natural history and some sports-related titles. blooms berry press does history and science and be current affairs, and the walker list does some history and science as well, some self-improvement books and a lot of language books. >> are you selling more e-books than you are hardback books at this point? >> not more, but we're selling a great many e-books. sales have grown dramatically in the last six months as they have for every publisher since christmas they've, of course, exploded. so we're selling many more of them than we were at this time last year, and it's become a hugely significant part of our business. >> how would you like to see the google book settlement end? >> oh. happily, you know? i don't know that i'd want to comment on it as a publisher, you know, i think that, obviously, what google wants to do, making books available, is very important. the spreading of knowledge is very important.

but it's also critically important that authors and publishers are compensated for intellectual property. so, um, you know, i don't think i could, i would comment on it beyond that. >> george gibson is the publisher of bloomsbury press. thank you for a few minutes here. >> peter, thank you. >> next, a former baltimore homicide detective and an investigative crime reporter take an in-depth look at murders in baltimore, maryland, which average around 250 a year. this is about 45 minutes. [applause] >> yeah, hi. thank you for coming tonight. we, um, very much appreciate it. you know, one of the reasons that kelvin and i decided to write this book together -- which, of course, having a reporter and a cop writing a book together is, obviously, an odd thing to begin with because, you know, a relationship is not always, we do not always see things eye to eye. >> no. [laughter] >> part of the interesting -- yeah.

we're the pencil necks. but anyway, the point of it was to sort of get out of the cycle of understanding of homicide and murder in baltimore which is difficult because the media and the way the media is structured, crime is a very sort of dramatic and ongoing story in baltimore. but we don't really take the time to look at it from a perspective of, you know, it's not immediate. at this particular moment, let's try to understand it. and the reason we did that is fairly simple. um, baltimore is consistently one of the most violent cities in the country. no matter what. i mean, right now the mayor will tell you that crime is down. and that's true, but if you look at this relative to other cities, we are the most, one of the most violent, i think in the top five. i don't know exactly. so the question is why. and the question is why do we keep doing the same things? i mean, in baltimore city for the past ten years, twenty years, as long as i've been a reporter, you know, the answer

to that has been some sort of law enforcement. we have the zero tolerance policy where we arrest 100,000 people a year. so it's always been a question of law enforcement or a question of building more prisons. and it's ironic that, you know, kelvin and i worked on this together, but, you know, my thinking was when i approached him and we talked about doing this -- or he approached me, actually -- was to provide some context. was to take these cases starting with a particular and the details and try to have some understanding of why baltimore has such a penchant for murder. and that's not an easy question. but rather than be overly philosophical, you know, kelvin was able to share with me cases and his insight into some cases that are fairly extreme which is what the story of crime is in baltimore singularly which is that it's a laboratory of the extremes. you know, you have extreme behavior. some of the cases that kelvin worked on are difficult to comprehend when a 14-year-old child shoots a woman he doesn't

know from 100 yards across the street, or a group of teen girls set a man on fire while he's alive. you know, these are things as citizens of this city that are difficult for us to comprehend but must be comprehended in some way that's meaningful so that we can, perhaps, alleviate this problem, i guess, would be what i was looking for. you know, i cover crime as a reporter, and i'm part of the problem. i mean, i go to a crime scene, write a story, interview a few people. now i'm a producer for fox 5, and, you know, part of the problem is it's just a 24-hour news cycle. so we were hoping this book by combining both of our perspectives would add something to the equation of our understanding of crime and what it means and why do people kill. i mean, you have to think about it. we're a fairly unique city in that six or seven hundred times a year someone picks up a gun and aims it at someone and pulls the trigger. and that doesn't include

overdoses and undetermined deaths which are unclass canfied. it's quite unusual compared to other cities, compared to europe and other places. we in many times and many social situations choose violence to settle matters that might otherwise be settled, you know, in less violent ways. so the question is, what are the combination of factors, you know, what is it in the psyche of the people who choose to take another life? and the only way really you're going to know that is from someone like kelvin who has sat in the box of people, has been up close to people who we would consider, most of us consider have done things that would be absolutely reprehensible to us but, however, seem common place. so that being said, you know, kelvin, maybe you want to talk a little bit about why you decided to participate in this or why we did this together. >> with first off, i wanted to say the book also talks about how difficult a homicide detective's job is working in

