By Police1 Staff
BALTIMORE — An activist’s call for a city-wide ceasefire over the weekend ended with three shootings and two dead.
Erricka Bridgeford called for the “nobody kill anybody” ceasefire for 72 hours, as the city is on pace to record its highest annual homicide toll, KTLA reported.
“This is about a culture shift,” she said. “It’s about helping people realize they have a choice in their decision-making. Not just about committing violence but about feeling hopeless that there’s nothing we can do about the level of violence in our communities.”
Almost 40 hours into the ceasefire, a 24-year-old was fatally shot. Then a 37-year-old. Both men died at the hospital. Fox 45 reported a man suffered an arm wound in a shootout as well.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Saturday’s homicides bring the city’s total to 210 in 2017. In 2016, the total for the year was 318.
Police Spokesman T.J. Smith, whose brother was killed in a homicide last month, said people were too quick to say the ceasefire was a failure after the two deaths.
“The measure of success is the fact that we’re having this conversation,” he told KTLA. “We can’t be successful as a city without the citizens being motivated, and that’s what this is. People are engaged that might not have been engaged before. We need this to spread like an epidemic.”
Tyrone Boyette, a participant in the ceasefire, told the Baltimore Sun that while they wanted to stop the violence, they wanted to unite the city as well.
“This is to let the people in the community know that there’s hope,” he said. “We know it’s not going to stop the murders, but it’s a start.”
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