crime without punishment

lest any of us be lulled into the false notion that baltimore is a safe place to live, hopkins medicine just sent this out to all its employees:

"The Hopkins employee was off campus, walking on Ann Street toward Fayette, and had just passed the KKI playground and loading dock, when the above-described female suspect approached the employee from behind, pulled a knife, and demanded her purse which she handed over. The suspect then ran toward Fairmount. The employee was not harmed during the incident. She notified KKI Security and the Baltimore Police Department who responded and filed a report."

i'd love to say that the woman who was attacked was just in the wrong place at the wrong time; that she stupidly ventured into east baltimore at 1am, flailing her cartier bangles in time to the ipod she was carrying. in fact she was right off campus, near where terry always insisted on parking his car (against my loud and terrified protests), and was robbed--at knifepoint, which i suppose is better than gunpoint--at 8:40am. now, in my experience, most people who live in east baltimore aren't out of bed at 8:40am. most seem to prefer rising anywhere between 10 and 3. at least that's what i've found in the study i work on.

it's just scary to know that people are still getting robbed/murdered/attacked in baltimore. since i basically drive my car from mt vernon to canton to towson and back, and because the area around hopkins hospital, once one of the scariest places in baltimore, is gentrifying so quickly, i forget that most of baltimore is a crime-ridden stinkhole. it might be the gem of the bay, but it's still not a very safe place to live.

and, sadly, that's one of the main reasons i'm moving to new york. even if i weren't a classical singer, i'd have to leave baltimore because it's just so unsafe. everyone i know--literally, everyone--in baltimore has had some kind of crime perpetrated against them: i've been mugged, hilary's had her car broken into around four thousand times. i don't even know what they're going for when they break into her car. is it the 5 year old headphones? the four pennies under the driver's seat? that old morrissey mixtape? we may never know. but i'm not going to stick around long enough to find out.