baltimore city. guys experience some of the most difficult challenges dealing with families who have lost loved ones. these guys sometimes -- these ladies and gentlemen sometimes have to put their families second to deal with the families who have lost loved ones to bring closure to their lives. so these detectives, including myself at one point in time, we spent a lot of time in what we called the box, that's the interview room down in baltimore city homicide unit. we deal with some of the most violent criminals, a lot of repeat offenders, and we try to do sometimes the impossible, get confessions out of why they have done some of the things they've done, taken another human being's life. sometimes it's a difficult challenge, sometimes a person just do it out of, for example, love for another -- i would say a love/hate for another person. um, one of the cases

particularly is a case with melvin wilson i wanted to talk about who, in fact, thought he was in love with a 14-year-old -- a 9-year-old kid, i'm sorry, irvin harris. irvin, i guess to melvin, betrayed his love by wanting to buy a young girl who lived in the neighborhood a gift. because of that for some reason melvin snapped and lured the little kid up into the woods and took his life. and that was difficult because a lot came out of that case where social service was warned several times to have this person stay away from her kid. the mother herself wound up going to jail for not protecting her kid like she should have. so, um, also the case of melody smith who we, who we -- the police department responded to calls to come to her house and a

person named gregory tierson lured the police officers away to show them he was the victim and not melody smith, and the entire time it was melody smith. and, in fact, i think the police officers responded to her house at least 50 times before we located ms. smith on a couch strangled and beat to death. in fact, at one point while we were at the location, while we were at the location ms. smith helped us out in her case by fedexing herself a letter indicating who the suspect was who killed her, and that letter arrived at her residence while we were there that day. so and that's also one of the things we discussed in this book right here. >> yeah. i mean, one of the things that kelvin, we talk quite a bit during his -- when i was a reporter and he was a homicide detective, one of the things that he let me know was how disfunctional the system was

like in the case of ms. smith who had filed a protection order and called the police 50 times. and also the situation you had with the state's attorney's office where many times kelvin would say, look, i know who did this, i know who murdered this person, and i have a witness, but i don't have two witnesses, so the state's attorney's office will not issue a warrant. and this became a big issue in the campaign with our current state's attorney greg bernstein. but to me it was you get a call from kelvin, and he says, look, i could take a murderer off the street right now, but i can't get a warrant. and to me that spoke to, you know, dysfunctionalty in the system that we as citizens of baltimore pay a great deal of money to protect us and that often times seems lost in politics and, you know, a lot of the other things that shouldn't really infect an organization that's trying to take murderers off the street. there should be some sense of priority. but, you know, that was a big problem. >> i see a lot of homicide

detectives around in the audience right now who they can also understand what we've been through down on the floor of homicide with we have the suspects out there walking the streets right now that we know should be off the streets. and we had a little bit of help from then the state's attorney's office. but gnaw we've got, as you said, greg bernstein who's in the office who won't let us take these cases to court with these one witnesses and try to get these people prosecuted and off the street. for a homicide detective it's very frustrated because you know a person committed the murder, you talk to that person while he's on the street, you know he did this murder, but you don't have the tools to take him off the street because of someone else. to some extent, that's not fair to the detective who worked hard out there trying to get these murdersers off the street. >> what was it that you used to say to me about the building. >> oh. [laughter] >> what'd you say? >>

>> when i'm driving down my vehicle, i would always look up at the building, police headquarters, and be i always said, you know, there's more problems in that building right there than there is on the street, you know? is. [laughter] so we, and we can just get the building straight first, maybe we can help the people a little bit better out there on the streets of baltimore city. >> and, you know, for both of us, kelvin has to go to the homes of people whose son or daughter has been taken from this world, and as a reporter we also talked to those families. and, you know, when you see all the sort of obstacles to clear thinking and truth with regards to the subject matter, it becomes frustrating. i think that's one of the reasons the book was so important, to at least give the people in the city a clear, straightforward, you know, unobstructed view of what happens and why people might kill and maybe start to answer that question. and if we can answer that question, then we, perhaps, have the ability to soft solve the problem, you know?

