Art nearly imitated life for actor Chris Clanton, who blasted the soaring crime rate in the of city of Baltimore after he was shot in the head in Charm City last Thursday.
Clanton, who portrayed a character named Savino in the popular HBO crime drama The Wire, suffered a perforation to his ear and bullet fragments to his skull in an incident that occurred at around 7 p.m. on April 28, Fox News reported.
“I’m pissed. I’m pissed because it’s uncalled for,” Clanton said according to Fox. “My son was not far from this incident. He was in the vicinity. Luckily, he didn’t see what happened.”
Clanton said he was not the target of the shooting and he also credited a Baltimore police officer named Stewart whose actions Clanton says probably saved his life.
The actor added that the climbing crime rate is frustrating because he is a native of the city. “I’m from here, I love it,” he said, adding, “But something has to change.”
Baltimore has suffered a rising crime rate even as the city explores defunding their police. The city faced one of its highest murder rates in history in 2019 with 348 murders. While 2020 saw slightly fewer murders — 335 by year’s end — but the murder rate has topped 300 for the last six years.
Despite that, in June of last year, the Baltimore City Council eliminated $22 million from the city’s police budget.
Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan slammed the city for defunding the police, calling the idea “reckless.”
“The people of Baltimore are very concerned about the violent crime, as are people all around the state,” Hogan said an interview on WBAL. “The city leaders and the legislators continue to fight every effort to stop this crime. I was shocked and outraged yesterday by the mayor’s crazy comments about his desire to defund the police and to slash their budget and shrink them for the next five years. That is the worst possible thing we could do to stop the violent crime in Baltimore City.”
“I just have strong difference of opinion. When you have violent crime out of control — 350 murders — I think the last thing you want to do is you can’t improve a situation by defunding the police. That’s like saying we’re going to slash all the education funding so we can educate kids better,” Hogan added.
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