“I’m not committing the murders and that’s what people need to understand,” the 65-year-old mayor said, according to The Baltimore Sun. “How can you fault leadership? This has been five years of 300-plus murders.”

He added: “I don’t see it as a lack of leadership.”

Young has been Baltimore’s mayor since being named acting mayor during a leave of absence by Catherine Pugh. Following her resignation in May amid investigations into her business dealings, Young was fully vested as mayor of the city.

In 2019, there have been 296 killings so far. The city has been unable to keep the number of homicides below 300 every year since the death of Freddie Gray in 2015.

The number of people who have survived being shot has also climbed by more than 100 to 681. In total, nearly 1,000 people have been shot in Baltimore in 2019 so far.

Jordan Taylor, a beloved youth sports director at the Y, was recently shot and killed in a home invasion. In response, John Hoey, the CEO of The Y in Central Maryland, wrote an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun about what he called an “existential crisis.”

“The truth is that we are in the midst of an existential crisis in the City of Baltimore. Our homicide rate is among the highest in the country, and the pace of violence and victims this year is exceeding last year’s already high pace,” he said.

Hoey went on to acknowledge that the reasons for this level of violence “are complex and interlocking.”

“There is no one thing to be done to fix it, but there are definitely a set of laws, practices and actions at both the local and state level (with federal assistance) that could be used to significantly reduce the rate of violent crime if we had the will and focus to do it,” he continued.

“Other cities have successfully reduced their violent crime rate significantly, but in Baltimore we have had not just a crisis of confidence but, in my view, a crisis of leadership.”

When Young was asked on Wednesday about Hoey’s comments, the mayor said that every city agency feels a sense of urgency to “reduce crime.”

“We’re going to get the bad guys,” Young said. “We’re going to get them.”

Crime will play a major role in the 2020 mayoral race in which Young is running for reelection. Nine Democrats, four Republicans and others have filed to compete in the April 28 primary.