Baltimore suddenly a punching bag in justice-reform debates

[Elderberry]

Grits for Breakfast 7/29/2020

When Grits thinks of Baltimore, three things come to mind: 1) soft-shell crabs in the summertime, 2) the musical "Hairspray" ("Good morning, Baltimore!") and 3) "The Wire," which the missus and I binge-watched this year for the first time since it originally aired. But in recent years, the city has also become a conservative punching bag over crime, suffering from high murder rates and an intractably corrupt city bureaucracy seemingly incapable of steering the ship.

In recent NY Times op ed, columnist Bret Stephens offered up Baltimore as an example of the risks of rule by liberals aimed at placating protesters. He pointed to this extensive NY Times Magazine feature on Baltimore from last year to support his thesis, so I read the whole thing. It suggests a more complicated picture than just Democrats-are-inept. In fact, it attributed the crime spike mainly to a union-driven ploy to punish the city for perceived insults as a result of protests over Freddie Gray, a young black man killed in BPD custody:

    The department’s officers responded swiftly, by doing nothing. In Baltimore it came to be known as “the pullback”: a monthslong retreat from policing, a protest that was at once undeclared and unmistakably deliberate — encouraged, some top officials in the department at the time believe, by the local police union. Many officers responded to calls for service but refused to undertake any “officer-initiated” action. Cruisers rolled by trouble spots without stopping or didn’t roll by at all. Compounding the situation, some of the officers hospitalized in the riot remained out on medical leave. Arrests plunged by more than half from the same month a year before. The head of the police union, Lt. Gene Ryan, called the pullback justifiable: “Officers may be second-guessing themselves,” he told The Sun. “Questioning, if I make this stop or this arrest, will I be prosecuted?”

The result: "residents were pleading for police officers to get out of their cars, to earn their pay — to protect them."

Notably, this sort of targeted worker slowdown just what Austin Police Association boss Ken Casaday threatened to do in Austin in response to recent calls for accountability. He shouldn't have authority to enact such a policy. But he might.

More: https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2020/07/baltimore-suddenly-punching-bag-in.html

[PeteS in CA]

States Attorney Mosby campaigned on attacking police and then did it in her frivolous prosecutions of six Baltimore PD officers. A few were acquitted, and charges against the others were dropped. But what BPD officers saw were two things: simply doing their jobs could get them prosecuted by an anti-police prosecutor; those six officers' lives were devastated, making acquittal almost meaningless.

That is the context to which BPD officers reacted. Whether this reaction was organized or just a bunch of officers seeing the same thing, the City of Baltimore reaped what they sowed - city "leaders", Mosby, and the people who voted for them.

[AL]

Abe Lincoln once took care of problems in Baltimore and Maryland.  Martial law, then all of the Maryland legislature was arrested and sent to military prison at Fortress Monroe.

[Bigun]

Abe Lincoln once took care of problems in Baltimore and Maryland.  Martial law, then all of the Maryland legislature was arrested and sent to military prison at Fortress Monroe.

And every damned bit of that was completely unconstitutional.

[Cyber Liberty]

And every damned bit of that was completely unconstitutional.

Tell me you would not love to see that in Seattle or Portland.  Maybe you might get an inkling of understanding of why that happened.  I dunno, I am not learned on the events in Civil War Maryland.

I do know there are folks demanding it.  I think it would be a mistake.  I'd rather these 'bleep burn themselves out.

[sneakypete]

Tell me you would not love to see that in Seattle or Portland.

 

I can only speak for myself,but in MY opinion the people of Seattle and Portland got the radical leftist government they wanted and voted for,so let them live in the squalor. Or die,as the case may be.

Nearby states should adopt a policy of giving early probation to Mexican gang cartel members and ghetto rats,providing they move to Portland or Seattle.