Mayor Scott joins McElderry Park walk to hear safety concerns
Scott said Baltimore had 40 homicides and 120 shootings as McElderry Park residents pressed for safer streets and more opportunity.
Mayor Brandon Scott, Baltimore Police and city partners walked McElderry Park on Monday to hear residents’ safety concerns and talk through the neighborhood’s day-to-day problems. The East Baltimore stop put a spotlight on a community that has been a recurring test case for Scott’s public-safety pitch, where residents have also pushed for more jobs, housing and education.
Scott used the walk to argue that Baltimore has made progress while still facing serious work. He said the city had recorded 40 homicides and 120 non-deadly shootings as of June 1, a 23% decline from the same point last year. He also said May ended with eight homicides, which he described as Baltimore’s first single-digit homicide month in more than five decades.
City leaders have credited the Group Violence Reduction Strategy, Safe Streets and residents and community partners for the drop in violence. The Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, known as MONSE, says it works with residents, community organizations, government, police and local businesses to reduce violence and address root causes under Baltimore’s 5-year Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan.
Scott said the city has cut homicides and nonfatal shootings nearly 60% since the start of his administration, and his Second Term Action Plan, released May 20, lays out measurable goals for city agencies. The administration has framed that agenda as an effort to line up government action with resident priorities rather than broad promises.
McElderry Park has surfaced before in Scott’s crime-fighting message. He held another neighborhood walk there on March 20, 2024, during a period of rising violent crime, underscoring how often the block-by-block conversation in this part of East Baltimore returns to safety and neighborhood stability. Monday’s walk showed the city still relying on those resident conversations to gauge whether its larger violence-reduction strategy is changing what people experience on the street.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
