This past June, federal prosecutors, working with the Baltimore Police Department, indicted 15 members of a lethal gang known as “CCC” or “Triple C” (which, in a revealing indicator of our cultural decline, reportedly stands for Cruddy Conniving Crutballs, not the Civilian Conservation Corps). Gang members had allegedly committed 18 murders and attempted 27 more between 2015 and 2020. Though that’s less than 1 percent of Baltimore’s stratospheric homicide total during that period, onlookers might still be tempted to find in the news grounds for optimism that Baltimore’s long-running crime wave is cresting.
Baltimoreans know better.
