Soccer Dad

What's wrong with this picture?

Looking at the Baltimore Sun yesterday I saw these two blurbs right next to each other:

Boy, 17, is first killing of year
Gunman shoots three getting food at city carryout

Gansler sets his sights on state's polluters
He'll take activist approach, new Md. attorney general says

Maryland does have a crime problem, of course it's because of the awful statistics in Baltimore City. Yet Maryland's top law enforcement official sees his priority is to go after polluters. The crime in Baltimore City remains an afterthought for him. (And his predecessor thought it more important to fight the evil of Microsoft than to work out any sort of crime fighting plan with his son-in-law.)

And what does Baltimore's incoming mayor think that the problem is?

City Council President and Mayor-designate Sheila Dixon said in an interview that she thinks the federal government has focused on overseas wars in recent years and could do more to help U.S. cities that continue to grapple with high crime. Violent crime in many areas across the country have gone up this year, national statistics show.

Yes the persistently high homicide rate in Baltimore City is due to shifting resources to the war in Iraq. So how do you explain?

Baltimore's homicide rate has dipped since the 1990s, but not by much. In 1993, when the city recorded 353 homicides with a population of 724,000, the rate was 49 victims per 100,000 people. In 2005 - the most recent year for which full statistics are available - Baltimore's population of 641,000 saw its homicide rate decline to 42 victims per 100,000 people.

The lack of progress in fighting Baltimore's homicide rate is due to a lack of will on the part of the political leadership. Yes, O'Malley made a difference; a small difference.

Under O'Malley, who takes over as governor this month, Baltimore switched to a broad "quality of life" strategy modeled after New York City's efforts, which involved aggressive enforcement of minor infractions to disrupt drug dealers and violent offenders in city neighborhoods.

Baltimore officials credit that approach with helping reduce violent crime in the city. But critics say the effort has only perpetuated a revolving-door criminal justice system, with too many people arrested for minor crimes that don't result in meaningful punishment.

But O'Malley never adopted New York's strategies in full. He wouldn't risk alienating the base of his support. (Two things that O'Malley improved over the negligent efforts of his predecessor Kurt Schmoke was to increase a warrant squad - officers dedicated to tracking down offenders against whom there were outstanding warrants - and sending the police out to arrest people unlawfully discharging firearms - such as on Jan 1. The warrant squad was supposed to have help from the state, but because of the mayor's bad relationship with Gov. Ehrlich, that help never materialized.)

The Sun article mostly focuses on social science solutions instead of crime fighting strategies, which would also seem to be a problem. Another problems has been a lack of continuity in the police leadership under O'Malley.

Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for the city state's attorney's office, said prosecutors have tried for years to focus on the problem that repeat violent offenders pose in the community. But the changeover in police commissioners under O'Malley brought different approaches of policing to the city in short periods of time and left little continuity in strategy, she said.

"You need to break the cycle of violence by eliminating the anonymity that these violent offenders have on the streets," Burns said. "Unfortunately, when you have different policing strategies, that affects your ability to move forward on a strategy for the entire criminal justice system."

Patricia Jessamy just sworn in for a 4th term as state's attorney for Baltimore City has had an uneasy relationship with the police. While she's been the focus of criticism for failing to get convictions or even bring cases to trial, she, in turn, blames the problem on the police for failing to do the basic work necessary to make it worthwhile to bring some cases.

Clearly there is a political failure in Baltimore City on a number of different levels and there appears to be little hope anything will change in the near term.

UPDATE: A few points need to be made. New York's focus on "quality of life" crimes worked because usually those breaking lesser crimes were often wanted for other more serious crimes. Even if O'Malley had duplicated New York's efforts totally, the discord between the prosecutor's office and the police department might have made success impossible.

New York's methods included "tossing" people on suspicion of carrying guns or other infractions. More often than not there wouldn't be enough to hold these people. So the question is if more aggressive policing that say involved "tossing" 50 people would reduce the murder rate by 10, would the loss of freedom of those 50 be worth saving the 10. No doubt the ACLU and NAACP would object to that. Something that doesn't happen can't be quantified.

Blogdigger tags: Baltimore City, Murder Rate, Sheila Dixon, Martin O'Malley, Patricia Jessamy.