Howard U engineering student, 19, is excited about class project, applying for patent for a virtual reality program to help students w/ ADD.
School closes bc of Covid. He comes home to Baltimore, gets job at Amazon
Is shot dead in a car w/ another man. His name is Aaron Sutton.
School closes bc of Covid. He comes home to Baltimore, gets job at Amazon
Is shot dead in a car w/ another man. His name is Aaron Sutton.
There have been 135 homicides in Baltimore this year. Thirty-eight in the past month.
'He was multitalented, like a Renaissance man,' she said, recalling how he could play a song on the piano just by listening to the melody. He won a talent show as a child, she said, by belting out The Jackson 5 classic “I Want You Back,' among other songs."
"He encouraged his mom to continue sewing and selling face masks, which she had been doing during the pandemic. Although sales had slowed, he told her to keep sewing, anticipating an increase in demand in the fall and winter when health officials have warned of a second spike."
The Baltimore homicide unit is utterly overwhelmed, with detectives carrying far too many cases each. Closure rates are down around 30 percent. Just something to consider during the "abolish/defund" debate. baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-…
Key passage from Jill Leovy's 2015 tour de force on urban violence, "Ghettoside": 
Another recommended recent book on policing is "Uneasy Peace," by Patrick Sharkey.
"If the well-justified calls for policing reform drift into a broader movement to reduce the role of police in urban communities, we risk returning to a time..."
"If the well-justified calls for policing reform drift into a broader movement to reduce the role of police in urban communities, we risk returning to a time..."
"...when the poorest neighborhoods were left on their own to deal w/ the challenges that come w/ concentrated poverty, a time when police depts were overwhelmed by the problem of violent crime & helpless to do anything about it. We risk drifting into a new era of rising violence"
And for those curious how we got from the death of Freddie Gray to a 60 percent increase in homicides sustained over five years and what it might mean for this moment: nytimes.com/2019/03/12/mag…
Aaron Sutton was killed three days after George Floyd was killed.
I am aware that the abolition/defund visions often include plans for retaining homicide detectives in some form.
Some more context on that front: there are more than 700 nonfatal shootings and 5,700 robberies to investigate in Baltimore in a typical year. It's not just murders.
Some more context on that front: there are more than 700 nonfatal shootings and 5,700 robberies to investigate in Baltimore in a typical year. It's not just murders.
And it's worth noting that there are indeed reform visions out there that entail pulling up the existing force root and branch but replacing it with *another force*--that is, the Camden model. nytimes.com/2017/04/02/nyr…
Choosing btwn police reform & fighting violence is a false choice. From "Tragedy of Baltimore," above:
"'All any of us want is equal protection,' she said. They were not describing a trade-off btwn justice & order. They saw them as two parts of a whole & daring to ask for both."
"'All any of us want is equal protection,' she said. They were not describing a trade-off btwn justice & order. They saw them as two parts of a whole & daring to ask for both."
A final word: we only know about Aaron Sutton because @janders5 took the time to report on his life and death. Her newspaper has been cut to the bone and had many of its reporters on furlough in recent weeks.
If there are no more Baltimore Suns, we NEVER learn about Aaron Sutton.
If there are no more Baltimore Suns, we NEVER learn about Aaron Sutton.
