Growing Up Baltimore – Dangerfield
During the day, some of the winding streets of Cherry Hill are largely empty and deceptively tranquil, despite a reputation as a south Baltimore neighborhood plagued by drugs and violence. That perception was reinforced by the recent murder of Angelo Dangerfield, described by friends and family as a “good kid,” who stayed out of trouble, only to be gunned down on the street a few doors from the apartment he shared with his mother.
On the living room couch of her modest apartment, Doris Dangerfield sits beside a shoebox filled with photos of her son and sheafs of paper, detailing his accomplishments.
Dabbing at her reddened eyes, Ms. Dangerfield, a small woman, tries to make sense of her son’s murder – Baltimore’s 207th of the year.
“I don’t know why somebody would do that to him.”
Angelo Dangerfield, a high school graduate, worked at the Housing Authority of Baltimore City as a laborer, gutting homes to prepare them for rehabilitation. She said her son was never in trouble with the law, which city police have confirmed.
“I want my son to come through that door. He always called me, ‘Miss Jean.’ And when he come in the house, ‘What you doin’ today, Miss Jean? You alright today, Miss Jean? Miss Jean, you need this, you need that? Or he’d say, “Mom, can I do something for you today?”
Doris Dangerfield says her son, who lived with her for the last nine years in their Cherry Hill apartment, was mindful of the dangers outside the front door.
“Angelo would always try to avoid areas that he see trouble. He’d walk on the other side of the street. Or if he see this and that, he’d turn around, walk back, go a different way, so he won’t be involved into none of that.”
In fact, Angelo Dangerfield, who grew up in Germany and Texas, vowed to move his mother out of Cherry Hill. Recently, she says her son had complained about being hassled on the street when he was walking to, and walking back from work.
“He would come home from work and say some people would call him a snitch. He wasn’t a snitch.”
[Khalid]: “Have you had murders here or shootings, recently?”
[Dangerfield]: “It’s all than Cherry Hill and he tried to avoid the areas.”
[Khalid]: “Did he say he had been threatened at all, other than people calling him a snitch?”
[Dangerfield]: “He said people would approach him.”
Being labeled as a “snitch,” or someone who cooperates with police, can have deadly consequences, especially after the controversial “Stop Snitching” DVDs produced a few years ago by local drug dealers. But statistically, the number of violent crimes continues to drop.
According to city police, there have been 216 murders in Baltimore this year, the same as last year’s total, when the number of homicides reached a 20-year low. The number of non-fatal shootings are down significantly. And teen homicides are down by 45 percent.
In the Southern Police District, where Cherry Hill is located, murders are down by 30 percent and non-fatal shootings down by half, so far this year. But those figures do little to dispel the fears of residents, like Ms. Dangerfield, who say they are surrounded by drugs and violence.
“Nobody ever get used to it, they just have to learn how to accept it and deal with it.”
Bobby Carter, a co-worker of Angelo’s, stood in the living room of the apartment. Dressed in his work clothes, a hood and heavy boots, Carter, a lay minister, came to express his condolences. He spoke with Ms. Dangerfield about the dangers of the streets.
[Dangerfield]: “…Angelo was always dealing with the positive.”
[Carter]: “I know, but some time you come in contact with people and it’s called ‘jealousy.’ Jealousy is what cause people to do the things they do, because they want what you have. And any way the enemy, through them, can take ‘em down, he will.”
Carter says the enemy isn’t gangs, or drug dealers, individually. Instead, he said they form a part of an age-old, metaphysical, collective evil in the form of…
“The enemy? The enemy is Satan.”
But, added Carter, the responsibility for ending the reign of violence that took his friend rests with those who live in communities, like Cherry Hill – with a little divine intervention.
“We need order. First of all, we need to get in fellowship with the Lord. Structure comes from the home front, because if you don’t do that, the enemy has so many tactics that he can draw you with, material things, money, sex, whatever it is the draw your attention. I mean, if you’re not really dealing with positive people, if you’re dealing with negative people, you’re going to get a negative response.”
And even for a young man, who sought to avoid them — like many who stayed in school and found work — negative responses eventually sought him out anyway.
I’m Sunni Khalid, reporting in Cherry Hill, South Baltimore, for 88.1, WYPR.
Our series, “Growing Up Baltimore,” is made possible, in part, Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence. The findings and conclusions presented in our series do not necessarily reflect the opinions of these organizations.
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