By Luo Lian
Baltimore City continues to have one of the highest murder rates in the country, despite the fact that its population has decreased while its police budget has risen, an investigative journalist told about 75 Towson University students and faculty members last week.
Speaking at Albert S. Cook Library on Feb. 19, former Baltimore Examiner police reporter Stephen Janis said that the city has spent several million dollars on criminal justice over the past three years but still has more than 200 homicides a year.
“We have one of the largest police departments in the country; we spend more money on police department more than any other city in the country. At the same time we have the highest murder rate in the country,” said Janis, who currently works at WBFF, Fox 45.
“The city is famous for this function,” he added. “We are famous for killing each other. We are famous for not being able to stop it.”
Janis said police and city officials are reluctant to discuss crime statistics with reporters because they fear that such bad news will keep away tourists and the dollars they being into the city each year.
“Crime is such a politically contentious issue in the city, it is also something that people don’t want to talk about on the political surface,” Janis said, adding that it has become more difficult for reporters to write crime news reports.
That is one reason why he decided to write two books about the crime problem in Baltimore.
Janis – who co-wrote the book “Why do we Kill?” with Sgt. Kelvin Sewell, a former homicide detective in Baltimore – said research for the book began when Sewell began to tell Janis what was happening behind the scenes at the department.
“Behind the scene is a very different story compared with what is being told to the public,” Janis said.
Janis said crime reporting often lacks context. He said it is difficult for reporters to write good police stories because journalists often do not understand the nuances of crime. He said this leads to most crime stories having the same good vs. evil narratives when in fact the causes of crime are much more complicated.
Taya Graham, who co-wrote the book “You Can’t Stop Murder” with Janis and who also spoke last week, shared her experience of working for a non-profit organization that helps women in Baltimore. She told the audience that many women who have experienced violence and sexual abuse, don’t turn to police for help.
“Sometimes police just told them I don’t feel like investigating this, you don’t have a credible witness,” Graham said. “This is a waste of time. There are so many cases to care about.”
“A lot of people put crime into mystery category, but it is not how crime is,” Janis said. “To me, there are unsolved pieces I have to write about. The greatest mystery to me is why people did crime – the mystery of mind.”
Much of Baltimore’s crime problems began 40 years ago in the 1970’s and can be traced to a lack of jobs and drug dealing, Janis said.
These problems spread from one neighborhood to another until the whole city was affected, he said.
During his speech, Janis read an excerpt from his book in which he wrote about a 14-year-old boy who killed an elderly lady just because his friend dared him to do it.
Janis said the murder turned out to be much more complicated than a friend’s dare, though. He said that when Sewell began to investigate the case, he found the problem stemmed more from the boy’s poor family and living conditions.
Joyce Garczynski, a librarian at Towson who organized the speech, said later that she was moved by Janis’s stories. “There are a lot of other factors that lead to the crime in Baltimore,” she said. “It is such a complicated problem. I feel terrible for the young boy who kind of killed himself by killing an innocent old lady.”
Katherine Salazar, a junior at Towson, said: “It is more difficult to be a journalist. Like Stephen Janis said, a good journalist really needs to go beyond the job of a journalist.”