Baltimore's most dangerous neighborhoods

Helen Vello lives the story outside the headlines pointing to record lows in violent crime.

Her home of more than 30 years is located right in the middle of what is statistically the most dangerous neighborhood in Baltimore city.

ABC2 studied the police departments calls for service for part one violent crimes.  Buried in spreadsheets, it's in these details where the devil lives.

Based on call volume and actual reports taken, the most dangerous area of Baltimore city is found in the northern part of the Southeastern district.

Police call it post 223, residents of neighborhoods Ellwood Park, Baltimore Highlands and Northeast Patterson Park call it home.

"When I bought this house in 68, I bought this house to die here, not to die because I lived here. That's how most of us feel," said Vello.

Because for years she saw this area change, Ellwood Park was once proud, safe and strong in community and identity.

"It was just a great place to live,” said Vello.  [And now it’s] 150 percent the opposite.  It's sad.  When I come home from the store and I get as far as say Highland Avenue and Pulaski Hwy my heart sinks cause I just don't know what I am going to face when I come home."

The odds are she'd come home to one of the hundreds of aggravated assaults and robberies reported to police last year.

But those numbers stitched together with other troubling trends.

According to statistics from Baltimore Neighborhood Indicator Alliance, seven percent of homes in Elwood Park are vacant, nearly 30 percent of school aged children are chronically absent and home ownership continues to plummet and struggles to break 30 percent.

These are key indicators experts say that point to a distressed community.

"That over time sort of results in an unraveling if you will of the core and fabric of the safety and stability of the neighborhood."

Debra Furr-Holden, Ph.D with Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health studies what makes a neighborhood rise or fall.

Baltimore she says provides a unique challenge. It is a city knitted together by the defined borders of small, independent neighborhoods which provides a patchwork for crime to move in and out with ease.

As one neighborhood fights for its streets, it often comes at the expense of the neighborhood just a few blocks away.

"If they could literally look across the landscape because to provide concentrated services in one aspect of say Patterson, will just displace the problem over 5 blocks and what's predictable is in 18, 24 months, the problem will come back to Patterson," said Furr-Holden.