O'Malley: Blacks are not 'disposable citizens.'

[Raine1967]

5. O'Malley left office in 2007 and I am no fan of CompStat — and I want to make that clear.

Last edited Sun May 3, 2015, 09:45 PM - Edit history (1)

To assume that what has happened is O'Malley's total fault, is in my opinion, myopic.

However, there dis a fact check to O'MAlley's claims regarding the crime drop in Baltimore during his tenure. http://readingeagle.com/ap/article/fact-checker-omalleys-claim-about-crime-rates-in-baltimore

I understand that there are going to be critics of O'Malley just as I understand there will be of every candidate.

This is from WaPo.

Crime fell during O’Malley’s mayoralty, with the number of homicides declining by 16 percent — part of a wider decline across much of the country. At the same time, the number of arrests in Baltimore soared, reaching 108,447 in 2005, or about one-sixth of the city’s population.

“What was positive was that there was zero-tolerance for criminals and drug dealers locking down neighborhoods and taking neighborhoods hostage,” said the Rev. Franklin Madison Reid, a Baltimore pastor. “Does that mean there was no down side? No. But the bottom line was that the city was in a lot stronger position as a city after he became mayor.”

Benjamin T. Jealous, a former president of the national NAACP who worked with O’Malley when Maryland abolished the death penalty in 2013, credited him for supporting a civilian review board as mayor and for a sharp drop in police shootings that occurred during that time. Jealous said O’Malley’s “mass incarceration” police strategy is “a separate issue” than police brutality, and “a conversation for a different day.”


“It was a period where a lot of mayors were doing whatever they could to try to reduce crime,” Jealous said.

People who lived in Baltimore at the time might be better suited to address this issue, of that I am aware, but I do believe that what was stated in the OP does come from an honest place.

To assume the opposite of that just makes this an either/or discussion. I don't like CompStat, it looked fine and good on paper in 1995 but it didn't work so well with city police departments across the nation. Speaking for myself alone, it is because the biggest problem was a lack of community policing. That was not just in Baltimore.