Wilfredo Lee/AP

Family members embrace after a student walked out from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, in Parkland, Fla. Students and faculty followed procedures outlined in emergency drills and dogged preparation for such a worst-case scenario may have saved lives. But they were not enough to slow down the attacker on Wednesday.

As the fire alarm blared for the second time on Wednesday, it seemed like yet another drill for how to deal with a school emergency until a term Alex Azar knew fed over the speakers: code black. “Bomb threat – evacuate.”

“We hear boom-boom, boom-boom-boom-boom,” says the sophomore at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after escaping America’s latest school shooting on Wednesday, the worst since 2012’s Sandy Hook massacre. “We were like, maybe that is firecrackers, maybe it’s just a prank. But then they said ‘code black’ ... and we start funneling out along the fence.”

Dogged preparations for such a worst-case scenario may have saved lives. But they were not enough to slow down an expelled student who returned on Valentine’s Day, killing 17 students and staff and wounding at least 14 others.

The 19-year-old, who had left clues of violent plans on social media, committed the deadliest mass shooting ever at a US high school, and the third incident in the past five months to enter the Top 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history.

“It cannot be denied that something dangerous and unhealthy is happening in our country,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday. “We’ve got to confront the problem. There’s no doubt about it.”

With Congress largely prohibiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from studying the interplay between guns and public health, states and communities have been left to respond, largely by stepping up training, security, and awareness. Forty percent of US schools are now under guard, including Douglas High in Parkland.

But this newest attack has jarred many Americans into asking more intently whether a national response is needed to investigate random, sudden violence afflicting the nation.

“This is now a real threat, a real national emergency,” says Alan Lizotte, a distinguished professor at the School of Criminal Justice at SUNY’s University at Albany. “And so we’re now at a point where it has to sweep the country and destroy lives everywhere until at some point someone takes it seriously.”

The shooting comes at a time of both heightened awareness and vulnerability in public areas, including schools. Since the 1999 Columbine shooting in Colorado, more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 schools have experienced campus shootings, according to a Washington Post analysis. 

When police breached one room full of injured students on Wednesday, they asked one student why he was wearing a flak jacket. Worried about a school shooting, his dad had given it to the teen to keep in his locker. The country also was given indelible insights into what school violence looks like, as students posted videos of themselves hunkering under desks, whimpering. “I am in a school shooting,” one student, hidden, wrote on social media. “If I don’t make it,” a freshman texted her parents, “I love you and I appreciate everything you did for me.”

Frustration by local school officials couldn’t be contained in the aftermath. “We did everything that we were supposed to do,” Melissa Falkowski, a teacher at the school, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Broward County has prepared us for this situation and still to have so many casualties, at least for me, it’s very emotional.”

This is where people move to protect their children

None of this is supposed to happen in a place like Parkland, a cluster of gated neighborhoods surrounded by manicured hedges, perfect green lawns, and majestic palm trees.

This is where people move to protect their children from school violence.

The local high school is among the best and safest in south Florida’s Broward County. But none of that mattered Wednesday afternoon to any of the parents and other family members waiting for the authorities to allow them to finally see their children.

As she stood with other relatives, Gina Fontana’s eyes flashed with anger at the death toll – and her own worries for her niece, who had not yet checked in.

“This country has to realize that this gun violence is out of control,” says Ms. Fontana. “And we have to stop playing politics and wake up and realize that our children’s lives are at stake.”

But others at the periphery say that the wave of violence has only made them more conscious that mass gun violence can intrude senselessly into anybody’s life.

Indeed, the shooting didn’t surprise Broward County dad Anthony Dubois. “Truth be told, nobody is safe,” he says. “You can’t think that this can’t happen to you.... You can only hope for the best, you know?”

But at least in Florida, the site of the 2016 Pulse massacre in Orlando, “hope for the best” may no longer be good enough.

Wilfredo Lee/AP

Florida Gov. Rick Scott gestures as he speaks during a news conference near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The governor promised “to sit down with the legislature and have a real conversation about: How do we make sure that when a parent is ready to send a child to school that the parent knows that the child is going to be safe?”

Republican Gov. Rick Scott announced a shift in state priorities a day after the massacre.

“Next week in Tallahassee we are going to sit down with the legislature and have a real conversation about: How do we make sure that when a parent is ready to send a child to school that the parent knows that the child is going to be safe?” he said.

To many Americans, a more distinct sense of common responsibility and communal burden may ultimately be more effective than any federal response.

“A man who is determined to kill ... will find guns,” writes David French in the conservative National Review. “But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do.... We have responsibilities, not just to mourn and comfort the families of the lost, but to think carefully about our own communities and the circle of people in our lives — and to take action to guard our own children and our own schools.”

President Trump reacted to the shootings by urging Americans to report “again and again” on people who appear to be threats to their communities. Teachers and the FBI had been warned about the shooter, who had been expelled, reportedly after bringing bullets to school in his backpack. “Your suffering is our burden,” Mr. Trump said.

‘This is a true stop-gap measure’

Yet states are clearly struggling with how to safeguard public areas and schools.

In late January, a student opened fire in a western Kentucky high school and killed two classmates. Later that day, state Sen. Steve West filed a bill in the state legislature that would put armed “marshals” in public schools.

“My bill will not save the world,” acknowledged Mr. West, a Republican, in a recent Monitor interview. “This is a true stop-gap measure. [We’re] just trying our best to fill in a hole and fill that hole in school safety in Kentucky.

“I don’t want to be filing this bill. I wish we didn’t have to address this situation,” he says, but “we’re at a line where we need to do something to address the problem.”

The problem for many states is lack of understanding, that while school shootings undoubtedly happen too often, they “don’t happen frequently enough that it’s very easy to predict what’s going to cause them,” and thus whether armed security personnel would have a meaningful impact in preventing them, says Emily Owens, a criminologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has researched school police programs.

