Dixon outlines city crime-fighting plan 9 May 2007

Well, yesterday I promised a look at (interim) mayor Sheila Dixon’s long-awaited crime-fighting plan, which was unveiled to the public last week.

For starters, you can read the article from the Baltimore Sun. Since the Sun takes articles down two weeks after they’re published, I’ve also reprinted the article locally.

The announcement of the new crime-fighting strategy for the city is significant because one of the areas in which the mayor has the most power to directly affect the lives of Baltimore’s citizens for good or ill is through policy decisions that directly determine how the Baltimore City Police Department will conduct itself. The O’Malley administration’s “zero-tolerance” approach to policing led to vast increases in “quality-of-life” arrests for offenses such as loitering, open container violations, and other trivial infractions that crowded Central Booking and clogged the courts, leading to a situation where fewer than two-thirds of arrests were prosecuted. It also had an extremely detrimental impact on the lives of the most disenfranchised citizens, as poor, black residents of the city’s worst neighborhoods were the most likely to be arrested on these frivolous charges, often leading already precarious workers to lose what meager employment they had.

As I started to address in the previous post, one of the most frustrating effects of zero-tolerance policing has been the impact on Baltimore’s large population of citizens who suffer from substance abuse problems. Police conducting corner sweeps, while theoretically attempting to halt the sale of illegal drugs, instead pick up drug users in possession of small quantities of narcotics, while the drug dealers time after time elude them. Police, not wanting to look completely useless, arrest and charge the addicts with simple possession (or, believe it or not, attempted possession of a controlled dangerous substance, if they nab someone they think they can prove was on his or her way to cop drugs). So the dealers are back out there, to supply more drugs to the local community (and drawing “kids from the counties,” who drive downtown to buy drugs and take them back to their safe, wealthy suburbs), draining the limited resources of poor families, and to become involved in violent turf wars that drive up the city’s homicide rate as police reduce the available turf through “Safe Zones,” officers stationed around the clock on specific corners, and their ridiculous flashing-blue-light cameras.

Abandoning zero-tolerance is an important step to reducing violence in Baltimore. For the past few years, an observable spike in the murder rate has followed every major success the police have had in sweeping drug corners, as turf wars inevitably ensue. Eventually, I think we’ll come to see that the only answer is decriminalization; only then can the proper emphasis be placed on treatment and prevention. Europe figured this out years ago. But we’ve always been a bit slow over here.

The emphasis on community policing is promising, although I think that after the Stop Snitching video, and the tendency of residents who report drug activity to the police to get firebombed, it might take a while for this to really catch on in some neighborhoods.

We’ll have to wait and see what effect Dixon’s policies have. At the very least, it should allow some citizens to breathe a little easier, reduce violence, and build community involvement in public safety. With the election just four months away (the general election is actually six months away, but this is Baltimore, and the Democratic primary is the election that really counts), Dixon will be under close scrutiny, and she’s going to do everything she can to keep the mayoralty she has sought for so long. A lower murder rate, combined with the support of O’Malley’s longtime nemesis State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy, will go a long way to help her achieve this goal.

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