Perry Hall and Gilmor Homes - worlds apart and yet so close

Linwen Way  can hardly be more suburban. Green lawns, station wagons, SUVs and pick-up trucks parked in the driveways in front of double wide garages attached to  two story homes; beige vinyl siding on the second floor, brick on the first level, a small porch roof over the front door. Dream homes of the 70s and 80s. The wildest thing here is the ruckus of car with a customized muffler. There are sidewalks but the street is so short, hardly 500 feet long, ending in a turn-around, that any stranger immediately catches the eye. The cul de sac as urban design is still popular among parents because kids can play in the street, there is no through traffic and cars are slow.

Linwen Way, Perry Hall: Suburban peace

Linwen Way is part of a maze of residential subdivisons that make up what is known as Perry Hall, an area that Baltimore County designated as one of two growth areas. Its "town center" is nearby White Marsh. Belair Rd, the old Route One connection to Philadelphia is near, some days, if the wind comes from the southeast, one can hear the traffic on I-95.

Gilmor Homes in West Baltimore is the quintessential public housing complex, featured in the British Guardian as the home of Freddie Gray. Gilmor homes is frequently the subject of Sun articles when residents complain about the living conditions, or when the mayor suggests demolition in order to reduce crime. "People complained about not being safe, the line of of sight is terrible" she said earlier this year on a site visit. The Gilmor housing complex was never a place of dreams, even though it also has courts in which kids play and cars park, all of Gilmor has become a dead end, even if one can drive out on the other end of the courts.

For an urban kid, used to the grid of the city, the curvy suburban streets can be disorienting and so it came that Dawnta Harris of Gilmor Homes didn't manage to elude the county cruiser showing up behind him. Caught in the dead end, all he could do was turn his Jeep around only to face Amy Caprio in full uniform, having stepped out of her car, weapon drawn. In Perry Hall the police is a friend. People call the cops when they see something that looks suspicious and the cops actually come. So here was Amy in quiet Linwen Way, responding to the call of a resident facing a young man from a world apart.  In Gilmor Homes, older people who suffer under the illegal activities in their court would love it if they could trust the police or if the cops would show up as quickly as in the County. But the trust has long been broken and for the young men there the police is just the enemy.

The encounter of those two worlds ended violently and deadly when Dawnta followed his instincts, one would have to surmise, ducked and gunned the accelerator. "In cold blood killing an officer" most would say, "fearful and not seeing what he was doing",  his attorney would later say when Dawnta was caught and arraigned. County cops are not only well respected in the community, they are also efficient. They usually catch their criminals, even if in this case they resorted to the same tactics as their city colleagues, putting an entire block on lock-down.

County police chief Sheridan, 74, is in his second run in the post, his term lasted 11 years, before he became State Police superintendent. County Executive Kamenetz brought him back last year and shocked council members nad the public with this surprise move. To call Sheridan "old school" would be an understatement, but to most in the County this is a compliment.

Gilmore Homes: Public housing gone bad

Perry Hall and Gilmor homes are two very different solutions to the Baltimore area postwar housing crunch. Gilmore is one of those unsuccessful insertions of run-of-the-mill low rise blocks into the historic fabric of West Baltimore, an intervention which was then called "slum and blight" removal. Perry Hall is a response to slum a and blight as well, its name is move as far as possible from the city. Among planners places like it and Honeygo have a bad name, for their uniformity, their income and race segregation, their total car dependency and lack of a center. But the people who live there like it, except maybe for their teenage kids who complain that there is nothing to do. Their generation is now fueling the cohort which is returning to cities for the food halls, brew pubs and coffee shops.

In Linwen Way the suburban idyll was shattered with a young white and female officer lying dying in the street and a young black and male perpetrator being caught very soon thereafter. Police says that the young driver was waiting for three friends who were burglarizing a home, reportedly in search of guns. The Jeep apparently stolen, the young man eluding home detention. The narrative of the dead hero and the criminal monster was too obvious to not be taken up immediately in all its variations. The tragedy, though, is not only the senseless death of a young promising woman, but also the hopeless life of a 16 year old who is all too representative for the dead end many of his brothers find themselves.

There couldn't be a plot that would unleash the latent and open racial tensions in Baltimore any more than the tragedy that had unfolded in Perry Hall. City and County were both already reeling from leadership loss, the City through self inflicted negligence in the police department, the County through the death of its Executive. Both had never come to terms with the unrest that followed Freddie Gray's death, many in the County believing they didn't have to, it wasn't their problem. The late Kevin Kamenetz knew better than that and, especially in his campaign for Governor, emphasized that the County needed a strong city at its core. But many of his constituents see the matter in much simpler terms and are now flooding social media outlets with their view of the world, a view that, no doubt, shaped Baltimore City and County in the first place. On the surface simply fleeing the noise, crime and dirt of the city for the peace of the County, underneath, though and elaborate system of redlining, restrictive covenants and race discrimination.

When the peace was shattered

Long has the County ceased to be the homogeneous retreat it once was; the inner ring suburbs are  now suffering from bad schools, lower property values, crime and disinvestment just like city neighborhoods did before. Further out in Perry Hall things seemed to be better, but the frontiers have moved even further, into Harford and Cecil Counties or all the way to Delaware. But Harford County has its Edgewood, and crime has also hit home in Bel Air. Turns out, distance from the City is no solution, crime is always already there.

And so we have now on full display not only the battles between races and people like County Delegate McDonough who pour oil into the fire with talk about city thugs but also quarrels between the department of Juvenile Justice, the State's Attorney and the various candidates vying for office. Lost seems to be the question if anyone could have offered better choices to Dawnta Harris.

Gilmor Homes and Linwen Way, so far apart, so different and yet, both are failed responses when it comes to building sustainable and livable communities. As inviting as this particular tragedy is for airing all the usual grievances and animosities, the path forward needs to break new ground and entail bridges not walls. No society can sustain itself, if it is as deeply divided as ours.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA