As Stephanie Rawlings-Blake took on the monumental task of becoming Baltimore's 49th Mayor, she soon realized why the city still needs a healing hand from its violent stigma.
While she swore the oath of office at about 12:00P yesterday, promising to "build a better, safer and stronger Baltimore", only hours later she was faced with a police involved shooting, that wounded several and fatally took the life of another.
It is being reported that at approximately 7:00P, two plainclothes officers were in the 3700 block of Oakmont Avenue, in Park Heights, when gun shots erupted, injuring one of the detectives. When shots were returned by both officers', both the suspected gun men were wounded, one taken to Sinai for his injuries, the other fatally. (Complete article here)
This being the second police-involved shooting this year, yet the first fatality, it should certainly bring people out of the darkness of complacent camaraderie and into the light of a more progressive and pro-active form of civil engagement. Despite your politics, Baltimore is continuously growing from Charm City to the city that bleeds (not reads).
As I received a letter yesterday from a close friend and long time city activist and leader, Michael Eugene Johnson, encouraging us to put politics aside and become more engaged in our communities with the assistance of our new Mayor, I began to see the monumental task we all face. No one official can single-handedly stop our children and citizens from being violently murdered, for 'it takes a village'; so the question remains what are we, as a city of concerned citizens, going to do too assist in the rebuilding of Baltimore?
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