O'Malley and city crime: Killings, drug trade
drop less than hoped

b Gus G. Sentementes and Doug Donovan, Baltimore
Sun reporters

October 21, 2006

As a Baltimore city councilman in the 1990s,
Martin O'Malley railed against the Police
Department's failures to effectively combat a
brazen drug trade that was fueling more than 300
homicides annually.

When he ran for mayor in 1999, O'Malley promised
to make crime-fighting his top priority. His
victory gave him the mandate to launch a
controversial, zero-tolerance approach to drug
corners, to revamp the Police Department's inner
workings and to boldly pledge that murders would
be reduced to 175 a year.

O'Malley administration officials say the anti-
crime efforts - coupled with a greater emphasis
on drug treatment - have helped lead to
significant reductions in violence since he took
office in December 1999.

Nevertheless, the deadly drug trade continues to
buttress Baltimore's dubious standing as one of
the most murderous U.S. cities, according to FBI
crime data. Annual murders stayed below 300
during O'Malley's tenure, falling as low as 253
in 2002. But the number of homicides never came
close to his goal of 175 - a level not seen since
the late 1970s.

O'Malley has emphasized better statistical
tracking of police activities and enhanced
accountability of officers. Still, the department
has faced intense criticism for its aggressive
arrest policies.

O'Malley, now the Democratic candidate for
governor, freely admits that more work remains to
be done on crime. But he and others say the
Police Department and city neighborhoods have
made progress, even as his critics highlight his
setbacks and failures.

"My biggest accomplishments are progress on
public safety and public education," O'Malley
said. "My biggest regrets are not more progress
on public safety and public education.

"It's a lot better. And it all stems from public
safety. The more you can drive down crime, the
more you can drive up investment, the more you
can improve your school system, the more you can
sustain those investments."

In his early years as mayor, O'Malley was
credited with bringing renewed urgency to the
city's crime problems.

City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, a Democrat,
said crime had gotten so out of control in the
1990s that O'Malley's promise to hold government
agencies accountable, especially the Police
Department, was a welcome change.

The violence and drug dealing, she said, have
tapered off at the former open-air drug market at
Harford Road and The Alameda, where O'Malley
announced his candidacy for mayor in 1999.

Though not every block has been so successfully
cleaned up, today, a police surveillance camera -
one of more than 300 deployed throughout the city
during O'Malley's tenure - watches the corner
from about 50 yards away. Neighbors say the
problems they deal with now revolve mostly around
unruly juveniles after school lets out.

"We've seen a considerable reduction in drug
dealing and drug marketing in that whole
community," said Clarke, who represents District
14 in north-central Baltimore. "We have a couple
troubled areas, but nothing like the blatant drug
dealing that we had several years ago."

When he took office, O'Malley inherited a
demoralized Police Department. He hired a no-
nonsense police commander from New York City, who
was steeped in a zero-tolerance approach to crime
fighting, and made him commissioner.

In short order, that commissioner, Edward T.
Norris, helped bring the stunning gains in crime
reduction that New York had seen to Baltimore.

But Norris didn't stay long, leaving for Gov.
Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s Maryland State Police and
eventually going to federal prison for crimes
related to misusing public funds while he was
city police commissioner.

His permanent successor, Kevin P. Clark, was
fired after allegations of domestic abuse
surfaced; he has since sued the city for wrongful
termination.

In total, the mayor has had four commissioners
and three interim police leaders. His critics and
gubernatorial opponent, Ehrlich, highlight this
steady turnover as one of O'Malley's weaknesses
as a leader.

Ralph Taylor, a professor of criminal justice at
Temple University in Philadelphia, said that how
much credit or blame police departments and
political leaders can take for crime spikes or
reductions is often open to debate. But the one
area that a mayor can control is appointments to
top jobs.

"The only thing he's directly responsible for is
who he puts over there on Fayette Street," said
Taylor, referring to the department's
headquarters.

Drug dealing - and the violence often associated
with it - remains a frustrating, pervasive
problem in many parts of the city.

Alvesta Cooper, head of the Nehemiah Homeowners'
Association of Sandtown-Winchester, a West
Baltimore neighborhood that has faced crime
problems for years, said she thinks the violence
and the drug dealing haven't changed much.

