Amid High Crime, Baltimore Sheriff Starts Friday Foot Patrol
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Baltimore City continues to grapple with crime, coming off a month in September that was the deadliest in more than a year.
Through the first 12 days of October, the city has already seen 13 homicides for the month.
37 people were gunned down in September, including Timothy Moriconi in the Federal Hill neighborhood.
It wasn't just the homicides, but also random robberies and assaults that continue to rock the city in recent months.
"Sooner or later, it's going to affect everyone one way or the other. It's going to get to everyone," A Federal Hill resident said when talking about crime.
While City police have increased patrols, the Baltimore City Sheriff's Office is now getting involved.
"We're concerned about what we see but there are solutions to problems," said Major Sabrina Tapp-Harper, Baltimore City Sheriff's Office.
An attempt to make neighborhoods safer includes additional deputies, walking foot patrol ranging from Monument Street to Eastern Ave to even downtown festivals including the Fells Point Fun Festival this weekend.
Police said it is an effort to conduct high-visibility community oriented patrol.
"Even though we only have 103 deputies, we can't possibly see our law enforcement partners just, you know, fight this fight alone," Tapp-Harper said.
It's an all-hands-on-deck approach to combat the violence, and while some in the city feel defeated, Baltimore leaders are confident that change is in sight.
"At the end of the day, there's hope and we're going to win," Tapp-Harper said.
The Sheriff's Office has been doing this at some capacity since April, but these additional deployments started Friday.
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