which really has been beyond our ability. i was just looking at the murder rate in d.c. thai had 45 -- they have had 45 murders this year as opposed to 125, i don't know, in the city. and that is true throughout the country. so why should we have to suffer with one of the worst homicide rates? and i think part of the problem is that we don't really have time or we don't really know exactly what's going on, and we can't deal with the situation if we don't have some sense of the truth. and kelvin was really courageous enough and willing to share that so that i could write it in a way or we could write it together in a way that would be meaningful. so, you know, that's why we did the book. i think we wanted to just let people -- >> basically, what this book also is about is no editing in this book because it tells about the truth of what goes on in the streets of baltimore city. it doesn't give you that channel 11, channel 13 or channel 2 news version of it. it gives you the details of what actually occurs on the streets.

i think people should get this. they should, people want to know the truth, they want to know what goes on. this book tells the truth. it tells what actually happens out there. it takes away from the, what the news put out there. this is the grim detailses of what actually happens so people stop and think. this is what happens in baltimore city, so what are we going to try to do about it to try and fix this problem? >> yeah. and also just one other comment in terms of the media. i'm a member of the media, and i work for be fox 45 as an investigator producer, so i think the media's structured in an important way to get breaking news and fast news. this is not a condemnation, it's more saying, you know, everyone deserves some time to think about things. this book is supposedly a more thoughtful look at it than an immediate look at it. i spent a lot of time with kelvin discussing the cases, and he gave me a look at it. that's more what it's about. >> and also to watch your loved ones a little bit better. by reading this book it shows

you these, the individuals out there who are committing these murders and what they're looking for and how they're committing these murders. just to keep an eye on your kids a little better, your loved ones so they can't become victims of homicide, and that's what this book actually talks about. >> can i make a comment here? >> sure. >> these guys sent material to me most often in the meddle of the night in pretty much finished draft form, and i had to read it, and be this is something that i think everybody needs to read. i couldn't put it down. and i don't like to read crime stories. i don't want to read about murder and what happens to people, but every time i read a draft, i couldn't put it down, it was so compelling. and kelvin's perspective on what goes on in baltimore and what goes on in the police department is something that everybody in baltimore and other places need to know about because it needs fixing. and hopefully, this book -- his

intention and stephen's intention, is to, hopefully, do something about this. not that we can solve those problems necessarily, but we do, we do run on investigative voice, stephen and i, run lots of stories about crime and about murder and about shootings, and it seem like every week somebody's being shot, somebody's being killed in baltimore, and it's a horrible thing. um, but we can't close our eyes to it and say, well, i don't want to deal with that, i don't want to read about it. it's something that we all have to deal with when we live here. >> we try as closely as possible to get into the psyche of the person that kelvin encountered and some of the people in the cases and what he shared with me in the box. so hopefully, you know, the book itself will give you that perspective that, perhaps, a homicide detective would have and, thus, give you a sense of how sort of dissociated certain parts of the city are with the

rest of the city. as a reporter i go to the east side and the west side, and t like you're going into a place where, you know, 30 people, 40 people have been murdered in a year within a very small area, and it transforms to a psychological landscape of the city. because people are, you know, i was just interviewing someone today, and he said, well, you know, the people who are really transformed don't blink because if they blink, they might get killed. so they become very tense. and he was just talking about dealing with kids who had witnessed three, four, five murders by the age of 9 or 10. and it's transformative on your psyche because you've been surrounded by violence that is almost like a war zone. and so the nature of those neighborhoods, the lack of support and community services and the things that, you know, give a neighborhood stability are hard to describe, you know, unless you see it firsthand. i think kelvin has seen it firsthand. >> definitely have seen it. seen it firsthand, definitely put an impact on why i wanted this week to come out. -- this

book to come out. i wanted people to understand through my eyes what i've seen so they can, basically, just be careful. but i also wanted to say to turn this society around and get these people to stop thinking about protecting their -- to start thinking about protecting their loved ones, you have to start with these elementary schools, you know? start at that level. by the time a kid turns 15 years old, 16 years old, a lot of times they can still be saved. but if you get them at the elementary school age and work with those kids to try to turn these kids, get these kids' minds on the straight and narrow at that point, i think our society would change in the future. >> okay. we can, um, if anyone wants to ask questions, um -- >> [inaudible] >> oh, i'm sorry. this is al foreman, he edited the book for us. he was very instrumental in helping us put it together, and he was a great part of what we did together. >> and i'm the one that said

