Baltimore is trying to deal with serious crimes by letting less serious ones slide. And not everyone is happy about the results. “For years, Baltimore’s leaders have faced daunting challenges that include poorly performing public schools, blight, widespread heroin and crack addiction, and corruption scandals that forced out two mayors and tarnished the police department. No issue has dominated civic discourse as much as gun violence, as homicides have surpassed 300 in each of the past six years.” WaPo: In crime-battered Baltimore, a halt to some drug and prostitution prosecutions is causing fresh anxiety. (The intense 24-hour coverage of mass shootings in America actually distracts us from the true scope of the problem. In Baltimore, 300 people are murdered a year. In Chicago, they often have the equivalent of a mass shooting multiple weekends a year. Little of this gets covered, which adds to the hopelessness and alienation.)