damn, baltimore.

I'm getting pretty sick of blogging about this, but it's intriguing and saddening at the same time. So saddening, in fact, that from this post on, any dealings with Baltimore City and its homicide rate will have the title "damn, baltimore". "Oh, baltimore" just doesn't seem to be enough anymore.

I haven't been watching the news much since I really don't sit still long enough anymore, but I do play catch up via the mobile device, and I just discovered that our number of homicides has jumped to 29. Now, in part 4, I stated that the number was 21. That was on 1/30; so in almost two weeks, we've had 8 more.

But Ziggy, why change the title of the blog for eight more homicides? Can't you keep adding more parts?
Trust me, I'd rather not post this at all, but since I live in this city I figured I'd shed light on exactly what's going on. And the number of homicides increasing is little to no reason for me to change up the title, but this definitely is.

After finding this last night, my brother and I have dubbed this THE MURDER MAP.

Sadly, you can click "The Murder Map" to try it out on your own.
The Baltimore Sun has actually integrated an interactive map on their website so you can see the exact locations of the homicides for 2009. It also goes back as 2008 (234) and 2007 (282). The map has a key at the bottom; red balloons represent homicides, green for blunt force, black for stabbing, blue for asphyxiation and white is unknown. According to the murder map, 25 of the 29 homicides this year have been shootings.

But, wait! There's more!
If you click on the tiny balloons, you'll get a detailed description of the victim's name, place of homicide, the victim's race, age and gender; cause of death, date of death and where the victim died. The fact that this is something provided over the internet is simply insane.

So, readers in other states: do you guys have any..."tools"...such as this? If you do, feel free to share them; just curious to know if there are others that exist...because if we're the only ones to have this, I'm afraid.

(deuces.)