The Body Politic

Hey, what's up?

Rich, what's going on? How are you?

I'm good. What's going on?

Man, what the hell's been going on today?

Well, for one is, uh...

Yeah, I-- Yeah, Natalie told me about that.

The second one was the body that got dumped.

We knew about that.

He took us right-- He took us to the body.

The Western ones?

No, no, no. The one, um--

The one that we ended up finding in, uh-- In the water.

Oh, yeah. Oh, jeez.

We know he killed his roommate. That was his roommate.

He killed him and dumped him.

-Wow. -Um, the Western one is--

I don't know how the fuck we get a shooting in the Western.

We were just talking about that.

I got every resource that I have,

spare resource I have, in the Western.

Plus, all eight districts are sending officers there, so...

Oh, shit.

I don't know how we get that one on Lexington.

-Right. -So the two up here

in the Southern, it looks like they probably--

-And just keep this between us. -Yeah.

You know, they probably shot each other.

Oh, Jesus.

Because we got a--

We got somewhat of a video of the gunfight a little bit, so...

Yeah, I was wondering if that was gonna be connected

to the stuff from last week down there.

Yeah, no, it's connected to the one from yesterday.

Yeah, yep, yeah.

You can't make this shit up. It's like a movie.

And that's only one day.

I know.

I'll hit you up later if I got anything else.

- All right, sounds good. -All right. Bye.

Okay, bye.

Good evening.

This 77th meeting of the 72nd term

of the Baltimore City Council

is now called to order.

Coming into today, we have a 17% increase for homicides

over what we had last year,

and we all know last year is the worst year that we ever had.

We're going to make every effort to making sure

that we're investing in the long-term root causes to deal with violence,

but that does not mean that we forget about the people that are dying every day.

I would like to ask you to honor a moment of silence

for the victims of homicides in Baltimore.

Violence is what's dominated our city

for the 37 years that I've been alive.

I'm not supposed to be here by the statistics.

I grew up in Park Heights,

one of the most underserved and violent neighborhoods

in Baltimore.

I saw my first shooting before I was 10 years old.

I grew up in the 1980s and '90s,

and that was really the beginning

of the war on drugs and zero-tolerance policing.

If you clean the corners up and you go after anybody that has drugs on them,

anybody that's drinking outside or anybody that's loitering,

then crime will just magically disappear.

Well, they didn't.

If you were Black and you were outside,

you could be set in handcuffs, you could be taken to jail for any simple thing.

We had families ruined over nothing,

people who were falsely incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit.

We've been doing this all my life,

but violence is still here.

We have to change the approach.

You cannot go anywhere in Baltimore without seeing the aftermath of gun violence,

a disease we have been unable to cure.

This is not normal.

Most people do not live like this.

Why must we?

It is unacceptable, and we must change it.

My entire life, I've heard from our elders that they can't wait

for my generation to produce a leader

that is ready to take the reins,

stand on their shoulders, and take us to higher heights.

I am that leader.

Yeah!

I am that servant.

I am a son of Baltimore,

and today I am announcing my candidacy

to be the next mayor of Baltimore City.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

-It is your time. -Thank you.

Mm. Peace and clarity.

Peace and clarity at the crossroads.

Peace and clarity.

Peace and clarity.

Peace and clarity.

Peace and clarity.

You live around here?

Somebody got killed in a car this morning,

and we looking for the spot where the car was

so we can bless the space.

That's why we here.

-Thank you for what y'all do. -Thank you so much.

We want murder to understand it cannot have the last say.

Just 'cause you showed up, love is showing up behind.

It's like murder gonna be persistent,

we gotta be persistent.

You gonna keep seeing murder, you gonna keep seeing us.

Since I started showing up at every murder space,

I done lost homeboys, cousins,

and I've had to come and bless those spaces.

We call redemption into this whole community.

Any toxic energy that's trying to take hold in this space,

we've been here before saying, "No, thank you,"

we stand here again saying, "No, thank you."

We reclaim this space as sacred ground,

sacred concrete, sacred grass, sacred air molecules,

sacred birds out this bitch, sacred everything in this space.

Because we understand and we acknowledge

we are one with your light.

Violence is a disease.

Murder is an epidemic that we're dealing with.

Sometimes when you're in the midst of healing, you don't know,

because all you see is the pain

and the pus and the infection.

And so it looks like things are getting worse,

but really what's happening is, you are the--

You know, you're part of the balm

that's actually healing things.

You a baby? Hmm?

You a old-man baby?

Don't hurt yourself.

I'm willing to do whatever I have to to heal my city.

Baltimore is worth fighting for

because the people of Baltimore are worth fighting for.

Be safe out here, yo.

What's up, brother? Take these masks, man.

That is me. The mask throw you off, that's all.

The things that everyone's talking about in this race,

the violence, schools with no heat and air,

I'm the only person that actually lived it.

I'm saying the structure itself is broken.

Sir, information on the candidates.

Information on candidates.

Brandon Scott at just 10% in this mayor's race.

He's going to need to convert a lot of voters, and we're not really, right now, seeing that.

The poll shows a mayor's race that is still wide-open.

You know you're the underdog, right?

I don't have to tell you that. You know that.

Because you haven't been in politics for so long,

and they're gonna be saying you don't have no experience,

and you're a young Black man, and all this.

So you know that's coming.

It is. They're gonna say and do anything.

The water pump over this side.

Damn, I thought it was under there.

Not no more.

All right, take that from over there. Here.

Screwdriver's still in the same place it used to be.

It ain't changed.

There ain't no way in hell we getting it this way.

You gotta go through the bottom.

If they thought my ass was bringing it into the dealership, they sadly mistaken.

Brandon, you're headstrong. Nobody-- You know, you're gonna do what you want,

and that's just the way it is.

-I'm headstrong? -You know what it mean.

What your mother was telling me about when y'all was playing ball

and somebody got killed or something?

I was probably around...

7 or 8 when this happened.

We were just out on the basketball court

like we would be every day, every night,

and someone just came to the top of the lot, started shooting.

I jumped the fence over on the side by the church.

You know how you could walk through there?

And just laid in the damn grass.

I just wanted to get back into the house, which was literally, you know, 15 seconds away,

but I couldn't get to it that quickly.

Like, the day after, it was like back to normal.

They thought we was just gonna fucking go back to life as normal.

I guess that's the way they expected it to be for us.

And I just kept asking my mother why nobody cared.

But she just looked at me and said,

"Well, if you want it to change, you're gonna have to change it.

No one is gonna do it for you.

No one is gonna come save us.

You-- If you wanna see change, you gotta do it yourself."

And I never forgot it.

Never, never forgot it.

You are looking live down at Baltimore City

as thousands of people have gathered.

In recent days,

protests have been held in Baltimore City.

But you can't just let lawlessness take control of the streets of a city.

Unrest is now being compared to the riots that rocked Baltimore

after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray.

Our community's on fire.

Yo.