of cases per a unit of time over a span of time. For example, you could graph the number of new cases of diarrhea…

Is Prison a Protective Factor for Homicide Victimization?

 in Blog

As I’ve been working on my doctoral dissertation, I’ve come across a few interesting homicide cases in Baltimore. They’re interested in that the victims had a chance to avoid being at the place and time when they were killed. They had that chance because of their own criminal activity. In essence, they should have been jailed but were not. Kinlaw…

“Je suis français” and everything that comes with that

 in Blog

Like so many people out there, I am horrified at the events that transpired on November 13 in Paris. Only people who are completely devoid of any kind of feeling would not feel something. I was listening to the Germany-France soccer game on the radio when the bombs went off and news of the attacks started coming through. It really,…

baltimore-murder-rate

The murder/homicide situation in Baltimore is an emergency

 in Blog

For the following graph, I took the population estimates from the US Census Bureau for the decades in question (1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010). I took the number of murders for each year from 1985 to 2012 from the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ Uniform Crime Reporting database. (One big caveat is that the data collection methods changed significantly in 2000,…

Homicides in Baltimore, an analysis of sorts

 in Blog

When I started working in Baltimore in 2007, plenty of people told me to be careful because of their perception of crime in Baltimore. That perception was fed by television dramas like “The Wire” or “Homicide: Life on the Street”. In those television shows, we saw somewhat of a dystopian Baltimore where crime was rampant and the police were in over…

Heroes and Villains and Everything In Between

 in Blog

People who don’t know any better like to put people into categories. Usually, the categories are binary, with only two options. Worse yet, the categories are on opposite ends of a spectrum. There are heroes and villains, and nothing in between. This is how I feel that the most outspoken anti-vaccine activists see people who support the proper (and necessary)…