In 2014, there were 211 homicides in the city of Baltimore. The following year, there were 342, an astonishing increase of 62 percent. The murder rate has barely budged since.

What happened? On April 12, 2015, Freddie Gray sustained a fatal injury in the back of a police van. Peaceful protests and then violence ensued. A demoralized, under-resourced and sometimes corrupt police force stopped doing its job properly. Nearly 30,000 residents have since fled the city, whose population is now the lowest it’s been in a century.

The story of Baltimore’s unraveling was best told by the journalist Alec MacGillis in a searing account last year in The Times Magazine. It should be read again today, against a backdrop of sudden surges in crime that are mainly devastating minority communities. In New York, shootings during the first three weeks in June more than doubled over the same period last year. In Minneapolis, the homicide rate is double what it was this time last year.

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