Black Lives Matter has done some real damage to Baltimore in its quest to eliminate police presence from the community.

According to NPR, police backed off of neighborhoods like the one where Freddie Gray was arrested, likely due to the anti-police backlash that occurs when an officer shoots a black suspect, and all the anti-police media attention that comes with it.

According to NPR, the murder rate has reached a whole new record, thanks in part to the lack of police presence.

For the third year in a row, Baltimore, Md., has had more than 300 murders, reaching a new record of murders per number of residents in 2017.

Some residents attribute the high murder rate to relaxed police patrols in the city following high-profile cases of police brutality. Officers have backed off in neighborhoods, like the one where Freddie Gray was arrested.

This is not at all what people in the communities wanted as Rev. Kinji Scott told NPR.

“We wanted the police there,” Scott says. “We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn’t want them beating the hell out of us, we didn’t want that.”

He’s among activists who are calling for police reform to reduce the violence in Baltimore and several other high-crime cities across the U.S. that he says haven’t seen change. That change begins with a conversation between the communities directly involved, Scott says.

“We need the front line police officers and we need the heart of the black community to step to the forefront of this discussion,” he says. “And that’s when we’re going to see a decrease in crime.”

When asked if Baltimore communities wanted police gone after the Gray shooting, Scott put that notion to bed, noting that this was the will of activists and leftist media, nothing more.

“No,” Scott told NPR. “That represented our progressives, our activists, our liberal journalists, our politicians, but it did not represent the overall community. Because we know for a fact that around the time Freddie Gray was killed, we start to see homicides increase. We had five homicides in that neighborhood while we were protesting.”

But those activists that drove the police off were themselves intent on violence. As the Daily Wire highlights, anti-police activists were adamant that police be disarmed, or disappeared in one way or another:

Following the death of Gray, Black Lives Matter activists poured into Baltimore, some demanding police officers be disarmed. Additionally, as reported by The Daily Wire, BLM rally-goers wore t-shirts that said, “F*** The Police.” One man even held a sign referencing the potential murder of the six officers involved in the Gray case: “I HATE YAll I WOULD KILL ALL 6 OF U B****ES,” it read.

Protesters also sported t-shirts celebrating Assata Shakur, AKA Joanne Chesimard, a fugitive cop killer.

Maybe there were some within Black Lives Matter who thought they were saving lives by pushing the police away. Some members who bought the narrative that the police hated black people, and wished to harm them.

The numbers show something wholly different, however. Without the police, Baltimore is losing citizens to murder at a much higher rate.