Baltimore expands violence reduction strategy into Northern District

Baltimore has pushed its group violence reduction strategy into the Northern District, extending a program that now operates in six police districts and reaches about 60% of the city’s population. The April 17 expansion puts Baltimore’s most intensive anti-violence tools into neighborhoods from Roland Park and Guilford to Hampden, Charles Village, Remington, Waverly, Pen Lucy and parts of Central Park Heights.

City leaders are not selling the move as a ribbon-cutting. They are treating it as a test of whether a place-based intervention that has shown results elsewhere can be widened before conflict turns into homicide. Baltimore officials said the strategy first launched in the Western District in January 2022, then moved into the Southwestern District in January 2023, the Central District in January 2024, the Eastern District in February 2024 and the Southern District in July 2025 before arriving in the Northern District this month.

The city’s pitch rests on numbers. Officials said nearly 95% of GVRS participants have not been victimized, and earlier city reporting said 96.7% have not recidivated while 95% have not been revictimized since the program began. A published evaluation of the strategy estimated that, after 18 months, Baltimore saw about 25% fewer homicides and shootings and more than 30% fewer carjackings than would have been expected without the intervention. That same evaluation said the program focused on a small set of groups linked to as much as 75% of shootings and homicides in the pilot district.

Mayor Brandon Scott said the stakes remain high, and Police Commissioner Richard Worley called on people to put down guns and step away from violence, saying the city is ready to help but will respond quickly if people choose not to. The expansion also reflects how Baltimore’s Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan, effective from July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2026, frames gun violence as a public-health problem, with a stated goal of reducing gun violence by 15% a year.

The question now is whether the Northern District produces the same results. Major Keira Saunders, who commands the district, will be one of the public faces of that effort, alongside MONSE, the Baltimore Police Department and intervention partners such as Roca and Youth Advocate Programs. Over the next year, residents should watch three measures closely: whether shootings and homicides fall, whether more high-risk residents are reached before retaliation, and whether the district adds to the citywide record of keeping participants from being victimized or pulled back into violence. Scott has said he ultimately wants the strategy citywide, which makes the Northern District expansion less a finish line than a demand for proof.