BALTIMORE — While murders and violence chip away at citizens’ sense of safety in Baltimore neighborhoods, when they take place at businesses like we’ve seen in recent weeks, they throw a different type of blow to public safety efforts.
That’s why City lawmakers are hoping to get business owners in the conversation to increase safety where they make a living.
We’ve seen the lights flashing and crime scene tape stretched around gas stations across the city in recent weeks like Royal Farms gas station on W Patapsco Avenue in South Baltimore, where a shooting left a 31-year-old man dead and another injured early last month.
RELATED: Double shooting at Royal Farms leaves one dead in South Baltimore
“It’s getting out of hand,” said one customer the day after the deadly shooting.
That happened not long before 56-year-old Al Stevenson was shot in the head at the BP gas station on Havenwood and Loch Raven Blvd.
RELATED: Community members want gas station shut down after a man was killed inside
“I just heard the shots and saw the commotion you know. That was basically it," one customer shared.
"It was traumatizing as usual, traumatizing,” another customer remembered.
Days after that shooting, loved ones of Stevenson pushed for the gas station to be padlocked since his death followed another deadly shooting there about a week apart.
But stripping those stations of their ability to do business could rob customers of their access to both fuel and food.
“Some of those gas stations are like convenient stores, so if we don’t have markets and we shutting down some of those places, that’s where people go and buy their food,” said District 13 Councilman Robert Stokes.
While there are mixed opinions on where the blame goes, councilman Stokes is hopeful a bill he’s introducing tonight can get stakeholders at the table for a conversation.
“I understand that some of these gas stations are dangerous and we probably need to padlock, but if we’re not talking to each other and talking to the business owner, maybe we can work something out with the business owner and the community, they can be involved,” he continued.
It’s a suggestion customers say they can get behind amid the violence around those businesses.
But while these conversions are had in public with city officials, businesses and customers alike, one customer shares it’ll do very little if private conversations aren’t being had where it all starts, at home.
“At some point, the city needs to involve the parent and say what is your own responsibility for this child that seems to be running you, running your home and taking that into the streets. Okay so what is the parents responsibility?” questioned Jessie Phillips.
Some ideas the councilman would support involve requiring some of the businesses where the deadly violence is happening to get cameras into the CCTV network. And also requiring armed security.
So far a time and date for the hearing haven’t been set.
