Soccer Dad

Murders up: aclu - city moving in the right direction

According to the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore police are arresting fewer people, then notes that the higher arrest rates may have had a positive effect.

But they also might have led to some steep crime declines. In 2002, with Norris at the helm, the city saw a low of 253 homicides, still far short of the goal then-Mayor Martin O'Malley set of dipping to 175.

Currently, with the year not yet over, 262 people have been killed in Baltimore. That projects to roughly 286 over the course of the year.

Nonetheless we learn

David Rocah, an ACLU Maryland staff attorney, said this year's arrest numbers show that the department has "moved slightly in the right direction, but not enough for anyone to say the problem has been solved."

So is the higher homicide rate an acceptable trade-off for the ACLU?

Isn't it possible that many arrests - even if all they do is take someone off the street for a short time - have the effect of disrupting criminal activity? And isn't it possible that that's played a role in lowering the homicide rate?

crime, baltimore.