"I've always felt safe, but you can't push that
too far," said Cooper, 59. "If you want to know
what it's like, come here around 6 o'clock in the
morning. That's when everybody is out [dealing
and buying drugs]. It dies down later in the
morning and picks up again around lunchtime."

Under O'Malley and his commissioners, the
department borrowed heavily from New York City's
crime-fighting strategy of using timely
intelligence and statistics to deploy officers to
emerging crime trends. Enforcing quality-of-life
infractions has been an important component.

But the approach has strained relations with the
city's top prosecutor, Patricia C. Jessamy. And
it has drawn criticism from civil libertarians
and some local leaders, who have complained about
what they say are illegal arrest practices.

Last year, city police made about 100,000
arrests, but prosecutors say they dismissed
roughly one-quarter of the cases for various
reasons, some for the sake of trying to keep
courtrooms unclogged, others for insurmountable
gaps in police work.

A Baltimore grand jury report in March decried
the thousands of arrests that were being
dismissed by prosecutors. The American Civil
Liberties Union filed a lawsuit over the issue
last summer.

Del. Jill P. Carter, a Baltimore Democrat, has
led the charge on criticizing O'Malley's arrest
policies. "There are people who say that they
agree with the concept of zero tolerance. But
what I've stressed is we don't have zero
tolerance, we have zero tolerance that's gone
awry," said Carter, who is considering a run for
mayor in 2007.

Privately, some patrol officers call the push to
arrest minor offenders an unintended consequence
of the department's emphasis on statistics
through its Comstat process. Meanwhile,
commanders say that supervisors and officers are
expected to solve crime problems in neighborhoods.

"Part of the Comstat process is to demand
strategies from commanders, and if the strategies
aren't right, you can have problems with abuse,"
said Eugene O'Donnell, professor of police
science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
in New York City.

The process has been copied by many cities and if
used well, O'Donnell said, can make everyone in a
department more accountable.

Staffing has remained a challenge for police.
Residents and community leaders in several
districts have regularly complained about a
shortage of officers.

This year, the department has 155 vacancies, plus
dozens of additional openings because of officers
on medical or military leave or on suspension,
police officials say.

It is a problem that O'Malley and his police
commissioners inherited, and which has persisted.
In addition, the mayor has been embarrassed by
scandals of rogue officers involved in sex and
drug crimes.

O'Malley has also been criticized for
exaggerating the city's progress on crime. He
frequently claimed that Baltimore had been making
more progress than any other big U.S. city
between 1999 and 2004, with a "nearly 40 percent"
decline in violent crime - measured in homicides,
rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults.

But the statistics for 1999 were increased by an
audit commissioned by the mayor shortly after he
took office in December of that year. The audit
of 1999 statistics concluded the prior
administration had been misclassifying thousands
of crimes as nonviolent offenses, making the city
appear safer.

The audit corrected the mistakes and established
a new standardized process that regularly reviews
statistics. But the city's FBI consultant on the
1999 audit said O'Malley cannot fairly compare
that year's statistics with subsequent years
without a similar comprehensive audit.

Using the 1999 statistics before the audit,
O'Malley's "nearly 40 percent" decline - really
37.4 percent from 1999 to 2004 - would drop to a
23.5 percent reduction in violent crime, the
sixth-largest decrease among the nation's largest
cities in that period.

The most recent statistics filed with the Federal
Bureau of Investigation show that violent crime -
incidents of rape, robbery, homicide and
aggravated assault - has declined by 30 percent
from 2000 to 2005.

Kristen Mahoney, the Police Department's chief of
technical services, said the department over the
past six years has put in place auditing measures
that regularly test its own recordkeeping systems.

Mahoney ticked off other several improvements
since 2000, including the creation of a regional
warrant apprehension task force, which hunts down
wanted criminals each day; the formation of a
division focused on organized crime and illegal
drugs; and the creation of a civilian review
board that monitors complaints against police
officers.

"Every district commander on our bench right now
is a confident leader," Mahoney said. "He knows
his district. He knows his allies, and he knows
every bad actor. They fight very hard to maintain
control."

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FBI Reports: Baltimore Remains ONE of the
Country's Deadliest Cities!