“Social scientists are in an uncomfortable position [in] that this is a terrible event that doesn’t happen frequently enough to lend itself to analytical tools,” she adds, a position made more difficult by the federal government’s restricting of research into gun violence.

Gordon Crews, who spoke to dozens of school shooters for his book “School Killers Speak,” says it is certain that such shootings are “increasing like crazy.”

“Schools are either the biggest symbol of [shooters’] first failures or symbolic: ‘What is more American and innocent than little child on playground in elementary school? That is what I am going to attack,’ ” adds the Tiffin University professor.

Most immediately, Broward County parents are struggling with a sense that even the best preparation, awareness, and follow-up can’t thwart a sudden attack. Some cultural observers have likened the phenomenon to a “slow-motion riot” – each incident fueling the next.

“When you look at these shootings from Dylan Klebold and his associate [in 1999] to the young man who committed the Sandy Hook massacre [in 2012] and now down to where we are with this young man, there’s a pattern here,” says John Finnegan, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis.

That pattern is that “the response that these young men choose is heavily influenced by our culture. That means we have to focus on creating a culture of abundance and not one of scarcity, where we are trying to keep people away, trying to be exclusive and bully and harass people. It is in that kind of culture where people who do have these mental health challenges may very well find a way, using firearms, to feel that they have some kind of agency in this world.”

This story was reported by staff writers Warren Richey in Parkland, Fla., and Henry Gass in Winchester, Ky. It was reported and written by Patrik Jonsson in Savannah, Ga.

Mohammed Tilbani is determined to keep the ice cream and cookie factory going that he opened 41 years ago in the Gaza Strip.

The factory supports his large family and 300 employees, but in the intensifying storm of the political, economic, and humanitarian crisis sweeping across this tiny enclave, he says he is overwhelmed.

With only four to eight hours of electricity available a day, it’s difficult to keep the machines running to make the sweets, he says, and he can only afford to pay workers for 12 shifts a month.

And then there are the supermarkets who cannot refrigerate the ice cream, and the parents who have no cash to buy their children treats anyway.

“This is the worst period of my life ever, and we have had really tough times. But this time everything is hard,” says Mr. Tilbani.

“There is food here,” he adds, “but who has money to buy anything? People are eating flour and water, a little tea, and that’s it. If they can, they buy some lentils or hummus or ful [fava beans].”

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

A refrigerator inside a Palestinian home in the northern Gaza Strip, Jan. 31, 2018.

Tilbani’s challenges hint at the wider problems afflicting Gaza, an impoverished coastal strip between Israel and Egypt no bigger than Manhattan, where 2 million people live in one of the most densely settled spots on the planet.

An estimated 70 percent of Gazans rely on humanitarian assistance, says Human Rights Watch. Overall unemployment is at 43 percent, the World Bank says, and that share rises to nearly 60 percent for young people, many of them college graduates with few job prospects.

Medicines are in short supply, people are relying on bottled water because there is no potable drinking water to be found, and merchants are crowding the prisons because they cannot pay their debts.

Feeling of abandonment

Analysts attribute the current crisis, in part, to the political vacuum created by stalled reconciliation talks between the local Hamas leadership and the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank. But Gaza’s economy has long been strangled by a decade-long Israeli blockade – imposed when the Islamic militants of Hamas came to power – that has limited the freedom of people and goods to move in and out of the strip.

But if knowing the source of a problem can often point toward steps to solving it, the worsening plight of Gazans has not prompted any of the primary actors – Hamas, Fatah, Israel, or Egypt – to change course. Nor are the United States, Arab world, or donor nations in general reacting to the crisis with urgency, contributing to a burgeoning feeling of abandonment among Gazans.

“Is there a way to say we are going from bad to worse to a catastrophe?” asks Mkhaimar Abusada, a politics professor at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University. He belongs to the minority of Gazans who are employed and receiving full salaries.

Meanwhile, apartment buildings and businesses, including part of Tilbani’s factory – which was hit by Israeli missiles during the most recent of a trio of wars with Hamas in the last 10 years – still lie in semi-ruins waiting for the funds and building materials needed to complete rebuilding.

The Hamas-Fatah dispute has further hobbled the fragile economy. Cash-strapped Hamas has cut the salaries of its 43,000 employees by 40 percent, while Fatah is cutting the salaries of its 60,000 Palestinian Authority (PA) workers by 30 to 50 percent. That's seen as a bid to pressure Hamas to accept its conditions for the reconciliation deal, which would see the PA take back control of Gaza.

UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov reportedly warned this month that if the PA did not take control there, “Gaza risks exploding in our face again, this time in a far more deadly and violent manner than in the past.”

Similarly, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, last week urged the Israeli cabinet to act, warning that Gaza was teetering on the edge of collapse, a potential danger to Israel.

Those inside Gaza say the best thing Israel could do to help would be to end the blockade it imposed in 2007 after Hamas pushed Fatah out of Gaza in a round of bloodletting. The fighting left deep scars and resentments between the rivals that are proving difficult to mend, despite a reconciliation deal signed this fall.

Although Israel is no longer physically present in Gaza – it withdrew its forces and settlements in 2005 – it controls the border crossings into Israel, its airspace, and territorial waters. The rationale for its blockade, which it has alternately eased and tightened over the years, is that Hamas is still bent on Israel’s destruction. Tensions over the blockade, and over periodic rocket-fire and attempted infiltrations from Gaza, have resulted in three Israel-Hamas wars that have been devastating for the strip's residents.

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

A Palestinian boy in Johr El-Deek, in Gaza, charges a mobile phone from batteries offered as a free service in his neighborhood, which experiences power shortages, on Jan. 31, 2018.

