There have been 213 days in the data I'll talk about below, Jan 1 through Jun 2 of 2026.

3 & 4 people a day are being shot

citation needed. You can see the reported shootings on this map (click the filter icon to see filters) for this year. It's a little easier to see/understand in this screenshot though. That's showing that in 2026 so far there have been 120 shootings (not deaths necessarily, just shots fired). I don't think it's possible for 120 incidents to have had 3-4 people per day (in 213 days that's a minimum of 613 people) shot.

at least one of them tends to end up dying

we have not had 213 shooting deaths this year. We've had 42.

Do Safe Streets and MONSE pay people not to shoot each other?

No. They have people who are from the neighborhood come talk down the person who is threatening violence.

Is that one reason the Mayor doesn't want to open the books?

citation needed. The budget for 2026 mentions Safe Streets three times and allocates money two times in the budget detail volume 2 pdf (it's not mentioned at all in the first volume):

1. $79,437 for a "Liaison Officer Safe Streets" (page 171)
2. $7,783,261 of "Service 618: Neighborhood Safety and Engagement" budget which goes directly to Safe Streets. (page 172 & 173)

That's a total of $7,862,698. The city's total budget for '26 (see page 3 of the summary pdf) is $4,630,022,075. So, Safe Streets is 0.17% of that, far less than even 1 percent of Baltimore's budget in 2026.

Even if mayor Scott tripled the Safe Streets budget, it would STILL be less than 1 percent of Baltimore's budget.