BALTIMORE — In a shocking turn that absolutely no one in political worlds will admit is partly real, Baltimore’s homicide rate has dropped to levels not seen since bell-bottoms were in style. According to local reporting, the city is on track for its lowest murder count in 48 years—a tidy historical bracket that conveniently predates most current elected officials. 

Yes, Baltimore—once America’s unofficial national mascot for urban homicide debates—has achieved the sort of decline usually reserved for VHS tapes and hope in political press releases. Experts are still trying to figure out whether it’s actual public-safety progress or simply that everyone who wanted to get attention by killing someone finally got exhausted. Either way, the body count is down. Great news, right?

The Baltimore Police Department, never one to let a few awkward decades of high murder rates spoil its PR day, has been quietly handing out confusing press releases about crime declines that make too much sense for today’s political climate. Back in October they proudly announced homicides were down over 30% compared to 2024, while non-fatal shootings also nose-dived like a Ravens playoff hopes (kidding—they do still have playoff hopes). 

City officials have attributed this remarkable progress to a mosaic of “strategies,” one of which probably has a fancy acronym. They talk a lot about community engagement, police data analysis, and something called the Group Violence Reduction Strategy—because nothing says “historic drop in crime” like a strategy name that sounds like it was invented by a web designer on a Friday afternoon. 

Meanwhile, armchair sociologists on Reddit are having the time of their lives crowing about declines so steep that Baltimore might actually get bumped out of the Top Ten Murder Capitals, and if that happens, historians will genuinely have nothing left to debate. 

Critics outside City Hall—some of whom probably haven’t slept since the last time someone used statistical charts to sell a narrative—still aren’t fully convinced. Some argue the drop might reflect national trends in crime reduction, not just local strategies. Others whisper that maybe the shooters just took up pickleball. Either way, the numbers are falling faster than the number of crime-themed cable specials set in Baltimore. 

Of course, for every PR triumph there’s always that one caveat: a man was still found dead in a Federal Hill parking lot, reminding everyone that “lowest in decades” is still not “safe enough for your grandma.” 

So here’s to Baltimore—where murder rates are down, headlines about murder are up, and the only thing sharper than the sarcasm in this article is the collective relief that murder is finally not the only thing in the news. Maybe next year we can get excited about potholes or snow delays.