Miram Marmur, a spokesperson at Gisha, an Israeli non-profit that works to promote freedom of movement for Palestinians, calls the blockade “a policy of economic warfare against the strip” that she says is part of a larger Israeli goal to economically and politically cut off Gaza from the West Bank.

In 2006, in response to the kidnapping of one of its soldiers, Israel bombed Gaza’s main electricity plant. The attack crippled Gaza’s electricity infrastructure, which has never fully recovered. Since then Gaza’s electricity needs have only increased as its population has swelled, while the grid continues to deteriorate. More recently, the Palestinian Authority partially cut its payments to Israel for imported electricity for six months, leading to even more blackouts.

Egypt's focus diverted

The crisis has also been exacerbated by the breakdown of talks between Fatah and Hamas. Partially to blame, say analysts, is Egypt, which was shepherding the deal but is now absent as it focuses on fighting Islamist insurgents in Sinai and next month’s presidential election.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has taken a tough approach to Hamas, wary of its ties to radical Islamic elements inside Egypt. Egypt destroyed Hamas’ smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, which were extremely lucrative for Hamas and were a way to circumvent Israel’s blockade. Egypt’s refusal to keep its border crossing with Gaza continuously open has also been a major stranglehold on the economy.

Meanwhile the bickering between Fatah and Hamas intensifies.

“Basically there is a political vacuum so no one is taking responsibility for the hardship in Gaza,” says Professor Abusada. “Everyone is blaming one another.”

“My concern is that everyone is viewing Gaza as a kind of laboratory to see how people will react rather than treating them as human beings whose rights should be respected,” said Sari Bashi, Israel Palestine advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. “Israel bears primary responsibility because it is the one controlling the borders, but also the Palestinian Authority and Hamas bear responsibility because they can and should do better.”

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Palestinian employees of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) protest against a US decision to cut aid to the organization, in Gaza City, Jan. 29, 2018.

President Donald Trump’s threats to cut funds for the Palestinians, specifically through UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, if the Palestinians don’t return to peace talks with Israel, is also fueling anxiety.

Hesitant donors

In Brussels, at an emergency meeting of donor countries, Israel recently proposed a billion-dollar plan to help rehabilitate Gaza. According to the plan, based on the recommendations of humanitarian organizations, Israel would help build water desalination plants and fortify electricity and natural gas lines as well as help upgrade an industrial zone at Erez, Israels’ main border crossing with Gaza.

But donors to the Palestinians have been hesitant lately to donate more funds to Gaza. Many consider the crisis to be politically manufactured, by both Palestinian infighting and by Israel, says Gerald Rockenschaub, head of office of the World Health Organization in the West Bank and Gaza.

An emergency campaign for funding has been launched with the hope this might help solve the most burning humanitarian needs in the short-term.

“But only a political solution can lead to a more permanent and sustainable solution,” says Mr. Rockenschaub.

On the streets of Gaza, meanwhile, there is growing talk of a mass, peaceful demonstration along the border fence with Israel. By the tens of thousands, people would stream toward the fence with empty plates in their hands. “To symbolize their hunger,” says Abusada. “This is one of the scenarios on the table – something has to happen to end this.”

Richard Drew/AP

Constance Malcolm, the mother of Ramarley Graham, an unarmed black teenager shot and killed by a New York City police officer, holds a news conference Monday, March 27, 2017, in front of police headquarters to respond to the news that the officer who pulled the trigger quit rather than be fired, in New York.

After her son Ramarley Graham was shot and killed by a New York police officer, Constance Malcolm says she dedicated herself to community activism almost by accident.

“I had to be Ramarley’s voice,” she says. “Even now, when you hear about Ramarley’s story, you think, 'Oh, yeah, that was the kid that was running from police into the house, and who hid in the bathroom.' Six years later, and that’s what you hear. I have to try to get that out of people’s mindset.”

Two hundred miles away in Baltimore, a city experiencing an unprecedented wave of murders since the death of Freddie Gray, a small group of mothers who had lost their sons or daughters to the crime of murder were grappling with agonizing questions about their communities. (Part 1, “A tale of two cities and murder.”) They were focusing on the choices the young men in their communities were making, and why their neighborhoods were in such a state. They, too, wanted larger structural changes in their city, but their focus was on what could be called a common-sense conservatism, less about ideology and legislation per se, and more about training their children in the ways they should go.

There are similar groups of people in New York. But for Malcolm, the structures of the American justice system itself – the tactics of the NYPD, the differences in arrest and incarceration rates, and the lack of a common-sense system of accountability and transparency for those who wield the lethal power of the state – created a matrix of human decisions that led to what she believes was the murder of her son. 

Police said they saw a gun protruding from Mr. Graham’s pocket and that he fled from them, dashing home and into his apartment. Video surveillance evidence, however, contradicted their claims – showing him walking casually into his home. Officers followed him into his apartment, and as Graham was allegedly trying to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet, they thought they saw him reach for a gun, and shot and killed him. A gun was never found.

“I was determined to let them know that I wasn’t going to take this laying down,” Ms. Malcolm says. “He was in his home, where he was supposed to be safe. Instead, the officers who [were] supposed to uphold the law, and serve and protect, took my son’s life and then turned around and lied about him. This is what people are believing about my son, and I can’t have that.”

She embarked on a five-year battle for justice, demanding answers, suing the NYPD for documents related to police actions. The officer was indicted for manslaughter, but a judge dismissed the case on a technicality. Still, because of the relentless demands of the family and other activists, the officer who killed Graham faced an NYPD disciplinary hearing, and was  forced to resign a year ago. Two other officers at the scene were also disciplined last year, one of them also forced to resign.

