Francis Scott Key saw the American flag soar above Fort McHenry on September 14, 1814, despite constant bombardment by British forces; so moved by the experience in Baltimore, Key penned the 'Star-Spangled Banner', a song that would become our national anthem.
Judging by how little black people care about the state of their city, why would black parent(s) care about where their children are in Baltimore? Year around curfew centers needed...
Not two hundred years later, the American flag soaring above Baltimore has not been able to withstand catastrophic levels of white flight - due to unsustainable rates of black crime - which enabled black political hegemony protecting an intifada of black violence (Johns Hopkins University reports that 90 percent of the 8,000 juveniles arrested in Baltimore in 2007 were black males).
The city, where our national anthem was penned, is dead.
Dead.
Conservatives have no answer (just embrace Martin Luther King's "Dream"!) and liberals have even worse answers ("if we don't mention race when discussing crime, we can't be called racists!").
Each wants to blame a lack of a father-figure to guide underprivileged black children (raised solely by welfare addicted mothers or grandparents), without first asking why these underprivileged black women are having kids at all?
Thinking back roughly 22 years ago, a study confirmed that more than half of black men in Baltimore (56 percent) were under criminal supervision on any given day in 1991. [Officials question study of city's young black men, Baltimore Sun, 9-3-1992]:
Despite a report showing that 56 percent of young black men in Baltimore were in trouble with the law, the city's top law enforcement official said yesterday that "there are more good ones than bad ones."
State's Attorney Stuart O. Simms said the report by the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA) included so many minor offenses and charges that it unintentionally supported "the bad stereotype of African-American males ages 18 to 35 today."
Del. Elijah E. Cummings, chairman of the Governor's Commission on Black Males, said the report -- which made front-page news Tuesday -- told black male students "on the very day they began school that you're probably not going to make it. That's a hell of a message to send out."
But both officials said they agreed with the report's conclusion that American society was dealing with young black men mainly by punishing them and not by developing programs that could help prevent them from getting into trouble.
"The criminal justice system is the forced solution to too many problems," Mr. Simms said. "The real solution lies at the front end --through prevention, education, job training, new housing."
Mr. Cummings said that "if all you see is black men being arrested, there's an assumption when a black man walks down the street that he will do harm. I feel it even as an elected official and a Phi Beta Kappa. I feel as a black man that I'm being watched."
The report said 34,025 of the 60,715 young black men in Baltimore, or 56 percent, were "under criminal justice supervision on any given day in 1991."
Herbert J. Hoelter, director of NCIA, said the report was intended to show how young black men are disproportionately targeted by the criminal justice system -- often for petty offenses -- not to further negative stereotypes of young black men.
About one-fourth of the young black men cited in the study as being in trouble with the law in 1991 were in state prison or on parole.
The great majority -- more than two-thirds -- were on probation, awaiting trial or had outstanding arrest warrants against them.
The great majority of these criminal black males fathered bastard black children in Baltimore (raised by blameless mothers) that have gone on to engage in the same type of behavior as their fathers.
With much of the city unsafe for law-abiding citizens (when a park is no longer a welcome place for people to exercise and enjoy fresh air; and for children to play, you know your city is dead), inattentive black parent(s) have forced the black politically-dominated city of Baltimore to enact some sort of control mechanism.
Nothing epitomizes this more (why residents fear parks) than the plague of stray bullets. 
Why is 63.5 percent black Baltimore dying? Juvenile delinquents running wild...
Baltimore is plagued with stray bullet killings, with black people firing their weapons in a heated argument and missing. Collateral damage. It happened in 1995; wounding a six-year-old in 2008; also in 2012; and killing a 10-year-old in 2013. A four-old-black boy was hot in 2007, prompting a fiery response from the police chief of the city. [Boy, 4, hit by stray bullet: City police official expresses anger at `mindless' shooting, Baltimore Sun, 1-3-2007]:
All they heard were the gunshots, and the first thing that Chanel Lee and her husband Donte Bond tried to do was protect their children.
The family had just returned home from shopping, and Bond hurriedly tried to unlock the front door to his Northeast Baltimore house. Lee stood behind him with their 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter.
When they finally made it inside yesterday, Bond told Lee, "Check the kids." They took off one of their son's shoes and saw blood - and a bullet hole near his heel.
"He just started crying," Lee, 24, said of her injured son, Donte. "I thought he was crying because we were trying to push him inside."
The bullet was one of several fired from a gun used by a man who police said might have intervened in an argument between two female neighbors.
