Inside Howard Park’s new ShopRite, a woman grabbed a bag of arugula, another examined bouquets of fresh flowers and a man discussed vegetable choices with a little boy riding in his grocery cart.

Outside the clean and spacious building, Liberty Heights Avenue looks like a scene from The Wire.

Across the street sits the Ambassador Theater, an Art Deco treasure that has been boarded-up since a 2012 fire.

Half-a-block to the north, young men duck in and out of a seven-day-a-week liquor store that residents have complained about for years.

The grit and decay of commercial properties so close to the new supermarket also contrast with the well-kept single-family homes and blooming azaleas that line the streets flanking Liberty Heights Avenue.

The same disconnect was evident at a community meeting to discuss concerns about four shootings in the area, three of them fatal, that occurred in the space of five days.

The Three Sides of Howard Park

In an open letter to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, residents have called the businesses at Liberty Heights and Gwynn Oak avenues “the epicenter and breeding ground” of the violence.

The politicians, police officers and an assistant state’s attorney who spoke Wednesday night to more than 100 residents answered people’s questions but they all returned to the same theme – it’s up to the residents to report and document drug-dealing as well as liquor law and housing code violations.

They urged residents to use 911 and 311 and repeated the phone number for Metro Crime Stoppers.

“We need to partner with our community, and that’s why I’m here to tell you we need your help. They can have an abundance of [police] officers, but if the officer doesn’t witness the crime,” said assistant state’s attorney Patricia DeMaio, explaining how the city’s 200 prosecutors have trouble making a case without citizens coming forward.

“We also know there’s this code in Baltimore City of not snitching,” DeMaio said. “You live in this neighborhood. We rely on you for information. Let us know the names of defendants, the names of people!”

“Just Pretend This is Roland Park”

These responses struck some in the audience as impractical, if not insulting.

“I don’t go in those places. I’m not going to know ‘Mookie’ or whoever,” said Aisha Banks, a member of Concerned Citizens of Howard Park, the umbrella group that organized the meeting.

She said the rash of shootings should be considered “a state of emergency” and would be treated as urgent in a more affluent white neighborhood. “Just pretend this is Roland Park,” she said.

Even more angry was Antwanette Bossard, who complained that speakers at the meeting were painting “a very unfair picture. . . about Howard Park.”

They “want to make it seem like we’re not a community that comes together, we’re not a community that sticks together, [that] we’re a community that keeps our mouths shut,” she said. “None of that is true!”

Standing in the back of the room, wearing a jacket from her alma mater, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Bossard said her family and other residents have been making specific complaints about the same nuisance establishments on Liberty Heights and Gwynn Oak avenues for three decades.

“We are telling you what’s going on. We are giving you names. We’re doing everything that we’re being asked to do, and yet it’s 30 years later and the same thing exists,” she said, her voice raw with emotion.

Christopher Ervin, a Howard Park resident who moderated the meeting, warned the officials about being defensive and said he appreciated their data but thought they missed the larger message.

“You’re not really listening to what was going on before these incidents,” Ervin said. “You have to absorb and not deflect.”

In a conversation with The Brew, organizer John Banks said the deeper anger in Howard Park comes from feeling left behind as city government boosts the waterfront projects with subsidies and stimulus programs, but does little for them.

“There’s a lot of focus on the Inner Harbor and Port Covington, but nobody talks about doing other things in the parts of the city where normal people live,” said Banks, an information technology project manager who has owned property in Howard Park since 2003 and lived there since 2010.

“Must they be the only decent places in the city?” he asked.

Extra Police Patrol

Amid the talk of bigger issues on Wednesday, police officials gave residents an update on their immediate concern – the spike in neighborhood bloodshed.

On Tuesday, April 26, Carlos Younger was shot and killed in the 4700 block of Liberty Heights Avenue, according to police. Two days later, at a convenience store on Gwynn Oak Avenue, Maurice “Mookie” Braham was shot and killed. A few hours later that day, Anthony Horne was shot and killed at nearby 4700 Haddon Avenue. On May 1, a non-fatal shooting on the 4900 block of Liberty Heights added to the grim toll.

Deputy Commissioner Dean Palmere said police know that the three fatal shootings were related and are seeking enough evidence to make arrests. “We are clear and confident about what happened,” he said.

Major Latonya Lewis said the district has added an overtime officer to patrol the area between 5 p.m. and 11 pm, in addition to the officer now parked in a cruiser at the corner of Liberty Heights and Gwynn Oaks avenues 24 hours a day.

Responding to a question about whether the officers would be more effective out of their cars, Palmero noticed that the practice of “foot patrol technique” is now being taught at the police academy, and foot patrol deployment is going to become standard practice.

Why Not a TIF?

Residents suggested a number of immediate measures that could make the community safer, chief among them shutting down nuisance businesses, possibly by using liquor laws.

“Are you aware that some of these merchants are allowing drug dealing inside? And that they have been doing this for a long, long time?” one woman asked the officers.

The owners of 4-G’s Liquors, a seven-day-a-week tavern that has been at the center of neighborhood complaints for years, have denied that drug activity takes place there.

Captain Jason Yerg, noting that residents are protesting the renewal of 4G’s liquor license, said police have been working with community members trying to compile data ahead of a May 19 Liquor Board hearing.

Other issues raised at Wednesday’s meeting involved promises made to the community by the city, such as trimming trees and improving the lighting in the 4700 block of Liberty Heights Avenue.

“Last fall we were told we were going to have brighter lighting,” one woman said. “They came out with designs and everything!”

Kohl Fallin, of the Baltimore Transportation Department, promised to look into the lighting matter. Howard Park resident Kim Trueheart remarked that spending for street lighting upgrades had been approved in the capital budget.

Could there be a police sub-station “like they have at Johns Hopkins,” asked one resident.

How about security cameras? Couldn’t the city demolish more blighted vacant houses in the neighborhood?

What about turning the Ambassador Theater into an arts center like the old Patterson Theater was converted into Creative Alliance in Highlandtown?

Few of these questions produced a simple “yes” or a date-certain response from the city officials present.

“Why can’t we have a TIF for this community?” Ervin asked, referencing the $535 million in bond money that Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank is seeking for his proposed mini-city at Port Covington.

“We do have slots money that could be used for that purpose, and I’m going to begin working on that tomorrow morning,” Del. Samuel I. “Sandy ” Rosenberg said in response.

What’s at Stake

Inside the meeting and out, people describe Howard Park as a stable, long-established community in need of help.

Standing in front of the Leroy O. Dyett Sr. Memorial Chapel, the funeral-home business he owns next to the Ambassador Theater, Brian Howell said even a simple facade facelift for area businesses would help the community.

“We’re trying to make it the beautiful area, with lots of nice homeowners and green grass, that it used to be,” said Howell, whose parents came to the area in 1968.

Ervin said he helped organize the meeting after the shootings “because my 10-year-old daughter sitting in the back can’t play in the front yard.”

Boussard said she feels a commitment to the neighborhood where she has such deep family roots.

“I didn’t go and buy a home in Roland Park or somewhere else. I came back to this community because I love Howard Park, and so do all of the people in this meeting room.”