Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore police commissioner admit heavy policing keeps violence down

Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore police commissioner admit heavy policing keeps violence down
Baltimore youths assault a police car. Baltimore has a very youth crime rate.

What a shocker! Allowing police to do the job they are hired to do helps keep violent crime at bay. Who woulda guessed? How about everybody in the history of the world, beginning with the Chinese, who in 771 B.C. initiated the use of “prefects” to keep the peace.

Make that everybody but Barack Obama, who declared police to be a corrupt lot who preyed on innocent people of color and ordered his Attorney General to launch an investigation into the forces of several major urban centers.

One of the cities investigated was Baltimore, where police were ordered to “stand down” even in life-or-death situations. As a result, the murder rate in Charm City soared. In July 2015, the city witnessed 45 murders, making it the deadliest month ever in the city’s history.

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The out-of-control situation has prompted some of the city elders to look at years past, when crime was down, and examine variables that might have changed, accounting for the dramatic rise in violent crime. What they discovered has prompted Baltimore state attorney Marilyn (“I Hear Your Calls for No Justice, No Peace”) Mosby and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis to concede that the difference between then and now is the use of heavy policing tactics.

Years ago, the city had tamped down on the violence and brought the homicides down to less than 200 in a year by using “heavy handed police tactics” that are now frowned upon, the two noted in the interview.

“There was a price to pay … that manifested itself in April and May of 2015,” Davis said, alluding to the Baltimore riots over Freddie Gray. “I think the long view is that doing it the right way is doing it the hard way, and I think most Baltimoreans realize that the way forward is not always going to be easy.”

The Baltimore Police Department came under scrutiny and heavy criticism after Freddie Gray died in police custody in 2015. A Department of Justice investigation into the police department found that the officers routinely performed unconstitutional stops, arrests, used excessive force and attributed the problems to “systemic deficiencies” in the department’s training, policies and supervision.

Baltimore is currently on track to reach 300 homicides for the year. In response to this, the city’s mayor, Catherine Pugh, released a crime plan earlier this month that uses a more holistic approach to fighting the violence. Pugh’s plan includes making Baltimore Community College free for high school students, hiring more officers, improving the training of police officers, and helping rehabilitate drug addicts.

It sounds like a hodgepodge, and the phrase improving the training of police officers is vague enough to be a source of concern. Train them to do what? The answer will have a profound impact on the city’s future.

LU Staff

LU Staff

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