The city settled the family’s civil rights lawsuit in 2015, awarding them nearly $4 million in damages. But Malcolm still describes a lingering hollowness, a persistent feeling that that the police involved in the death of her son were never truly held accountable and punished. It’s a grievance at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

“This city caused me a lifetime of pain that no amount of money can make me satisfied,” says Malcolm, who still commutes to her job as a certified nurse’s assistant at the Cedar Manor Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Ossining, N.Y., adding that she loves to help people. “Take your money and give me my son back. That would make me a happy mother.”

Malcolm has joined with other mothers whose sons died at the hands of police officers. The crew of mothers has gotten pretty close, and it includes Kadiatou Diallo, mother of Amadou Diallo, killed in a high-profile case by police in 1999; Valerie Bell, mother of Sean Bell, killed by police in 2006; and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, killed in 2015.   

These mothers call each other often for support, Ms. Carr says, and many of them travel together to community events and protests across the country.

Like most of them, Carr also describes not just a frustration, but a sense of despair that her son Eric has never received the justice that he deserves. Not only because he was killed, she says, but also because of the indignity he suffered at the hands of police.

The facts of his death, captured on bystanders’ video, are well known. When Mr. Garner loses consciousness after saying he couldn't breathe, officers give him little assistance. No one attempts to revive him. Two medics and two EMTs arrive in an ambulance. There is no sense of urgency about the man lying motionless on the ground. No one attempts to administer CPR. Then, instead of securing Garner on a gurney and securing his neck, police and emergency workers grab his arms and legs and simply sling the 350-pound man, his head slumped back, onto a stretcher that hadn’t even been lowered to the ground.

“They should all stand accountable for such gross misconduct,” Carr says. “It was a very dark day. A very confusing day. I was in disbelief. I didn’t even know what happened, but all I knew my child was gone, and that was all that mattered.”

Kathy Willens/AP

Eric Garner's sister Ellysha Garner, right, consoles Garner's mother Gwen Carr June 21, 2017, in New York. Ms. Carr, like other New York mothers whose sons died at the hands of police, has become an activist seeking greater accountability for the New York Police Department.

“Now I hope that because of his death, there will be more awareness – that these things are actually happening to us, and get people to stop thinking that we’re just complaining about nothing, or that we deserve it,” Carr says. “That’s why it’s important to me to stand up for my son and tell his story.”

It's painful, too, she says, to watch the person who put her son in a chokehold that contributed to his death continue to get raises, overtime pay – and a life her son was denied.

One of the most urgent goals of these mothers and the broader protest matter is to convince lawmakers of the need to establish a fair process of justice. This especially includes the appointment of special prosecutors for any case in which a police officer kills a civilian. 

As a practical matter, police officers and prosecutors necessarily work together closely on a day-to-day basis to make their cases, experts observe. Even from a common sense perspective, many say, there seems to be a conflict of interest, given that criminal justice professionals must necessarily work as team. How are they supposed to investigate, let alone convict, one of their own?

Both Carr and Malcolm, as well as other activists fighting for police transparency and accountability, remain relatively unmoved about New York’s jaw-droppingly low murder rate and record-setting low levels of overall crime.

True, the stop and frisk numbers also have fallen dramatically, but critics contend that many officers have simply stopped filling out the required forms. Last December, the NYPD’s court-appointed monitor confirmed this, reporting some officers were indeed failing to document their street encounters.

“The reality is, there are many important reasons for New York City’s crime decline, including the community’s violence prevention programs, community interventions, increasing employment, and other factors,” says Malcolm, echoing a number of experts.

And she and other activists believe that the principles of "proactive policing" like stop and frisk have laid bare a vicious symbiosis that has demonstrable racial consequences. Proactive strategies that focused on enforcing low-level crimes created a destructive and racially-selective systemic cycle, activists argue. 

It's a symbiosis with which the nation is still trying to grapple, and it cuts to the heart of the story of murder, violence, and policing in America and the ongoing critiques of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

“If you’re focusing on violence, there's going to be racially disparate policing, because violence is racially disparate,” says Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer and an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “Now, you have to separate that from racial bias, which of course can be a problem. But you’re going to end up with racial disparities, and you have to somehow justify that.”

****

The story of murder in America, many activists say, is plain and simple, a story about race in America.

But a pall hangs over this story, especially its most troubling statistic: Though only about 13 percent of the population, black Americans make up around half of the nation’s murder victims. Similarly, black Americans make up about half the nation’s murderers and murder suspects. And for both, the overwhelming majority are men.

In Baltimore, where black residents make up 63 percent of the population, more than 90 percent of homicide victims were black last year and more than 90 percent were male. In New York, where black residents make up 25 percent of the city’s population, more than 57 percent of murder victims were black in 2016, and nearly 56 percent of murder suspects were black.

In the nation’s toxic state of politics, the refrain “black-on-black violence” has become the standard rejoinder to those protesting against police violence. It's become the rhetorical counterpoint to Black Lives Matter protesters or NFL players kneeling during the national anthem.

For many conservatives and police officers, it only makes sense that areas with higher crime and murder rates would demand more aggressive policing. Sure, there are mistakes and even “bad apples” within police forces, but “cops go where the bad guys are,” and often at great personal risk, many say. 

But “black on black violence” is not simply a statistic. Inescapably, it falls into a long history of discredited theories about racial differences going back to the 19th century. Such theories dovetailed with eugenics, Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation laws, and a casual white supremacy that saw black Americans as dangerous  "others" who needed to be kept separate.

“I think the term and the concept has been exploited, and I think it’s been used by others outside to paint us as savages,” says Mark Winston Griffith, executive director of Brooklyn Movement Center, a community activist group.

Now, with the emergence of the self-described “alt-right” and a burgeoning online movement of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, that pall has deepened.

