After decades of notoriously high murder totals, Baltimore and the people whose work entails dealing with the city’s most violent crimes are adjusting to a new reality.

A shooting at a U.S. Consulate has thrust a neighborhood with a troubled past into the center of an emerging criminal phenomenon: young guns for hire as gig workers in the underworld economy.

© Ian Willms for The New York Times

A shooting at a U.S. Consulate has thrust a neighborhood with a troubled past into the center of an emerging criminal phenomenon: young guns for hire as gig workers in the underworld economy.

© Ian Willms for The New York Times