Last night, police issued a warrant charging Torino Truitt, 31, of the 700 block of Appleton St. with attempted second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault, a handgun violation and reckless endangerment.
The dispute began with name-calling and ended with bullets flying through the neighborhood - a seemingly senseless escalation of violence.
"This is exactly what's happening in the city, all over the place," said Deputy Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. "Just mindless, crazy shooting incidents that are occurring right now."
Bealefeld said the shooting was the latest example of people using guns to end arguments.
"These are minor disputes that are being resolved by armed individuals," Bealefeld said.
"The ability of the Police Department to mediate every slight, every insult, every bad name ... is beyond any police department's capabilities," he said.
With parents no longer, wait - black parents, teaching basic rules governing civil behavior, the plague of nonfatal shootings, black-on-black homicides, and stray bullets injuring/killing citizens will never cease. 
Is 2014 Baltimore a depiction of the "failure of democracy" Heinlein dared predict in Starship Troopers?
Curfew Centers (started in 2010), paid for by the dwindling white tax-base of Baltimore (remember, 40 percent of the city budget of Baltimore is paid for by the state of Maryland), is the answer to the plague of unsupervised black children in the city [Baltimore Opens City Curfew Center, CBS Baltimore, 6-14-2011]:
Baltimore City officials are collaborating to keep teens off the streets and out of trouble this summer.
Jessica Kartalija reports they’re announcing the opening of the City’s Curfew Center.
The center will stay open through the night and teens will be given something to eat while they wait for their parents. Counselors will be on-hand to talk with families.
“I don’t think kids should be outside at night. There’s no telling what could happen to them,” said Kayla Ivy.
Now the city of Baltimore is imposing a curfew, hoping situations like that one don’t happen again.
“Children under the age of 17 are not allowed out without an adult after midnight on weekends and after 11 p.m. on weeknights,” said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
City schools, law enforcement and juvenile justice departments are all on board.
Teens caught violating the law will come to the Curfew Center on North Avenue.
“Last summer, over 1,000 were brought to the Curfew Center. Seventeen percent were under the age of 13,” Rawlings-Blake said.
The center aims to end violence, make parents accountable for their children and provide supervision.
“You guys have to step up in your community and step up for yourself and take advantage of the opportunities the mayor has laid out for you,” said Police Commissioner Fred Bealefeld.
Not enough.
Children as young - wait, black children - as eight are running around the streets of Baltimore. Parents? They don't care what their children (after all, look what they've done to the city!)[City officials consider earlier youth curfew: Councilman Scott pushes legislation to require children, teens to be off the streets, Baltimore Sun, 9-9-2013]:
Top city leaders are supporting an effort to tighten Baltimore's curfew law that could require children younger than 14 to be off the street as early as 9 p.m.
Councilman Brandon M. Scott introduced legislation Monday that would abolish the city's midnight curfew for children and teens and instead set a staggered deadline for youths to be indoors based on their age and whether school's in session.
cott called the current curfew — established nearly 20 years ago — absurd for failing to distinguish between an infant or teenager, and for allowing youths to stay outdoors so late.
"If their parent was out there with them, OK. But they're 8-year-olds, and there is no adult anywhere in sight," Scott said at 10:30 p.m. on a recent night as he watched a group of boys playing football in a street in Belair-Edison. The Northeast Baltimore neighborhood was a scene of violence this summer.
Not enough. Black violence is reaching epidemic proportions in Baltimore (with areas of the city boasting concentrations of whiteness the targets of black crime), meaning the black political establishment must respond. Beside setting up new enforcement zones, those curfew centers will now be extended to year-around detention facilities to house unsupervised black children. [Mayor proposes year-round curfew centers: Rawlings-Blake unveils anti-crime initiatives during State of the City address, Baltimore Sun, 2-10-14]:
Baltimore will open several year-round, 24-hour centers to enforce the city's curfew for children and teens and connect troubled youths to services under a plan Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake unveiled Monday in her State of the City address.
Youth Connection Centers, modeled after similar programs in Washington and Miami, will replace the city's curfew center in the Barclay neighborhood that operates from June to August.
The first center is expected to open in the northwest or southeast section of the city by this summer, the mayor said. City officials could not provide an estimated cost, but said it would be funded both with general fund dollars and grants.
"We know when our young people are on the streets at night that they are more likely to either become victims of violent crime or the perpetrators of it," Rawlings-Blake said in her 36-minute speech to an audience that included Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown and schools interim CEO Tisha Edwards.
