Held during the mid-morning on Wednesday, the Baltimore City Council heard its third and likely final hearing into the city agency responses to the Brooklyn Homes shooting.

That shooting, likely the worst in Baltimore’s history, killed 18-year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez and 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi on July 2nd. There were 28 others injured, most of them were teenagers.

No members of the public came to testify at this hearing; earlier this month the council cut their hearing short after the emotional testimony of Krystal Gonzalez, Aaliyah’s mother.

Despite continued pressing questions from the council, they received few answers as to “why” the Baltimore Police Department repeatedly chose not to escalate calls for service from Brooklyn Homes up the chain of command for more resources.

“Walk me through that situational awareness of how the officer did not see those individuals gathering throughout the day leading up to 800 people,” asked Councilmember Phylicia Porter of District 10, the district including Brooklyn Homes, after noting that an after-action report said earlier in the day police were nearby responding to a traffic incident.

But Worley said officers would have known.

“We knew starting at 7 a.m. they were setting up tables,” he said.

That didn’t sit well for Counclimember Zeke Cohen of District 1, many parts of which are in the area typically called the “white L,” that includes Fells Point where large unpermitted gatherings occur frequently and organically. Cohen called for clear protocols.

“We got to have a plan for how we're going to address it,” he said. “So there's not any kind of differential in response… around one part of the city versus the other part of the city.”

Yet, BPD Chief of Staff Michelle Wirzberger said they did have a policy for handling large unpermitted gatherings at the time of the Brooklyn Day shooting — it just wasn’t written down.

“It if is not in black and white, it’s squishy,” she explained. She said now the policy is written down and “crystal clear.”

But Councilmember Porter says police told the council the same story in 2021 during another hearing after a quadruple shooting in Carroll Park — also in Porter’s district.

“This is not an aspect of officer indifference, this is a clear example of not following the rules and lives are being lost.”

The Housing Authority and MONSE

The council also heard from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City and the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE).

Janet Abrahams, the CEO of the housing authority, stressed that the authority didn’t know about Brooklyn Day before it happened. She said staff were not scheduled to be on site during the weekends and would have gone home by about 4 p.m. on Friday, although she has admitted that staff could have had a stronger community relationship with residents that would have allowed them to be aware of the party.

“We also realized that the requirement for prior approval for indoor and outdoor events as defined in the lease was not included in our governing document, the Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policies,” said Abrahams. That was updated in July, shortly after the shooting. Most events are also organized through the local tenant council representative, but in Brooklyn Homes, that person was still going through onboarding at the time of the shooting.

Councilmember Mark Conway, District 4, cautioned the authority not to make the process of applying for an event permit so involved that people would skip it and hold unpermitted events anyway.

Brooklyn Homes now has armed private security — as do the other HABC properties — that comes as part of an extended pilot program that was in place at other communities before the shooting. That extension was already in the works before Brooklyn Day but not yet in effect at Brooklyn Homes. That security could alert officials about potentially dangerous problems on the property, suggested Abrahams.

Even on Brooklyn Day, Abrahams said that if the authority had been alerted they could and that they have, shuffled security around.

“When we were notified of another event that was taking place the following day at Cherry Hill, we already moved our security to ensure that they responded to that particular event,” she said.

During MONSE’s presentation, Interim Director Stefanie Mavronis shared that 86 residents from Brooklyn Homes have asked for relocation assistance.

Abrahams was able to confirm that “one family member” has been transferred from the property. But she was also frank, explaining that there are certain requirements the authority has that qualify someone for an emergency transfer. Part of that includes a “threat assessment” conducted by the police department. In all, the process can take weeks.

“Some residents will be denied,” Abrahams told the council.

Mavronis told councilmembers that the agency will be implementing new large events protocols for Safe Streets next month. The group did have procedures for reporting to MONSE when it came to events Safe Streets was organizing but not for other events held in the community.

“We believe that the updated protocol would afford us the opportunity to be even more proactive,” said Mavronis.