When he was a candidate, President Trump tweeted a racially-charged and wildly incorrect set of murder statistics, including a false number that said 81 percent of white murder victims were killed by blacks. In fact, more than 8 out of 10 white murder victims are a result of white-on-white violence.

“The more important fact is not, why are black people killing each other?” says Mr. Griffith, whose group is also part of the coalition Communities United for Police Reform. “But, why are they killing anybody? What are the conditions that are leading to that, as opposed to creating some racial pathology out of these numbers, which only serves to further dehumanize us.”

Criminologists have long sought reasons why young black men are more likely to commit murder. Many cite strong correlations between family instability and fatherlessness. Others cite direct correlations between poverty and violence. Poor whites, in fact, had a higher overall rate of incidents of violence from 2008 to 2012: 46.4 per 1,000 people. Poor blacks had a rate of violence of 43.4 per 1000.

There is also the fact that racist housing policies, such as redlining, along with the flight of manufacturing jobs from US cities, created segregated urban caldrons in which the conditions of crime could fester, and for which there were few white analogs.

But both Nathaniel Powell, a former convict who now works to get Baltimore teens to make better decisions than he did in his youth, and Griffith in New York see another, more subtle layer to the lingering legacies of white supremacy. Even beyond the open racist motives of a segment of those wielding the expression "black on black violence," they suggest, its constant use is like a relentless cultural whisper that this is who you are.

“I think it’s been an integral part of our own self hatred as well,” Griffith says. “The idea that we’re not only murdering ourselves, but we seek to destroy ourselves.”

Mr. Powell sees something similar. “It’s the mentality of our kids in our environment that needs to be addressed,” he says. “If you don’t have any value for yourself, how can you value those around you? Without that, we’re going to keep hurting each other, and ourselves.”

Then there is the issue of the war on drugs, waged especially on marijuana and crack cocaine in high-crime minority neighborhoods, leaving a legacy of incarceration that would give the United States the largest prison population in the world, with almost 40 percent of this population black.

It’s another irony within the symbiosis: a focus on violent neighborhoods can breed more, not less violence. Even low-level crimes can lead to prison terms, and prison forges a certain kind of posture, a sense of “respect” that must be earned in the face of relentless challenges. This mostly-masculine “code on the street,” as Powell says, might be one of the most durable pieces in the puzzle of factors behind the legacy of mass incarceration.

Indeed, look at both the victims and known perpetrators in Baltimore last year: 86 percent of the victims had criminal records, with an average of 11 previous arrests. Similarly, 85 percent of the known murder suspects had criminal records, with an average of nine previous arrests. There are similar findings in New York.

But there is another way to look at such figures: The segment of men engaging in criminal violence and murder is very small. And while black Americans are incarcerated at a rate five times that of whites – 1,408 per 100,000 compared to 275 per 100,000 – the vast majority of men in both groups remain peaceful, law-abiding citizens.

*****

There are a host of reasons for the raw inverted symmetry between the stories of murder in Baltimore and New York.

The beleaguered Baltimore Police Department, the 8th largest municipal police force in the United States with nearly 2,100 full-duty officers and a budget of about $500 million, has fewer than 10 officers and support staff for every murder it has to solve.

The celebrated New York Police Department, the largest in the United States with about 36,000 officers and a budget of about $5.3 billion, has about 186 officers and support staff for every murder it has to solve.

New York is economically and racially diverse, its tax base is stable, its private and civic institutions are strong. With a wealth of resources and expertise, New York regularly solves about 70 percent of its homicides.

Baltimore is far less economically and racially diverse, its tax base is volatile, its private and civic institutions are uneven. Baltimore solved about half of its homicides last year – which was actually a dramatic improvement. Its clearance rate was 30 percent in 2015.

But here's the final irony: It was precisely because of the relentless critiques of New York's community of activists that the NYPD may now be inaugurating another historic era of innovations.

“We’ve gone from bludgeons to scalpels, if you will,” says Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, a nonpartisan civic group that works to foster innovations to the criminal justice system. “And it may well be a game changer moving forward.”

The game began to change in many ways because of the relentless work of the city's community of activists. Over the past two decades, activists demanded information. They found that nearly 85 percent of those stopped and frisked were black or Latino, the vast majority of them men, ages 14 to 24. They found that nearly nine out of 10 of the more than 5 million people stopped during that era were never charged with an infraction or crime. It was because of them that a federal court found the NYPD guilty of racial profiling and violating New Yorkers’ due process rights.

They found that in New York from 2002 to 2012, during the height of the stop and frisk era, about 85 percent of the 440,000 low level marijuana arrests were of black and Latino young men, which saddles many of them with life-altering felony records, a blemish that often turns away employers, landlords, and the ability to get certain kinds of student aid or municipal services.

Almost a third of young white Americans aged 18 to 25 report using marijuana, a rate higher than black Americans, surveys show, and the use of cocaine and amphetamines remains common, and visible, in places like Wall Street. These crimes are rarely subjected to enforcement – an example of "privilege," many activists say. 

So New York changed its laws. Possessing small amounts of marijuana is a simple summons now rather than a misdemeanor or felony. Stop and frisk has declined by 90 percent. Still, the problems persists, activists say: marijuana arrests and legal stops are still overwhelmingly of black and Latino men.

Crime falls for many reasons, and “the great crime decline” has not just been a result of policing, even police experts say. “New York has been very blessed with a very robust not-for-profit group of organizations that provides prevention services,” Mr. Aborn says. "And these people are professionals at the top of their game, and the DAs and police are beginning to embrace this.”

They are also starting to revolutionize the idea of proactive policing, this time trying to rebuild relationships with the neighborhoods they are charged with protecting. 

Kathy Willens/AP

Police investigate the scene of a shooting Sunday, Jan. 21, 2018, in midtown Manhattan in New York, where, police say, three people were shot blocks from Penn Station and Macy's Herald Square store. The victims' wounds are not considered life-threatening and no arrests have been made.

