Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Anthony Batts took to the streets of Belair-Edison Tuesday to announce the city’s lowest mid-year homicide count in three decades. This in spite of a recent string of violence that saw six people killed since the beginning of July.
The mayor said community involvement helped bring about the reduction.
“I firmly believe that the reason we made this progress is the reliance we have on our communities and the partnerships we have,” Rawlings-Blake said. She added that city officials must continue to reach out to the community and build on the relationships that have been established.
“We’re not going to be able to arrest our way out of this; we are going to have to remain in better relationship with our community members,” the mayor said, acknowledging that building the relationships will not happen overnight.
In addition to better community relations, the targeting of violent repeat offenders was also credited for the drop in violence.
Batts said while the numbers are going down, police still must target the perception of crime in the community.
“Do we have kids hanging out,” he asked. “Do we have disarray that’s in our area; in our community? Those are things that we are evolving to correct and to address.”
The commissioner said police are targeting groups of violent repeat offenders that commit crime, in addition to gangs.
“Gangs people think about are like Crips and Black Guerilla Family and groups that have formality that way,” Batts said, “We also have groups that come together for criminal activity but they don’t call themselves by those names; they call them based on the streets they grew up in.”
He said police have established 17 “enforcement zones” in the city flooded with extra uniformed and plain clothes officers watching out for criminals.
Batts also said an upgrade for the department’s intelligence unit is expected to be complete by the end of the year. He also wants to see the clearance rate of homicide cases to be close to 60 percent around that time. The current clearance rate is 47 percent.
The mayor also highlighted city council approval of $2.2 million in June to pay for police overtime and to start Operation Ceasefire with money seized from illegal gambling operations and other crimes.
She also said a new union contract with officers will allow the commissioner to deploy officers where they are needed.