The disaster that is Baltimore is largely caused by federal drug policy. Federal drug policy is also largely responsible for a number of other dark patterns that we see in the US: Militarized and corrupt police, ghettos, and a massive prison population.

EDIT: To clarify, "The Color of Law" and "The New Jim Crow" cover the ways that we have made sure that POC are primary police targets in the US. I further submit that we intentionally create lawless zones for POC to live in so that they can be harassed by police, and that the war on drugs was the perfect cover to do so. There is enough evidence of this that I don't think I need to go nuts explaining it.

Cities with similar demographics will have similar problems, because it has been designed to work that way.