everybody should read it, right? [laughter] >> i guarantee if you read this book, you're not going to want to put it down. there's a lot of information this the book -- in the book that people need to know. >> ben's going to see if we get some questions. >> we'll have about 10, 15 minutes of q&a, and then at the end of that we have copies of the book on sale in the back, and i'm sure these gentlemen will be glad to discuss further the book with you and/or sign a copy of the book for you and we'll, obviously, be open, and the bar in the back will be open again if you want to get another refreshment or something. so that being said, who has comments or questions? yeah. >> i'm just wondering if some of you guys are talking about some of the conclusions of why people kill. [laughter] i mean, that's the title. i have that question and then, also, the idea of this book giving a lot of details about homicide, murder and, you know, what goes on behind the scenes. i feel like there's a lot of

unnecessary information in the media daily, it's not just weekly, it's every night about who gets killed and what happens, and it's very salacious, and, you know, people kind of glom on to that. so what's the difference between that and what's in the book? the so i know z those are two questions but -- >> first of all, the difference in this book, perhaps s the intimacy of the narrative. you know, i think a lot of times in the media we don't have time to explore, you know, the character of someone behind the crime or their personality or, or the social circumstances or the context, you know? i mean, why people kill in baltimore, to me -- and this is just simply from talking to people and going to these neighborhoods -- is because a lot of times they feel that's the only choice that they have, you know, that their lives, they're so separate from the system that we all are used to participating in a lot of ways, you know? you know, i was talking to this young gentleman today, and he

was saying, you know, they don't think -- people in some of these communities don't believe that they have the same future that most people have. so when a conflict arises, you know, it's easier to pick up a gun maybe. or the frustration, the anger and isolation. you know, i'm not making excuses for people who decide to do this. but i'm simply telling you what, you know, i've learned from talking to kelvin and from going the these neighborhoods, that there's a sense of isolation and desperation that is inculcated into their lives to an extent that it's the only reality that they know, you know? or that this particular person knows. and it transcends all the type of decisions that we make in our lives to deal with things that we can't deal with. we all reach walls and places -- and we have places to turn. but i think in a lot of these neighborhoods the rec centers have gone, the schools are having trouble. there's a tremendous police presence, but there's not a presence that says we have a way to help you or show you a future where, you know, your life will

be improved. there's lead poisoning, you know, today i was in an apartment, a woman was paying $800 rent for the home next door that had been abandoned, and there was cockroaches so bad she had to throw out all her furniture. and everyone she called wouldn't help her. she called the health department. so there's a sense of isolation, and that isolation, i think, leads to desperation. but, you know, i can't -- i'm not saying that they did the right thing or this is a moral justification for taking someone's life, but i'm simply trying to answer the question, truthfully, this is what does it. a lot of times when you say that you say, well, look at the circumstances. people say, well, that's ridiculous. you're a jerk. it's their choice. and that's true, but if we ignore the factors, if we ignore what type of community we've created, then we're just going to be in the same -- we're going to be having the same conversation three years from now. one of the key elements of this book is we called it why do we kill, not why do they or you or

someone else. because we as a community, i think, share a certain amount of responsibility for everything that occurs. and until we really recognize that on a fundamental and complete level, we're not going to be able to solve this problem. i mean, if people think it's wrong to say that we have created this, then we will, i guarantee you, four years from now have just as many murders as we had this year. i guarantee you. until we're willing to say, well, collectively we have created a world where there are haves and have nots to such an extreme that people feel hopeless, until we're willing to acknowledge that, we'll never understand the psyche of a killer. it's not like all these people are the serial killers you see on tv who live in a duplex apartment. kelvin would talk about these people, it wasn't like one of the killers was somebody -- it was nothing like i've ever seen in a their tv or tv thing. it was just matter of fact. melvin jones said, well, he was

cheating on me. now, he was a 50-year-old man and irvin harris was 9. did i get the names wrong? >> that's right. >> so it was matter of fact. it wasn't as though he'd been putting up pictures all over his wall and put them in the basement and put costumes on them. it's not like that. not at least from what i understand. >> do that's correct. >> okay, just to make sure. so, you know, we have to get past that narrative, and to get past that their taye is to look at it collectively. it's our community. >> you touched on the despair that people feel. there are many studies that have shown kids growing up in the inner city, particularly african-american boys, don't expect to live to be 20 years old. so if you don't expect to live to be 20, then what is there to restrict you from doing whatever you need to do to survive as long as you can? and that's what they do. >> tell them about the alphabet?

