BALTIMORE — When people talk about Baltimore they often mention the crime, but some of the victims of these crimes continues to be teenagers.
In the first month of 2023, 17 teens have been involved in some form of shooting at the time of this writing.
From that number, seven of those teens were killed.
The first day of 2023 began with the murder of 17-year-old D'asia Garrison.
SEE MORE: 'This hurts': First homicide of 2023 in Baltimore claims the life of a 17-year-old girl
The violence only increased from there.
Three days later was the mass shooting that killed 16-year-old Deanta Dorsey.
Dorsey was one of five teenagers shot across from Edmondson Westside High School. He was the only one killed in this incident.
The latest incident happened on Jan.25, as 15-year-old Laron Henderson from Forest Park was shot and killed after school was released.
The violence in Baltimore appears to be spread out, but not according to the mayor's office.
Just last year, the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement launched the Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS). The aim of this initiative was to address the norms perpetuating violence by focusing on resources on individuals identified as being at the highest acute risk of involvement in gun violence.
It works by engaging directly with those most intimately involved and affected by violence.
“In order to do this right, you don’t just go into a neighborhood and say, 'well this neighborhood has a whole bunch of shootings and homicides and say we’re going to do the Group Violence Reduction Strategy in this neighborhood'. You have to do the work of identifying who those people are, you have to build the resources alongside to make sure you can offer those other opportunities and that’s where the city failed before. It’s about really growing the ecosystem of community-based violence intervention as well,” Mayor Brandon Scott said.
The mayor took this a step further with his squeegee collaborative plan. Although they're not the sole cause of teen violence, Scott invoked this plan to get squeegee workers off the streets into real jobs.
Many of these workers are teenagers.
It's why since the deadly shooting between a squeegee worker and a driver, they've created this collaborative.
At this time last year, there were four teens killed; with 33 total victims.
