Another year starts violently in Baltimore. Roca keeps knocking on doors to try to save lives.

The gauge we hate but cannot ignore shows that 2021 is already worse than 2020. There were 29 homicides in Baltimore by Wednesday; that’s one more than at the same time last year. All but six of those killings were by gun. On top of that, 51 other people were wounded, and that represents 10 more nonfatal shootings than police recorded by Feb. 3, 2020. There were no killings on Dec. 8, the day Brandon Scott took office as Baltimore’s new mayor. But there have been 56 homicide victims since then, including the Safe Streets peacemaker Dante Barksdale.