Teen trouble

John Berardi clutched his warm pizza box as he walked home on a cold Baltimore evening in November 2024. He barely noticed a group of three teenagers in hoodies, two of whom held brooms. But as he walked by, the group asked him for some of his pizza. He ignored them and kept going, but the teens followed him down the street, demanding the pizza.

“OK. Here, take the pizza,” he said, quickly handing it over. Two of the teenagers fell back. “But one of them, it wasn’t enough for him,” Berardi recalled. That teenager followed Berardi down the block. “When I realized he was over my shoulder, he was already in full swing.”

The attacker smacked Berardi in the face with the pole of his metal broom and fled.

Berardi staggered forward as blood gushed from around his eye. Just then, he spotted a group of friends walking out the front door of a nearby house, and he asked them for help. They called 911 at 11:17 p.m. Medics arrived 10 minutes later. Berardi waited in the ambulance, determined to help police catch the perpetrator. But officers didn’t arrive on the scene until 11:47 p.m. By that time, the three teenagers were long gone.

Over the past two years, Baltimore has celebrated major reductions in some types of crime, notably homicides. Police Commissioner Richard Worley and State’s Attorney for Baltimore City Ivan Bates, who both took office in 2023, have prioritized efforts to fight crime. It’s working, but not universally. The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) is still severely understaffed. And the officers who remain on the force are struggling to combat a wave of crimes committed by juveniles.

BPD’s staffing crisis dates back to April 2015 when Freddie Gray, a black man, died of a spinal injury sustained during a post-arrest ride in a police van. This prompted days of violent protests. The progressive State’s Attorney for Baltimore at the time, Marilyn Mosby, filed charges against all six officers involved in the arrest. Judges acquitted three of them, and Mosby dropped charges against the remaining three. But it is hard to overstate the impact the case had on police. Officers resigned or retired in droves. Those who remained preferred to stay in their cars while on patrol, fearing Mosby would prosecute them for doing their jobs.

Nearly a decade later and despite major recruiting drives, BPD staffing has continued its precipitous decline. The city had 2,009 sworn officers in February. BPD advertises 525 sworn vacancies, but that likely understates the true extent of understaffing. In 2013, the city had over 2,900 sworn officers.

Berardi, 33, spent the days after the attack in and out of the hospital. Doctors soon gave him devastating news: The vision in his right eye, which had been struck by the broom pole, was permanently damaged. In between medical appointments, Berardi tried to put together the pieces of what happened that night and demand answers. It soon became clear that there were not enough officers to cope with too much juvenile crime.

And Baltimore is not the only major city with a youth crime problem. In 2023, youth arrests increased by 42% from 2022 to 2023 in New York City. In the state of California, the juvenile arrest rate increased 23% from 2022 to 2023.

Berardi learned officers should have apprehended his three teenage attackers long before he encountered them. Two different residents had called the police about them earlier that evening. The trio had rummaged around one man’s back porch and thrown a brick through a woman’s window. But police didn’t respond to either call.

Berardi has gotten several different excuses for why the officers who were on duty took 30 minutes to respond to his attack. One of the biggest factors seems to be that they were busy dealing with an armed carjacking involving 12- and 15-year-old suspects.

IN 2022, MOSBY LOST her reelection bid to Ivan Bates. She was also convicted of mortgage fraud and perjury. “You’re replacing a criminally corrupt, incompetent woman who hated cops and maliciously prosecuted cops, going back to Freddie Gray, and you replace her with someone who presumably isn’t corrupt and seems to be competent,” said Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Law and former BPD officer.

Bates works well with BPD and immediately stepped up prosecutions. His office put 1,000 more criminals behind bars in his first two years in office than Mosby did in her last two, according to data released by his office. And Baltimore witnessed a remarkable drop in homicides.

In 2022, the city recorded 334 reported homicides, but in 2024 that number dropped to 202. Moskos thinks Bates deserves some of the credit. “They’re just not that many murderers out there. So if you can take an extra dozen off the street, well, that’s half the crime drop right there,” he said.

If that’s true, the other half of the crime drop might be attributed to the leadership of Police Commissioner Worley, a 27-year BPD veteran. In media interviews, Worley says his familiarity with the city and the department enables him to assign personnel to the roles where they will be most effective. Brian Askew, who owns the private security firm Matcom, regularly works with BPD and has noticed the improvement: “Worley is deploying the resources to where they need to be deployed.”

But Berardi’s attack highlights the growing threat of juvenile crime. In the first half of 2022, prosecutors charged 17 juveniles with robbery. In the first half of 2024, that figure skyrocketed to 246. And the ages of those committing crimes keep dropping. In December, police arrested a 9-year-old for carjacking. When police arrest a juvenile, they are required to take them to the Department of Juvenile Services, where they are often released the same night, sometimes with an ankle monitor.

That’s what happened with the 12- and 15-year-olds arrested for carjacking the night of Berardi’s attack. This is despite the fact that the 15-year-old had six prior arrests, including a handgun violation. Juveniles can commit crime after crime, with little to no accountability. Bates has been speaking out about the need for reform, but progress is slow.

Berardi and I met for an interview at a café near his house. He drove there as a safety measure, even though he says he used to walk everywhere. The following morning he reported for surgery that might restore some of the vision to his eye. His recovery required him to lie face down for two weeks.

He has been attending public meetings and writing to government officials to raise awareness about the failures leading up to his attack. He’s disappointed at the lack of response from the mayor of Baltimore and Maryland’s governor but withholds judgment from BPD. “I don’t want to get the cops a bad rap. I think they’re doing their best,” Berardi said. “They’re very reactive. They don’t have the resources to be proactive. If they were proactive, they would have caught those three guys hours before they got to me.”

Please read Part 3 of this 360 feature: “Reduction in force”