>> oh. one of the techniques i used and can some of the detectives in the back might smile at this, when you get the hardened criminals inside the box or the interview room and they don't want to talk to you, you try to get a sense where this interview is going. and they sit back, and they lean back in the chair, and the first thing i'd ask was, okay, you so tough, you so bad. recite the alphabet. you'd be surprised with the education system we have here today that a lot of people don't even know the english language alphabet. they don't know the alphabet. and that's what helps me break the ice and start the conversation. they can't say it. don't give me no l, m, n, o, p be. take your time -- because i get that a lot. people can sing it, i want you to say it. and that breaks the ice. and then you get them to come down to, how can i say, get to their level and start talking to them and a lot of times guys in the box want to talk to you, and sometimes they don't. most of the times some of the

tactics we use in homicide we get our point across, and they talk to us about why they committed this murder or how they did it, and that's what we try to accomplish when we're in the box to get some of the cases solved. >> that's one of the stories in the book. you have to read it. it talks more about it in the detail. >> yes. >> the credo of local newscasting has been for years, if it bleeds, it leads. but when i watch local television news in baltimore, i have never seen as much emphasis on violence as today not only one or two stories, but four or five stories, one after another. so the question is, do we have more violence than we used to have? is it different kind of violence? or is this just a function of news policies? >> well, i mean, that's a really good question. and, um, you know, i think if you look at the numbers, technically, we have fewer

homicides than when you were a reporter at the sun. we probably had 350 at that point or 300, right? maybe the '90s. and i don't know the particular reason for this phenomenon is, but crime gets more hits on the internet, and as media companies sort of transform from print to -- if you write a crime story versus a the story about a city council municipal hearing, the crime story will get four or five times as many reads. and that dictates decisions made in media companies because, you know, internet advertising is based primarily off of, you know, how many hits you get. that's, you know, the very straightforward answer. now, why crime has become an obsession, you know, could it be the wire? we are a city that is best known for exporting misery, you know? and that's become maybe our cultural product is the fact that we produce a lot of crazy crime stories that go viral over the internet, that become

national stories. you know, maybe that's part of it. maybe it's the fact that people just feel like this problem has lingered so long that it requires all our attention. and the thing is true, also, in the middle of the decade, i mean, mayor martin o'malley politicized the issue and said baltimore city will not be whole until we reduce crime, and i will reduce the homicide rate. and so crime became purely political and numbers became political. so everything came down to what are your numbers. is crime lower, is crime higher? so, of course, the media can't resist when a politician is proven wrong, when crime continues and homicide continues to expose that story. it's almost like baiting them saying, you know, i'm going to reduce the homicide rate under 200. we all remember that at the beginning of the decade. that affected how kelvin did his job. so when you politicize something like crime, when you make it a currency that the media just can't resist, and it becomes the whole story, you know? go ahead. >> and what i don't want people in baltimore city to accept is

at the end of the year we have 200, for example, last year we had 20, 240 homicides. at the back of my mind i always thought the one homicide was too many. so you brag on 220, 230 homicides when you shouldn't have one. that's just the way society accepts things these days, and we're trying to change that, the way people think. >> another question. yes. >> is there any sort of, in your opinion, anything that makes baltimore special than other regional cities or other cities with the same racial breakdown that makes homicides go up? >> what's something that makes baltimore unique? >> based on the homicide rate you're talking about? i'm sorry. >> what about this city in particular drives this rate that other cities around don't have? or might not have the same -- >> well, if i can -- i think i'm

trying to understand your question, basically. >> well, you know, basically, what makes baltimore unique, is there anything that makes baltimore unique that informs our homicide rate, you know? >> well, if you drive through baltimore city especially on the east side of baltimore and the west side of baltimore, we're going to see a lot of abandoned homes. and look at the education system itself. i've put people in the box, i ask them to say their abcs, and they don't know it. so the education system, i think, needs to be better, and this is a lot of people living on the streets these days, so they're trying to do the best they can. i'm not, i'm not trying to explain -- i'm not trying to make it right what they're doing because it's not right. but you've got to educate the people a little more, and that's why i say start with the elementary system because a lot of these guys in middle school and high school kids are already in gangs. it's like the bounty hunters itself. most of the kids who committed that crime and set that man on

fire while he was still alive was 15 and 16 years old. they were kids that were in middle school and elementary school. we have to do something to try to educate these kids that these things that they're doing is not right. it starts at the elementary level and not the middle school and high school level. if you can save some at those grades, that's fine. but you've got to get to the young kids, let them know that you could be whatever you want to be in life, but you're going to have to start right here. most of the kids that go into a lot of these middle schools and high schools, their thought process is already to join a gang and be affiliated with a gang because that's the only family that they have. ..

