"This is a bad neighborhood," the cabdriver tells me as we pull up to an ugly, beige, low-rise building in the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Lower Park Heights. The dappled sunlight on the tree-lined street belies the fact that this area has one of highest per capita crime rates in Baltimore.
There are bars on the steel door entrance to the building and a keypad lock. It looks like a deserted prison. I'm relieved when the door opens before I exit the cab and a middle-aged white guy with an ID tag emerges talking on his iPhone. He waves to me, and I realize he is Michael Schwartzberg, the public information officer for Baltimore's Health Department.
Schwartzberg has set up interviews for me with convicted criminals, but we aren't meeting at a prison. We're meeting in the headquarters of Park Heights Safe Streets. The ex-cons are two of their trusted staff members.
Prosaically typecast, they are both wearing bright-orange shirts.
[For more of this story, written by Fawn Johnson, go to http://www.citylab.com/crime/2...top-violence/382155/]
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