By about this time last year, Southwest Baltimore’s Penrose/Fayette Street Outreach neighborhood had seen 15 shootings, six of which were fatal.

This year, as of June 24, the community of aging two-story rowhouses and vacant lots stretching from Grace Medical Center to the westside MARC station saw two gun homicides and one nonfatal shooting.

It is among the Baltimore neighborhoods seeing the sharpest declines in year-over-year gun violence, one piece of a citywide effort to drive down gun violence that’s seeing results. A Baltimore Sun review of public data reflects that the first six months of 2024 likely will see the city’s lowest levels of gun violence during that period in a decade, following a more than 10% drop in gun homicides and shootings from 2022 to 2023.

The city is on pace in 2024 for fewer than 200 homicides, and, so far this year, also has seen decreases in the number of young shooting victims, after troubling spikes.

Experts say it’s difficult to pinpoint what’s driving the reductions, even as city leaders take credit for their role in the progress, citing Baltimore’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy and changes in how crimes are prosecuted.

The volunteer-led community organization Fayette Street Outreach, which has a decadeslong record of community building and improvements, sees developing relationships among residents as key.

The group hosted a block party in early June that brought together current and former residents for a day of remembrance to honor community members who’d recently passed. It was a positive outlet for grief, said Sterling Brunson, the organization’s treasurer.

“Pain is real, and sometimes people don’t get a chance to express that, whether it’s from gun violence or just living until God calls you home,” he said.

That day, Brunson said, there were no shootings he knew of in the neighborhood.

A national analysis by the Center for American Progress suggests that Baltimore’s decline in gun violence is surpassing national trends. Chandler Hall, a senior policy analyst with the center, said that could speak to the effectiveness of the city’s strategy.

Daniel Webster, a distinguished research scholar with the Johns Hopkins’ Center for Gun Violence Solutions, agreed. Baltimore’s “notably greater” violence declines, to Webster, suggest there’s something at play beyond the economic, cultural, political and sociological factors felt nationally.

“The fact that Baltimore is having much greater declines — notably greater declines, in my opinion — than some other places, makes me feel more comfortable as a researcher to say, ‘OK, somebody’s doing something right here. And let’s take a close look and consider what that is,’” Webster said.

Contributing factors could range from a change in leadership in the Office of the State’s Attorney to the group violence reduction strategy expanding to larger swaths of the city to greater success by Baltimore Police in closing criminal cases.

Democratic City Councilman Mark Conway, who chairs the council’s public safety committee, attributes the decline to stability in city government and Baltimore’s “focused” execution of its Group Violence Reduction Strategy, which has been tried unsuccessfully in the past.

“Having the right partners in the right places at the right time has helped just make sure that we’re a little bit more efficient and effective, and better at executing the strategies that we say we want to execute,” Conway said.

Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott, meanwhile, sees value in his administration’s comprehensive violence reduction plan, which outlined the goals and the roles of groups across the city. Once a laughingstock, the plan’s goal of 15% reductions in gun violence are being surpassed this year, Scott said.

Compared with the same period last year, gun homicides through June 30 are on pace to decline 37% and nonfatal shootings to decline 33%, based on data through June 24, the Sun analysis found.

Young people under 20 years old, specifically, have been wounded or killed by gunfire 60% less often so far in 2024 than during the same period in 2023 — from 85 gun violence victims 19 and younger in 2023 to 34 through June 24 this year.

The mayor also trumpeted the value of bringing community into the picture to co-produce public safety. Growing up in Park Heights, Scott said, it felt like people were trying to make his Northwest Baltimore neighborhood safer for — not with — him and his neighbors.

Groups on the ground, like Fayette Street Outreach, know what’s best for and what’s needed in their neighborhood, Scott said. His administration is partnering with Fayette Street Outreach on a neighborhood policing plan pilot designed to empower residents to identify and help solve neighborhood issues contributing to crime or blight.

