One of the more pernicious anti-self defense myths is that you only need worry about being a crime victim if you yourself are at fault (namely, by being in the wrong place at the wrong time…stay away from the “wrong areas” and you’ll be fine). Aside from ignoring the fact that the law abiding shouldn’t have to be fearful anywhere in public, making the ridiculous leap that the victim is the person at fault in violent crime, and doing nothing for folks who can’t afford or don’t want to move away from their neighborhoods when criminals show up…the biggest problem with this anti-logic futile position is a pragmatic consideration.

Which is, rather apparently, that the criminals will follow you if you try the “run from crime” approach.

We’ve always been told here in Baltimore than the Inner Harbor, Canton, Fells, and Federal Hill are “safe” and as long as you avoid the rest of the city (the other 95% of it, mind you) you’ll be fine. In the meantime, the BPD are cracking down on gang activity (and I love Marty Burns, Jessamy’s spokesperson, the one who said Zach Sowers looked like a sleeping baby the night thugs beat him to death, saying that we need to make it illegal to be in a gang…how you gonna enforce that one, you fat piece of dung? Freedom of association anyone?) in the rest of the city simply means the gangs have taken it somewhere else and are now descending on the Inner Harbor. You quash gang activity by occupying territory in Edmonson Village and Sandtown and north of Patterson Park, and the gangs just find somewhere else to be bored teenagers looking for trouble.

Now, they’re taking it downtown where Baltimore’s struggling tourist industry can take it on the chin.

BPD will reoccupy downtown, and homicides will explode in the rest of the hood. You cannot arrest your way out of this problem.