“Now, the buzzword in New York is ‘precision policing,’ ” says Mr. Moskos, the former Baltimore police officer. “And in some ways, it’s a way to rationalize racially disparate policing – that’s always the elephant in the room, the square peg in the round hole.”

“Precision policing” still focuses on high crime neighborhoods, where the majority of residents are minorities. But the effort now is to develop a collaborative and laser-like focus on those most likely to commit crimes. 

“In the past, if there was a lot of crime in a neighborhood, police departments would do what they call ‘flood the zone’ with hundreds of cops into a geographic area to bring down crime,” says Aborn. “Now we try to understand who the players are, and those people are targeted.”

“And standing right alongside precision policing is what we now call ‘precision prevention,’ which is, we bring prevention services to those most likely to commit offenses,” he says.

If the buzzword of the past was “community policing” – which generally meant that a designated community relations officer would attend meetings and then act as a liaison to local precinct commanders – now there is a very different approach: “neighborhood policing.”

Ann Hermes/Staf

Officers with New York Police Department's 45th Precinct talk with local residents at a Coffee with a Cop event with the 45th Precinct Community Council at The Miles Coffee Bar on January 24, 2018 in the Bronx, New York. The 45th Precinct is set to implement a Neighborhood Coordination Officers program to strengthen relationships with the community.

Police officers are starting to be assigned to specific geographical areas. They get to know a community and its civic leaders, and then begin to identify the specific issues the neighborhood is facing. Then, in conjunction with local leaders, police try to develop a specific neighborhood-focused plan. “What it does is, it not only addresses the issues that are of most concern to the neighborhood, but it also builds a strong synergistic, trusting relationship between the cops and the neighborhood,” Aborn says.

One of the biggest differences between New York and cities like Baltimore, experts say, is New York’s relentless and methodical focus on getting illegal guns off the street. New York state’s gun laws are among the most restrictive in the country, and New York City tightens these even more.

“While New York has a very balanced approach to punishment, and we do a lot of prevention and a lot of pre-trial diversion, we believe that if somebody carries an illegal gun, that person needs to go to jail,” says Aborn. The city has expanded the number of specialized cops investigating gun crimes, and city prosecutors are putting a high emphasis on gun crime prosecutions. In 2016, the city set up a specialized “gun court” in Brooklyn, which fast-tracks cases involving guns.  

For the past few years, only 55 to 60 percent of New York’s homicides were carried out with a gun, well below the national average. The overall number of shootings in New York, too, has plummeted to historic lows. There were only 789 shooting incidents reported last year, compared with 997 in 2016. This represents a near 90 percent reduction in the number of incidents in New York since 1994.

The Baltimore City Council attempted, but failed to pass a city ordinance last year that would have included mandatory jail time for those carrying illegal guns. Its own gun task force has been rocked by a corruption scandal. And about nine out of 10 homicides in Baltimore are carried out with guns.

“All these efforts had a significant deterrent effect on people carrying guns in New York,” says Moskos. “Baltimore doesn’t have that, so you have repeat offenders, you catch him with a gun two or three times. What do you think is going to happen?”

Long-time activists remain skeptical, however. The history of abuse runs deep, they say.

“If you look over the past 20 years, there have been a lot of different tactics that have been used, from very aggressive ‘Let’s stop every black and brown person walking down the street’ to what the [Mayor Bill] de Blasio administration now is calling neighborhood policing,” says Griffith, who heads the Brooklyn Movement Center. “But I think that on some level, the changes that we’ve seen have been superficial.”

And the NYPD’s long history of innovative “proactive policing” in black neighborhoods includes another legacy, he and other activists say: Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Ramarley Graham, Eric Garner, and other unarmed black men who lost their lives at the hands of the NYPD.

“I always tell my kids, nothing is ever going to be easy, and you have to fight for what you believe in,” says Malcolm, speaking about her son Chinnor, now 12, who witnessed his brother’s shooting six years ago, and daughter Leona, now 28.

“So they may take our sons, but now we have to try to comfort those out there still suffering, and let them know, you’re not alone,” Malcolm says of working with the other mothers of those killed. “That’s my goal right now. That’s my goal.”

Part 1: A tale of two cities and murder

A few years ago, when Insha Bashir Mir began playing cricket in her neighborhood playground, she was ridiculed by neighbors who told her not to play a “boy’s game.”

But then, as now, she ignored that derision by remembering her father’s words: “Don’t answer people with your mouth, but through your bat.”

Ms. Mir, now a student at Government Women’s College in Baramulla – 40 miles north of the state capital, Srinagar – is daughter of a businessman father and homemaker mother, both of whom enthusiastically support her passion.

She’s part of new generation of local girls showing their mettle in sports, from rugby and soccer to karate. That alone is boundary-pushing. But that trend is especially meaningful here in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where opposition to Indian rule has simmered for decades and often burst into violence. Increasingly, young Kashmiris are involved, from schoolgirl stone-throwers to teenage rebel fighters. In Jammu and Kashmir state, where curfews and internet blackouts are frequent, more boys and girls alike are finding an empowering outlet through athletics.

It’s a trend officials are encouraging, with investments in previously neglected facilities and sports programs – and one that may serve as a simplified sign of peace. But the lessons on the playing field are still welcome for many teens, particularly girls, though they continue to combat stereotypes game by game. The more that people adopt Mir's and her teammates’ perspective that gender is no handicap, she says, the more optimistic she is about her generation’s future.  

“We are in [the] 21st century and we shouldn’t be living like ancient times,” she says. “Girls who can carry a broom can also pick up a bat.”