i think baltimore has tried to do this to the extreme that you created a situation where myrrh and violence is the obvious outcome of that experiment. i am not saying there are cities like that. perhaps the flight. i am from new york and new york was a little different. there was more of a sense the city was self sustaining and important. in baltimore some of the thesis of these stories is baltimore is supposed to fail. it is designed to fail. when you write a story about its failure everyone read it and

says great, you got it right. 84 riding that story. i told you this wasn't going to work. it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. it is a set up. we look and say this is crazy. four shot in 24 hours. this is the outcome that is supposed to happen. this happens when you design a city to be isolated. and you don't have a full community. >> a question -- [inaudible] >> the book is a fantastic read. it captured the inside of the city very well. my question is is there a plan for a sequel? [laughter] >> i get that question all the time. i got that question this morning on e-mail.

we are going to look at it. it took two years to write. we will be exploring that option. we will decide that in the near future. >> everyone who asks that question, when is the next book coming out? thank you. >> how do you turn it around? young people and how do you turn that around? >> the border of baltimore city made baltimore a part of maryland. that would be a big part of changing. make everybody deal with the consequences of what we created in baltimore. if you did that and it affected other people significantly you had money and the power to change things you would see change. real substantial change. rather than creating a system in

isolation make everybody accountable. i am sure that is not a palatable and will never happen in our lifetime but once you align the interests of the entire community with a small part of the community you will see substantial change. as long as we can isolate people and we can write crazy stories about horrific murders and create a virtual wall it won't change but once people are accountable, maryland and the lot of taxes to baltimore city. go downtown. what used to be a manufacturing center is a center of prison. i took a philosopher on it for. i can't believe how many prisons you have. it goes on forever. even warehousing. that is what we do. when do you decide that is not effective or what we want to do to people in our city that we want to house them or segregate them things will change but until then nothing will change.

>> had to be a better rehabilitation center. we are going to take the plunge into baltimore county. the murder rate is getting high out there too so we have to deal with it here. there should be a system in place in baltimore city and our own society. >> part of the issue that we are narrow minded in our approach to responding to people and their problems, i agree that as young as we can get them we need to respond to them. it is everyone else in their lives, we need to be working with. i hope we are really clear this is about class. this has little to do with race.

this is about class and a lack of resources. >> it does to a certain extent. if you look at the statistics in the prison system, african-american the more affected by violent crimes, more likely to be incarcerated in areas with environmental concerns. it is class but race is the backdrop for an important story. we have sergeant lewis cost and here -- to with a major lawsuit. is part of that issue. we have for people suffering more who are getting killed more. that is absolutely true. it is important issue here. >> in baltimore city they close down the town center and rex

centers and people don't understand the importance of grabbing kids when they are young. i was working with 17-year-olds reading on a fifth grade level. it is a thing about race and targets the young black males. until we raise our voices and start to try to do something about that, with these politicians, 47 to do their job, i don't really see a lot changing. >> how do you take a situation where kids are growing up in poverty and they see the large -- the largess of the community and the big hotels and their harbor and the condos in other parts of the city and to say to

them you can have this. how do you make them believe that without being drug dealers and living a life of crime? they see that the drug dealers and the gangsters have all the money in their community. how do you do that? >> that is another point. going back to parents and dealing with a lot of parents who are not doing their jobs. when i was on baltimore city police department everyone wanted to point at police and churches and schools. there is a problem there but we have to go back and educate some of these young parents and it was starting with in that town center. i worked in that center and i worked with those kids and they

saw a difference. i told them i am a product of the projects. you don't have to sell drugs to afford a halfway decent house, car or something like that. they have to see positive images outside their homes. we have police officers, we really cared about these kids and work hard. >> how did you come out of that whereas most of the others -- >> it was a different time. everyone looks at the project in different era. my mom and my dad were there. i had a father that let me know -- my sister -- i had nine brothers and sisters. it was difficult but we understood you had to go out and