“I know how critical it is to have those relationships because we knew it wasn’t going to be just us. It wasn’t going to be just the police department. It wasn’t going to be just this community organization or this other city agency,” Scott said. “Everyone has to work together.”

Fayette Street Outreach strives to meet community needs by first listening to resident voices, leaders say. That can look like offering a podcast course for teens over summer break or creating positive green spaces in vacant areas. A stretch of 2100 West Saratoga Street, for instance, now features picnic tables and young trees, in the hopes of hosting gatherings.

“Before anything — law enforcement or anybody else — in order for you to help change, you have to have a relationship. That takes time,” said Timothy Bridges, the organization’s vice president. “A lot of times, people want to get past that part and jump to something else. It’s a process to it.”

Webster, the researcher, said there is evidence that cleaning and greening projects, and addressing neighborhood blight, have public safety benefits. Baltimore is making slow but important progress on that front, he said.

Other factors at play in the violence decline, Webster said, likely include the group violence reduction strategy. It’s a focused deterrence, or “carrot-and-stick,” approach that couples a warning about pending law enforcement action with an offer for help transitioning from current behaviors. The effort saw success in its first pilot district and is working to expand citywide — which Webster said leaders admit can be a challenge.

He also pointed to the potential for more community trust in police, following years of work to reform the department under the court-mandated consent decree, and the potential that changes in the prosecutor’s office could be having an “incapacitation effect,” or short-term results in getting “bad guys off the street,” Webster said.

Democratic State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, who took office in January 2023, praised his office’s work in “setting the tone” that gun violence or carrying firearms is not acceptable, in repairing “broken” relationships with law enforcement agencies and in securing convictions for “trigger-pullers.” He cited prosecution figures that reflect a year-over-year increase in convictions for some crimes, including cases where individuals were initially criminally charged in a homicide.

The defense-attorney- turned-prosecutor said “just locking people up” won’t effectively drive down violence, but he believes it’s important to “show people it’s a possibility” and pair that with services and resources.

Looking forward, he hopes the city will prioritize services for people returning to Baltimore from prison or jail — and that the city can more effectively focus on “quality of life” crimes such as drug possession, loitering or open container laws. His citation docket initiative seeks to address those low-level offenses with citations and an offer to complete community service in exchange for dismissing the case.

“When I talk to the residents and I go out to the community meetings, sometimes the violent crime, it’s not on their doorstep. Quality of life crimes, they see them on their doorstep,” Bates said. “Like my dad said, ‘You gotta be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.’”

The city also is seeing reductions in many property crime categories through June 24, compared with the same period last year. Overall, property crime is on pace to be down 8% through June 30 compared with the same period last year. That includes crimes such as burglary, larceny, and larceny from autos.

Auto thefts, a skyrocketing crime in Baltimore and nationwide in recent years, are lower than in the first six months of 2023, but remain high compared with the rest of the last decade — 3,213 through June 24, or about 18 per day, compared with lows during the pandemic around 1,500, or about nine per day, during the same period.

Conway said neighborhoods that don’t struggle with poverty or drug use and addiction are likely not the ones bearing the brunt of violent crime in Baltimore. Instead, those neighborhoods might be seeing car break-ins or home invasions. The councilman said he’s heard “significant” complaints about those types of crimes, despite seeing homicides drop at historic rates.

“I hope when folks are talking about the significant progress that we’ve had, that we don’t lose sight of either-or: the huge win in the reduction in homicides, nor the amount of work that we need to do to make sure we’re addressing quality of life crimes,” he said.

Conway looks forward to a day when Baltimore’s homicide rate isn’t front-page news, when it’s no surprise that the city has fewer than 200 homicides, or fewer than 100. There’s so much positive news in Baltimore, he said, pointing to the AFRAM Festival in June, the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament and the recent Harbor Splash event where people — Conway included — swam in the Inner Harbor.

“I jumped in, dunked my entire head and did the backstroke,” Conway said. “The whole shebang.”