Region in turmoil

Conflict-torn Kashmir is a disputed territory, claimed by both India and Pakistan; polls suggest that most residents support independence. Estimates of the death toll over the past three decades run into the tens of thousands. Today, youth are at the forefront of the movement, joining street protests and insurgency groups. Indian forces and police killed more than 200 rebels in 2017, the highest in recent years, but civilians bear a heavy cost as well: over 200 were killed in the past two years, and more than 15,000 wounded.

Right alongside, however, has been a rise in sportswomen. Last year, nearly 90,000 players from around the region participated in sports, “and almost half of them are girls,” says Waheed Ur Rehman Para, the secretary of Jammu and Kashmir State’s Sports Council.

“When I carry my cricket bat in my hand, I forget who I am, I forget my food, everything. I can do anything for cricket,” Mir says.

Since 2016, when the death of a popular rebel leader reignited unrest, the government has periodically imposed curfews and internet blackouts to quell protests. But that doesn’t stop sports, says Irtiqa Ayoub, a player and assistant coach for the state rugby team. She practiced at home, but “I still go out during curfew or protests to give training to fresher players,” says Ms. Ayoub, a student at the University of Kashmir who also runs 10 rugby clubs.

She learns from her trainees, too. To the many aspiring rugby players who message her on social media – boys and girls – her frequent reply is: “You’re most welcome. Whenever you have time, come and I will teach you.”

Budding support

Until recently, funding for sports infrastructure was hardly a priority. But since the 2016 uprising, both the Indian and regional governments have taken an interest in sports as a way to shift young people’s focus from the fiery conflict. The state is brimming with youth: Almost 70 percent of the population is younger than 35, according to the 2011 census, and about 20 percent in their teens and early 20s.

Sports can be a source of integration in a fragmented state, Mr. Para says. “We need to offer space to youth, and sports is an option. The government finds sports a meaningful means to improve leadership, sportsmanship, and team spirit among children,” he says. “There are people excelling in sports across the world. We want to figure on that global sports map, [because] it has nothing to do with guns or conflict.”

In the past, athletics facilities were simple, Mir says. Without proper facilities or a coach, she learned cricket skills by watching professional matches on television – especially with her favorite star, former Indian skipper M.S. Dhoni – or when she traveled outside the state and asked senior cricketers for tips. Now there is better infrastructure, Mir says, and officials have promised a new playing ground. But there’s still much to be done.

“We are so different from other girls in sports; it looks like we are coming from some old century,” she says. “We also need opportunities.”

Mubashir Hassan, coach and director of the State Cricket Academy, says that with the surge of interest in sports, infrastructure is getting better. He has been coaching both girls and boys at the academy, and wants the government to focus more on rural areas, in particular.

“We have raw talent but don’t have adequate facilities yet,” says Mr. Hassan. “And girls have started from scratch, so it has to be given some time before it blooms.”

'As long as I'm alive'

But there are benefits of sports for girls and society alike, Hassan says. “I think sports is conflict-neutral, like education. It is an effective part of your growth. You grow mentally.”

Many teen sports events have been organized by police. Athletics “will engage youth so that they do not get into drugs, don’t take up guns,” state police chief Shesh Paul Vaid said last September, during a rowing contest in Srinagar; “[it is] very sad to see bloodshed and sadness on the faces of the youth.”

In Para’s opinion, however, sports can’t do much for peace – but peace can boost sports, and the region’s young sportswomen, as they continue to push against stereotypes.

In Mir’s estimation, more than two-thirds of people “think girls should work inside homes and not be into sports.”

“Girls are often humiliated and harassed,” she adds. “Once while playing a cricket match many boys at the playground passed lewd comments and abuses at us, but we continued our game.”  

Her efforts have paid off: Mir recently played in the region’s first-ever twenty-overs format Women’s Cricket Championship. Ayoub has also made a name for herself, winning gold and silver medals in national championships – and seen support grow. Originally, neighbors told her father not to let her go into sports, “but my father said, ‘No, I trust my daughter. She will do well,’ ” she remembers.

“Rugby is in my blood,” she says. “I won’t let anyone snatch an opportunity from me to play. I will continue as long as I’m alive.”

Cherie Pinchem delivered some somber news to her Boston Latin High School African American studies class this week. The $8 tickets for their Friday group outing to see Marvel’s latest superhero film, “Black Panther,” on opening day would cost another $10 each.

Sighs and quiet protests echoed around the crowded classroom. Some students held up both arms in disbelief. But then Ms. Pinchem delivered the good news: This class is going for free.

Several students gasped. Then the applause broke out. “I’ve anticipated this movie for over a year,” says senior Aaliyah Alexander through a wide grin.

The tickets will be courtesy of #BlackPantherChallenge – a GoFundMe campaign that has been replicated across the United States. In Boston, Liz Miranda, the director of the Hawthorne Youth and Community Center, has raised more than $15,000 online so far to cover movie tickets, food, and transportation for children, particularly children of color, from across the city.

“Black Panther” is the first Marvel movie to be directed by a black director, Ryan Coogler, and to feature an almost entirely black cast. For Ms. Miranda, and countless other organizers like her, those superlatives make a difference – especially for African-Americans.

“It’s almost like seeing yourself reflected in the culture means that you're American. It actually means that you count, that you matter,” says John Jennings, professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California, Riverside.

The movie is tearing its way through advance ticket sales and is positioned to break box-office records for Presidents' Day weekend, possibly earning upward of $170 million. While Marvel films typically dominate at the theaters, they don't usually result in large-scale field trips. What's different is the opportunity afforded by a movie whose characters were carefully envisioned during the civil rights era. In other words, observers note, the unusual collective effort is based on a need. 

The #BlackPantherChallenge, for example, began in January when Frederick Joseph, a writer and marketing specialist, created a GoFundMe campaign to send the Boys & Girls Club of Harlem, N.Y., to see the film. 