work. you didn't go out and do this or that. >> sergeant sewell will tell you about the girls who killed petro taylor. the one girl with a college student in atlanta and her mother was a supervisor of social security administration believed -- wouldn't believe him when he called to tell her her daughter confessed to murder. can't be my daughter. my daughter is in college in atlanta. she is not even in baltimore. >> put her daughter on the phone that she was in baltimore. then she didn't believe it. >> you have questions? >> you talked about starting elementary school. even earlier. could you consider the fact that if you have a parent who is not

in the city to raise a child and the most important period is eight month to two years and two years to six years so we don't have kids that are ready for school or ready for the kids and somewhere back at the very beginning, maybe before a elementary school. >> that age period will be difficult for the kids but once the kid goes to elementary school level they have to be put in place in the elementary school system to help the kid get a better understanding of things that are happening out here is wrong and make a better life but those things based on what i have seen is not in place at this time. >> two more questions. we go to you. >> [inaudible] the family structure is not the same as it

was 20 years ago. we need to get back to some basics. you have a kid in fifth or sixth grade who has seen violence since they were 3. and you put them in school and tell them all these things, what you can achieve but that is not tangible to them. they go back to seeing mom and dad and sister and brother abuse one another, abuse illegal stuff. >> i understand what you are saying. the mentality of the kids, the 14-year-old who shot the lady.

the mentality that some of the things he was doing was the norm for him. when i interviewed that kid i got to give it to the kid. he held out a long time. 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. i looked in the snow area and he dropped his head and he looked up at me, 14-year-old kid and said i did it. can i go home now? this is what this kid was doing. he shot this lady in the back of a head on a dare, he can go home after that. he didn't even know her. >> part of the problem is we see things that are crystallized over decades and we see a snapshot of a crime and don't always get the perspective of what led to the culmination of things that led up to that

crime. >> how long have you been a homicide detective and what is the most gruesome case you have seen? >> i have been a baltimore city police officer for 22-1/2 years and a homicide supervisor since 2006. we work a lot of gruesome cases. so many of them. you could see a body on this side and the head on the other side. you can go into a scene where you see bodies -- i hate to be gruesome but something you don't see in the casket with detectives see on normal basis. you can go on the scene and you conceal body that has been murdered and then in the house for months in the summer time.

covered with all kinds of -- i hate to -- you know. and you get that person out of the house, has been in the house so long the body explodes. you see things like that. you see a lot of stuff. being a homicide supervisor, i keep an eye on my detectives because without mentioning names i had to send my detectives to cure stalin because after coming from a homicide scene are they ok? i won't mention names but had to send to a counselor because they were not acting right after the scene. as well as people who see these on the scene. >> just so we don't end on such a gloomy note you had a question. >> i did. i wanted to know how the media has responded to the book. have you been able to get

coverage? >> we had a review. we brought water from the -- he was here. he is back there. kind enough to run an excerpt. there has been a fairly positive -- i had a woman who has been calling me personally. i don't know how she got my number but she has been trying to track down the book. a lot of people tracked down this book and been interested because of what kelvin is willing to share. what is it really like? it has been a personal event more than a media event. >> we had four so far and we

will have more. >> the book is on sale in the back. >> we have a lot of media attention in the u.k. as well. people helping us with the sale of the book. >> we will do a tour of europe. we are. >> can i say one other thing? i said this in the book. 22-1/2 years i have the baltimore police officer. i have it working these cases along time. sometimes put my family second to help other families get exposure in life. my wife is here tonight. [applause] by two daughters are back there too. >> k is over here who helped write the book.

>> thank you for coming out and putting up with the heat. they will be glad to sign copies. copies of the book on sale in the back. feel free to browse around. thank you very much. [applause] >> afterwards available by pod cast. visit booktv.org and click pod cast on the upper left side of the page. select which comcast you would like to download and listen to afterwards while you travel. >> book came out of my attempt to answer a question i was asked very frequently when i was talking about climate change particularly after i had written in 2005, that question was what are our chances of surviving the

shifting climate? the only way i could think of to answer that question was to really go back to the scientific fundamentals. go back to the process that created a us and our planet and looked at the intersection between our species and this thing we call planet earth. it is that issue of sustainability. i couldn't think of a better way of looking at the issue than to go back to the work of that man, charles darwin's tombstone in westminster abbey, the sacred house for all the great men and women of the british people. it tells you something that he was buried in the church in the great house but nothing is set on his tombstone of his achievements. is unique among all the

