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While Baltimore has become the center of a national political firestorm over crime and safety, two men who know the city’s toughest streets well said the “real crisis” they face daily isn’t recognized or acknowledged by Maryland’s governor in media interviews.
Dirty Harry and Cartier Glockboy, asked only to be identified only by their street names, walked with Spotlight on Maryland through the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood on Thursday. The Southwest Baltimore community, a five-minute bus ride from the city’s Inner Harbor, is one of the most crime-ridden collection of blocks.
Both men pointed out the neighborhood’s structural decay during their nearly two-and-a-half-hour walk through the community. Despite the streets being littered with used drug paraphernalia and trash, the two men in their mid-30s described life after years in prison, selling drugs on street corners, dodging tragic gun violence, and now trying to stay clear of the street life they have known since they were pre-teens.
To be honest, the streets were in my house,” said Dirty Harry, recalling a childhood surrounded by crime, poverty, and addiction in Baltimore. “The streets pull all the way up to my house to the point where I didn’t have no locks on the door, the windows didn’t close.”
“It was just 24 hours, so it became normal,” Dirty Harry added.
Released from prison in 2022 after serving over seven years for armed carjacking, according to court records, Dirty Harry now says he’s trying to turn his life around and leave his past behind. He said that he feels the odds and the system still seem stacked against him, even though top Maryland officials claim Baltimore has significantly improved.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, in his annual State of the State address to the Maryland General Assembly in early February, said that “the data is telling us that we need to have a greater statewide focus on supporting and elevating our men and boys.”
“[W]e need to make sure our men and boys aren’t falling behind,” Moore said in February. “I strongly believe our mission to uplift men and boys isn’t in conflict with our values to leave no one behind – it’s in concert with them.”
The men told Spotlight on Maryland that they feel their community is not only falling further behind but is also the last to be recognized.
The Baltimore men say the city is still struggling despite the claims of improvement heard in the national limelight
Over the last two weeks, a feud between Moore and President Donald Trump flared up over crime and safety.
The president declared a “public safety emergency” after a 19-year-old employee of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was allegedly violently attacked outside Dupont Circle in the nation’s capital. The employee reportedly tried to stop a carjacking by about 10 juveniles, according to a Washington, D.C. police report.
After the National Guard was activated in the nation’s capital, Moore took the first step by saying he refused to send the Maryland National Guard to tackle violent crime, open-air drug markets, and quality-of-life problems during a prime-time national news interview.
Trump then referenced Baltimore’s crime history the following day from the White House, citing a U.S. News and World Report that ranks the city as one of the four most dangerous in the country. Maryland’s governor then doubled down, inviting the president on a crime walk through Baltimore.
Trump dismissed Moore’s invitation, calling Baltimore “a hellhole” this week and mocking the governor’s offer. The governor responded on CNN.
“We are seeing a lack of seriousness from the President,” Moore said. “That’s why I invited him to come to Baltimore, to come be educated so he doesn’t have to spout nonsense from the Oval Office.”
While the verbal battle continues on cable news, Dirty Harry and Cartier Glockboy said the real fight is happening unnoticed in communities where young men are still pulled toward street life out of what they feel is necessity, without truly understanding life beyond what they see in front of them.
Dirty Harry told Spotlight on Maryland that the realities surrounding him in his community contradict Moore’s portrayal of life in Baltimore.
Spotlight on Maryland asked Dirty Harry whether crime-fighting and anti-violence programs like Safe Streets and other nonprofit efforts promoted by Maryland and city officials have helped him and others he knows in Baltimore’s drug-dealing community to divert or find other economic opportunities outside of a life on the streets that often turns violent.
Where’s the f*** they at? Where are they,” Dirty Harry asked. “They’re not out here doing anything.”
“If Black lives mattered, there wouldn’t be so many homeless and hungry people out here. They walk around chanting. [It] looks like they’re throwing a party to me,” Dirty Harry added.
Dirty Harry was then asked if he felt that many of the nonprofits that have sprung up across the city, which receive local, state, and federal funding, are either a political movement or genuinely care about people like him.
“To me, they’re just chasing a nonprofit grant,” Dirty Harry said. “They’re not feeding a soul out here.”
Disconnect between the streets and the state
Neither Dirty Harry nor Cartier Glockboy told Spotlight on Maryland that they had seen or heard about Moore in their neighborhood. Instead, they say that interactions with state representatives, when they happen at all, often feel distant and cold.
“They don’t have no access on a personal level,” Dirty Harry said. “Even through a secretary.”
During the two and a half hours in Carrollton Ridge, Spotlight on Maryland did not see a single marked car from the city or state, nor witness a Baltimore Police Department vehicle driving in the neighborhood.
As the men spoke, their frustration with the promises from local and state officials visibly simmered. To them, promises of “all-of-the-above” crime strategies felt hollow.
‘All they know’
Walking through Southwest Baltimore, the men pointed out vacant homes, graffiti-covered alleys, and corners where drugs are used and sold. Both men said that despite their history, they are deeply concerned about the current state of their city, especially the young men selling drugs and firearms on the street.
All they know is these back alleys,” said Dirty Harry. “It’s numbing. They get in their feelings and they can’t control themselves. They’re not strong enough. Then they just give up.”
But giving up isn’t on their agenda.
Both men say they are working to stay out of the drug game for good. They said they are actively pursuing careers in music and modeling, and they hope it is a way to escape the environment they say is crushing the next generation.