“Many of us yearned for the chance to be Batman or Superman, but only if he was black. Black Panther gives our children the chance to dream those dreams,” he wrote in The Huffington Post.

Entertainer Ellen DeGeneres has since funded Mr. Joseph’s campaign. But his idea went viral. So far, GoFundMe campaigns have raised more than $400,000 for tickets for thousands of young people, with donations coming in from all 50 states and 40 countries, according to the crowdfunding platform. 

Black Panther, played by Chadwick Boseman, isn’t Hollywood’s first black superhero (Wesley Snipes’s Blade and Will Smith’s Hancock both predate him). But his position as a sure-footed authority working alongside so many other strong black figures has ignited a sense of pride among African-American fans. Hollywood films, they say, normally aren't known for such positive and explicit racial representation.

Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Actor Daniel Kaluuya, who plays W'Kabi, the right hand man of the main character, poses with fans at the premiere of 'Black Panther' in Los Angeles on Jan. 29, 2018.

“When you’re little and you see black people who are powerful and educated, that’s something that can boost your ability to create a positive image of black people in your head, rather than a negative one that you’ve been force-fed your whole life,” says Sydni Britton, another senior in Pinchem’s class.

For many of the movie’s supporters, the Black Panther’s fictionalized home of Wakanda is just as inspiring as the superhero himself. Wakanda, hidden somewhere on the African continent, has been untouched by European colonization. Free of imperialist violence, the country developed the most technologically advanced society on the planet.

“Even just from history, people always think that European powers need to step in in order for a society to become advanced. I think that’s another important aspect of the movie, where they can become developed without European influence,” Aaliyah says.

That the Black Panther is African, not African-American, can be complicated for black American audiences, says Professor Jennings. By centering the comic in Africa, its white creators in the 1960s could avoid confronting racism facing the black community in the US – a decision some contemporary writers critique. On the other hand, connecting black American audiences to an African context can foster solidarity in a wide-reaching diaspora.

“People keep forgetting that most black people in [the US] are not immigrants. We were kidnapped. And that's a very different relationship with this country,” Professor Jennings says. He notes that the film’s setting, which drew upon contemporary African languages, cultures, and fashions, can appeal to black Americans, whose own heritage was lost in slavery. “We didn't get to bring those various types of cultural production with us,” he says.

The recent rise of “Black Panther,” and other black superheroes such as Netflix’s “Luke Cage,” have been connected by some experts to activist movements, such as Black Lives Matter, that promote racial justice and fight white supremacy.

“Every time you see rebellion or revolution around politics, you see a surge in arts, in resistance arts spaces,” Jennings says. “Black Panther and all these black independent comics that are coming out are this generation's Harlem Renaissance.”

In Pinchem’s history class, Aaliyah makes a similar point. “People are starting to realize that it’s really important that the black community feels included. Especially during the political tension right now,” she says.

For all the record-breaking fanfare surrounding the Black Panther – on Tuesday Variety.com announced it was the most tweeted about movie in the world this year – it’s the subtler milestones that can sometimes have the biggest effect.

Jennings loves the representation found in the film’s promotional videos, but what really got to him was a “Black Panther” toy commercial featuring black children. “Me and my wife watched it like 20 times,” he says, “almost with tears in our eyes.”

AP Photo

People at the Parkland Baptist Church pray together at a vigil for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Feb. 15, in Parkland, Fla.

As most presidents have done after a mass killing in the United States, Donald Trump spoke to the American people the day after the Feb. 14 school massacre in Parkland, Fla. He was consoling to the victims’ families but also offered two practical steps. He called for better security in schools and more help for the mentally ill who might resort to such violence.

His ideas are welcome. Yet he did not mention better regulation of guns. Nor did he speak of many other measures offered by experts. The reaction to his selective choices was swift. It reflected not only a political divide in the US but also a deep exasperation and despair over a lack of progress toward ending large-scale shootings.

Such rage is not uncommon these days. It is directed at the seemingly slow work in ending police shootings of black men, stopping sexual harassment, reducing income inequality, cutting carbon pollution, lowering the national debt, and other big problems.

Solutions to such issues seem so obvious to many people that they are quick to anger and quick to fight others. What is often missing is a mutual recognition between opponents of their common belief that progress is possible.

In the history of human societies, that belief is relatively new. It really took off in the Enlightenment of the 18th century with the writings of European thinkers. It was built on an understanding of each individual’s ability to perceive the underlying nature of reality and that all people have an equal moral standing. This enabled a new age of reason and discovery as well as a spirit to assist others who are suffering.

In a new book, “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress,” Harvard University scholar Steven Pinker makes a case that solving today’s problems would be much easier if we were more grateful for the progress of the past two centuries.

Progress, he says, needs a wholehearted defense. The ideals that have created so much progress are “gifts” that we take for granted. Humans cannot ignore the achievements of the past, such as liberal democracy and the “institutions of truth-seeking.”

People can only understand where they are if they know how far they have come, he says. Dr. Pinker goes so far as to define spirituality as “gratitude for one’s existence, awe at the beauty and immensity of the universe, and humility before the frontiers of human understanding....”

Much of the book includes mounds of data about progress made in reducing homicides, poverty, pollution, illness, war, and similar problems. Gratitude for such progress can help us not be resigned to the “miseries and irrationalities of the present, nor try to turn back the clock to a lost golden age,” he writes.

He asks that we stop seeing every unsolved problem – such as gun violence – as a symptom of a sick society. The ideals that have built a better world, such as reason and benevolence, are still readily available. In fact, much of that knowledge can be found in the smartphones in our purses or pockets.

Massacres like those of innocent teens in a school bring forth strong emotions. But despair at preventing such tragedies should not be one of them. Solutions are possible, and they will need gratitude to achieve them.