monuments. you would guess why he was there, what he had done and written about with the theory of evolution. was not kindly looked upon by his own church. the reason i wanted to start with darwin is he was the man who explained to us the process that made us and the process that made our earth. his idea was a simple one. it was simply that in every generation there is variation between individuals and some of those individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce than others and over the fastness of time that people were just becoming aware of the history of the earth in the nineteenth century, that must

tell on a irritability -- heritage that shape species of the hole. the simple idea, but darwin being a very wise and perceptive person decided to sit on that idea for 20 years. only when i went to his house that i understood little bit more about why he waited so long before he announced this fundamental idea that changed our view of the world. just outside his house he built a little thing called the sand walk. is actually a pebble walk but there you go. great men do odd things. every day of his life he would walk for several hours around that sand walk and people wondered what he was thinking

about as he walked around that race track. just a loop around the forest. some speculated he was perfecting his arguments for constructing the beautiful paragraphs and sentences that characterized his written work. but the testimony of his children suggests something different. they left memoirs where they took about -- talked about his father. they would interrupted in the forest and he always seemed glad of the interruption and would join their games. those are not the actions of a man who was deeply engaged in complex critical thought. i think what bar one was doing was metaphorically fingering his worry beads. he was thinking of the implication of his theory for religious belief in his country, for the shape of civil society

and other deep matters. he was worried that if he destroyed faith by showing we were not unique creation of a loving and caring god, we are the result of an amoral and cool process, by destroying faith he might destroy hope and charity as well and have a very adverse impact upon his society. he may never have published his theory is not for this man here. 20 years after darwin stumbled on the idea of how we and every living thing was made this man here, alfred was wallace -- alfred russel wallace was working in asia.

he was working class bread, self-made and went to the tropics to collect biological specimens and when he was there he had a malaria attack and as a result the idea came to him that species were created by the same mechanism that darwin had chanced upon 20 years earlier. when he recovered enough he wrote a note to darwin outlining his theory and asked darwin if he wouldn't mind transmitting it to one of the journals to be published in britain. when darwin received the letter he was horrified. he said wallace couldn't have made a better summary of my work if he had my notes in front of him. he thought his life's work was about to be stolen. he appealed to his friends

particularly those who looked after journal publications including the the aldus charles lyell and as a result his work was published in july 18, '58. it is extraordinary how similar they are. the theory is presented in complete this in those accounts. no one took any notice. the man in charge of publishing the journal wrote his summary of the riding that there were no significant scientific discoveries in the journal. he couldn't have been more wrong and that was shown the following

year when darwin published his book on the origin of species. with the theory unleashed on society everything began to change. within five years herbert spencer had claimed the term survival of the fittest and social darwinism had been born. darwin did not help his cause in the subtitle he picked which included the line on the preservation of favored races. i am mad and going into a book shop in 1859 as an average englishmen picking on this book, wouldn't have been thinking about worms as favored races. you would think of the british empire builders and stuff like that. there was this social impact.

overtime what we saw was deep impact on society by these darwinian ideas. everything from national socialism to eugenics' to classical economics have borne some inkling of darwinian thinking particularly as mediated through herbert spencer. as i was beginning to look at the process that created us, i reread richard dawkins's selfish gene and reread darwin and began to despair that perhaps we were selfish, shortsighted, ruthless entities forged by and a moral and utterly cool process but this man here gave me hope that that may not be the case.

alfred russel wallace live the full life guy get the age of 90. at the age of 80 he was still riding and his most important work was published in 1904. that is the title page, man's place in the universe. a study of the result of scientific research in relation to the plurality of world's. very strange title indeed. what this book really is is a summary of his understanding of what the evolutionary mechanisms created. he wasn't like darwin. he wasn't interested in the reduction of science ever more finely in terms of understanding the evolution -- he had done that in 1858. he wanted to know what created and being a holistic thinker his field of endeavor was the entire

planet. this book is the foundation of astrobiology. he says this planet is the only living planet. the others wherever they may be are all dead. it is the forerunner of the guy at --gaia theory. he talked about the atmosphere and the gases created by living things regulate earth's climate system. it is an extraordinarily lucid work that underpins many aspects of our current science particularly holistic science. what we learned from wallace and his work is evolution's