The mayor spent nearly half her address discussing her administration's strategy for combating violence, including increasing the number of geographic zones patrolled by officers from four to 17 and adding a staff commander for the CitiWatch surveillance program to better respond to crime in real time.
Year-around curfew centers.
Because black parent(s) in Baltimore are incapable of providing responsible parenting to their - odds are good - bastard black children.
Think about this for a second.
Year-around curfew centers are needed in 63.5 percent black Baltimore, because black parent(s) have little regard for supervising their children.
Even those as young as eight-years-old.
The British were unable to subdue America during the War of 1812, with Key able to pen the Star-Spangled Banner (... but the flag was still there); in 2014 Baltimore, the black population of Baltimore has done far damage than the British Army could ever hope to inflict.
Do you remember your 'History and Moral Philosophy' class lecture from Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers?
Jean Dubois 'History and Moral Philosophy' class from the fictional work, Starship Troopers.
You remember it, right?
Set well into the future, Dubois is leading a discussion on the collapse of democracy and the chaos that engulfed America in the late-20th century. A world where, “Law-abiding people,” Dubois had told us, “hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons . . . to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably — or even killed. … Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places — these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark.”
Dubois continues:
“These juvenile criminals hit a low level. Born with only the instinct for survival, the highest morality they achieved was a shaky loyalty to a peer group, a street gang. But the do-gooders attempted to ‘appeal to their better natures,’ to ‘reach them,’ to ‘spark their moral sense.’ Tosh! They had no ‘better natures’; experience taught them that what they were doing was the way to survive. The puppy never got his spanking; therefore what he did with pleasure and success must be ‘moral.’
“The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand — that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their ‘rights.’
“The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature. …
Mr. Dubois then turned to me. “I told you that ‘juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms. ‘Delinquent’ means ‘failing in duty.’ But duty is an adultvirtue — indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be, a ‘juvenile delinquent.’ But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents — people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.
“And that was the soft spot which destroyed what was in many ways an admirable culture. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of ‘rights’ . . . and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure.”
Ladies and gentlemen, Baltimore in 2014 offers the same set of circumstances Mr. Heinlein warned about bringing down democracy in a book published back in 1959.
Curfew Centers... needed year around in Baltimore, to house black juvenile delinquents who are terrorizing the city, making public parks (and the Inner Harbor) unsafe.
Baltimore is no longer the home of the free and land of brave; it's the home of an eternally protected black class of criminals, which popular culture (The Wire) strives to portray as a perpetually victimized class of angels.
A majority of white residents (living in the Southeast section of Baltimore) packed a forum addressing crime in the city, with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts, City Council members and state lawmakers in attendance.
It became obvious the only concern Rawlings-Blake has is to continue ensuring white tax-payers provide the funds to pay for those year-around curfew centers [Southeast on edge over crime as neighbors call for measured debate: Some worry area complaints minimize struggles of poorer neighborhoods, Baltimore Sun, 2-12-14]:
Crime can be a concern in any neighborhood, but this year the issue has taken on new urgency in neighborhoods like Canton and Highlandtown. Many are calling on the city to shift law enforcement resources into the area, but others say that perspective minimizes the plight of poorer parts of the city that have struggled with violence for years.
The event was organized by Del. Luke Clippinger, who said the area's problems reflect broader issues in a city with a climbing homicide rate.
Rawlings-Blake has called on residents to offer solutions in the debate over crime, and in response to one blog post voicing a litany of frustrations, pointed out that no area of town is entitled to more resources than another.
The mayor disputed the notion that "when crime happens in an area where the income taxes and property taxes are higher, we're supposed to care more."
"I am focused … on action and finding partners who are doing more than complain, that are willing to do more than write a check for their property tax," Rawlings-Blake said.
But some residents said they have had enough of crime in the city. Brian March, who lives about two blocks from where a man was robbed and beaten with a brick last month in Canton, said it doesn't seem as if law enforcement cares enough.
"I've already considered moving. Crime's been bad for a while," March said. "I haven't seen a cop walk through my area in 13 years."
The 'History and Moral Philosophy' class from Starship Troopers has proven nothing more than prophetic; that this fictional work of the future (written in the past) came true in a city that gave birth to the United States national anthem is one of the great ironies of our time.
Freedom has failed.
Democracy has died.
The rotting carcass of our "country" is on full-display in a city like Baltimore, where the black political class worries more for the rights of poor black communities than their duty to protect the integrity and civility of productive areas of the city.