Jul 11, 2017

Maggie Ybarra is a dedicated — and unpaid — chronicler of Baltimore’s crime and fire scenes.

: Maggie Ybarra sits with a police scanner — her constant companion on weekends. Her apartment in the Central District is decorated with paintings and photographs she’s taken. But one thing sticks out: a gas mask, high up on the shelf. It was given to her by a friend. “He figured I’d need it someday,” she said. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)

: Friends don’t expect Maggie Ybarra to hang out on weekends: that’s her time to roam the city, and listen to the police scanner. She keeps a list of police codes taped to the wall so she can understand what’s happening. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)

: Ybarra said she approaches crime scene photography from the perspective of an artist, rather than a journalist. “I think there’s this weird intersection of the things that scare you, the things that are dark and the things that are beautiful and that’s what I’m looking at,” she said. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)

: Ybarra, 39, bends to get a shot of detectives at a shooting in Federal Hill on July 8, 2017. “The majority of the time people are just pissed off that they can’t get past the tape,” she said. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)

: Ybarra isn’t afraid to get on the ground at a scene to get the perfect shot. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)

: Ybarra thinks her presence at crime scenes helps hold police and local news stations accountable. “Every life counts, and it gets rolled up into two to four lines in a Baltimore police press statement. And I hate to see that,” she said. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)

: “A man tries to salvage part of a building after a car drove into it in May 2015.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Firefighters try to extinguish one of many blazes in the city on the night of the April 27, 2015, riot.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A police officer looks out of the doorway of Geri’s Liquors on Charles Street during an April 2015 shooting investigation.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Police investigate a December 2014 shooting in the 500 block of Edgewood Street.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Baltimore firefighters struggle to put out a three-alarm fire at a warehouse near Kirk Avenue and Curtain Avenue in November 2014.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Detectives discuss an October 2016 shooting as a cat darts out of an alley and into a crime scene.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Crime lab technicians collect evidence of a December 2016 shooting that took place near the intersection of E. Saratoga Street and Holliday Street.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Citywide Shooting Unit detectives smoke cigars as they study a December 2016 shooting scene near Baltimore City Hall.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Detectives investigate an October 2016 shooting on McCulloh Street.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A police officer explains to reporter Juliet Linderman that she can’t cut around the crime scene tape at a mass shooting near the intersection of Greenmount Avenue and E. Preston Street. The shooting occurred on October 24, 2016, about 8:30 p.m.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A woman and child walk by the crime scene tape strewn around the place where a man was shot in the Eastern District in October 2016.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A crime lab technician takes pictures of the corner of W. Fairmount Avenue where a man was shot on February 26, 2017.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Neighborhood residents walk through a house on E. 26th Street after it was destroyed in a March 2015 fire.”

: “Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis talks to local media about why it was important for police to pitch in and finish building Kendal Fenwick’s fence. Police and the community gathered at Fenwick’s house on November 15, 2015, a few days after Fenwick was murdered.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A young boy plays with the bits of crime scene tape in Baltimore’s Eastern District as police investigate an October 2016 shooting.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Police investigate an October 2016 shooting in the 400 block of Rose Street.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A detective urges the friends and family of a young boy taken away in an ambulance to calm down while police conduct an investigation into a June 2017 shooting on Aisquith Street.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A man sticks his tongue out at a detective as an officer escorts him from an East Baltimore shooting scene to a nearby police car.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A firefighter walks past a building that was destroyed by a fire and condemned in Marcy 2017.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A woman carries a child into the Mini Market while police investigate a shooting on E. Eager Street in January 2017.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “Police tape frames a police investigation into an April 2017 shooting in the 2700 block of Ashland Avenue.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: “A child plays with the crime scene tape on Whitelock Street while police investigate a July 2014 shooting.” (Photo and caption courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: (Photo courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: (Photo courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: (Photo courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

: (Photo courtesy of Maggie Ybarra)

When photographer Maggie Ybarra goes to a crime scene, she likes to get low. Stomach on the ground, arms stretched on the pavement. She was at a scene on the east side recently — on the ground, camera in hand. A woman passing by saw her and screamed, thinking her small body was a corpse.

That reaction was understandable. Ybarra, 39, isn’t someone you’d expect to be on the ground, taking pictures at crime scenes. Originally from Texas, she’s not a professional reporter – though she’s worked as one in the past. She’s not a detective. She doesn’t consider herself an activist. She just does it.

On nights and weekends — when she’s not at her day job as an editor for a foreign policy magazine in D.C., she takes the bus to crime and fire scenes around the city, taking pictures which she shares on Twitter (her handle is @MolotovFlicker) and on her website, briefingroomart.com. She forgets to eat.

She thinks her presence helps hold the police and news organizations accountable – to pay closer attention to crimes that are otherwise so commonplace as to be forgettable. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it generates momentum,” she said. “I do feel bad when I don’t show up.”

In the past, she sold prints of her work online, but she stopped, struggling with the ethics of it. She doesn’t want to look like she’s profiting from people’s suffering. “I can just imagine all the people who would hate me if they thought I did do that,” she wrote in an email.

She listens to the scanner on her phone when she’s out — at home, via a radio purchased a year ago. She sometimes falls asleep next to it. It stays on during an interview at her apartment, background chatter.

“Hold on a sec – that’s a fire,” she said. The scanner crackles. Fire at 300 South Charles. Not too far. Interesting.

The chatter continues: in the parking garage.

“Oh, no, I can’t access that,” she said. She returns to the conversation.

Heading to a recent shooting in Federal Hill, she texts a friend to let him know she won’t make it to hang out tonight. Crime is happening. She rarely accepts dates on the weekends — those are scanner days.

When she gets to a scene at Fort Avenue and Hanover Street, she stashes her backpack behind the wheel of a parked car. She’s dressed in a tank top, her hair curled, her face hidden by a baseball cap. It was a shooting, but she’s not looking for the body.

“I look at the ground and where the light is bouncing off,” she said.

The police don’t seem bothered– or even to take much notice of her — as long as she stays behind the yellow crime scene tape. A man with FORENSICS emblazoned on his chest chatted with her as he walked the perimeter, making notes in a clipboard. She offered to send him any good photos later on.

She has a handwritten note taped on her phone. The same note is taped on her door, above her peephole. It’s the last thing she sees before she leaves each day. “Take more risks,” it says.

Ybarra’s willingness to take risks — and to go to far-flung parts of the city, late at night, make her a second set of eyes and ears on the city for area reporters, who follow her updates from Twitter.

“Maggie provides a vital window into the crime scenes playing out across the city, often at hours when no one else is able or willing to venture out,” wrote Justin Fenton, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. “Especially with police switching from as-it-happens updates to briefings done at intervals, her Twitter account is the first I check on the weekends to find out what’s going on.”

Her other followers include Steve O’Dell, chief of forensics for the Baltimore Police Department, who blogs on Twitter through the handle @CrimeLabBoss. He frequently shares photos she’s posted that include members of his staff. “They are well composed, artistic, and capture a reality to the job,” he said in a message. He’s even heard stories from crime scene workers posing when she asks — he said usually they don’t mind.

But it hasn’t always been pleasant. Ybarra said she’s been confronted by women on the street; one found her on Twitter and began cyber bullying. “There’s just no point in arguing with someone on Twitter,” she wrote. “I just wish them well and block them.”

On the scene with Maggie Ybarra (@MolotovFlicker)

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