Sunday November 28 at 23:05, Bernard de la Villardière invites you on M6 for a new unpublished from the magazine “Enquête Exclusive” in Baltimore, the American capital of crime.
Located on the east coast of the United States, Baltimore (Maryland) has become, in recent years, the most dangerous city in America. 600,000 inhabitants, 340 gun deaths in 2020, a crime rate eight times higher than the national average. A sad record for this great seaport once renowned for its size, its riches and its sweetness of life.
In Baltimore, crime is now law. Plagued by drug trafficking, violence, racism and inequality, the city is today on the verge of chaos. With 65% African-Americans and a quarter of its people below the poverty line, Baltimore is home to gangs, like that of King “Rah,” a 21-year-old crack dealer who heads the world. about twenty “soldiers” and ready to die at any moment. Concentrated in downtown neighborhoods, these gangs have many minors in their ranks (fifteen children under 16 shot dead in 2020).
Here, no one should be trusted except Jermaine, former convict sentenced to twenty-two years in prison for murder. Today, he is a social worker and tries every night to save lost souls and those who no longer believe in anything except violence and crime. Certain neighborhoods, which have become areas of deal and cut-throats, are now deserted. Even the police no longer venture there.
However, the city prospered until the 1950s, in particular thanks to its industrial port, turned towards Europe. But successive economic crises have got the better of its former glory. Unemployment, once almost zero, has skyrocketed. And insecurity has spread throughout the city. As a result, Baltimore suffered the “white flight”, in other words the flight of whites from the city center to the suburbs, these outlying suburbs transformed into ghettos of the rich, like that of Lutherville. At the head of a public relations company, Lauren Corrigan It organizes evenings and social events attended by the great fortunes of the city.
In the heart of the city, a few isolated cases manage to get out of their condition, such as Rikky Vaughn, a former homeless person, now the boss of a restaurant chain and a millionaire.
Baltimore, portrait of a city adrift, that the former president Trump described it as “a disgusting rat-infested cesspool”. A city torn between a fervent desire for reconstruction and extraordinary crime.
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