Greetings!

In this weekly series, the Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC) is sharing candidate positions on key policy priorities with you "In their Words." Each week leading up to the primary election, we will provide you with the candidate responses to a specific policy priority.
 
Last week, the "In Their Words..." informational series launched by highlighting the need for strong leadership in Baltimore City's government. This week, the GBC focuses on improving public safety in Baltimore City. The candidates were asked to provide three specific actions they would take to address the public safety crisis.

While the GBC does not endorse candidates, we take seriously our role in communicating policy priorities and educating Baltimore residents and businesses on where the leading candidates stand on key issues. We encourage you to visit our website to view the GBC’s policy priorities and the responses to the candidate questionnaires .
 
We urge all city residents to vote in the June 2 primary election.
 
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.
 
Sincerely,
Donald C. Fry
Donald C. Fry
President & CEO
Policy Priority

Prioritize enhanced coordination across criminal justice agencies and support evidence-based crime reduction strategies to improve public safety. 

Question: What are three actions that you would take in your first year to improve public safety?

*Some of the following responses have been excerpted due to length. Please visit the candidate questionnaires at GBC.org to see full responses.

"I believe that to address public safety in our communities, it must require a holistic approach.
 
First, we must go after the most violent offenders. Approximately one-third or less of homicides and other violent crimes go unsolved each year in the City of Baltimore. This sends a clear message to criminals that they will not be held accountable for their actions. For that reason, I will establish an analysis and apprehension program within the homicide unit that will be responsible for supporting investigators by tracking and correlating information on murder cases. This effort will be supported through a partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to make sure that we have database connectivity to utilize their ViCAP program which provides real time information cases.
 
Secondly, we must reinstitute the Criminal Coordinating Council that was instrumental during my administration to convene all of the public safety entities to assess our effectiveness, strengths, and weakness. That cross-communication really outlined each person's buy-in to making sure that all of our citizens were safe. We were able to hold each other accountable and strategize together to devise a multi-agency approach to combating not only violent crime, but quality of life crimes as well.
 
My third action would be to work to implement stronger community policing practices within our neighborhoods. We have to have officers in our neighborhoods who know the neighborhoods that they are patrolling. This begins with our recruitment processes-- we must recruit young people in our schools who have an interest in serving their community through law enforcement. Having officers who are from the communities that they serve provide a contextual approach to policing which is invaluable to addressing the unique safety needs of our various neighborhoods."

"First, I'm going to give the Police Commissioner the support and resources he needs to put proven crime reduction strategies in place. This will involve getting every relevant party and agency to the table to agree on the plan and support it. It also involves removing any barriers to recruitment and training, including offering more incentives for police officers to live and work in the City. In the first year, we’re going to put more officers on patrol by moving sworn officers out of administrative roles.
 
Second, I would set a timetable for meeting the Consent Decree requirements. Restoring trust in community and police relations, sooner rather than later, is critical.
 
Third, I would bring in the necessary resources to modernize our data technology and analytical tools to support evidence-based policing. If necessary, I would ask the private sector for help to get this done quickly."

"Our city is in the midst of one of the worst public safety epidemics it has ever faced. Since 2015, there have been over 1,600 homicides, 3,300 non-fatal shootings, and nearly 3,500 fatal overdoses in Baltimore City. To me, these are not just numbers, they represent lives cut short, children without parents, parents without children, and communities overcome with trauma.
 
The violence our city continues to experience, disproportionately in Baltimore’s Black and historically redlined neighborhoods, is what motivated me as a young man from Park Heights to become a public servant. I am running for Mayor to transform our city’s approach to crime reduction, from being focused solely on law enforcement to a comprehensive, holistic approach to public safety that centers public health.
 
Baltimore cannot arrest or prosecute its way out of this problem. Baltimore’s violence results from generational trauma, structural racism, lack of opportunity, and systemic under-investment in our city’s youth and families. We will only sustain reductions in crime if our approach is comprehensive — grounded in the immediate action we can take today while simultaneously addressing the root causes of violence.
 
Ending violence will require us to stop the flow of illegal guns that end up on our streets and actively target the small groups of people who commit the vast majority of murders, shootings, and aggravated assaults in Baltimore. We must also prioritize the opioid crisis, which fuels street-level, open-air drug markets and has intensified with the emergence of fentanyl."

Read the full response here .

"I have put forth a crime plan that addresses the crime epidemic on day one. First, my administration is not going to be afraid to say we are going to have to arrest people. Our focus will be violent offenders and repeat offenders. While we can’t police our way out of this situation, we must realize that there are some people who are consistently taking advantage of the "soft on crime" approach to the current state of lawlessness.
 
I will walk into City Hall on day one prepared to advocate for tougher penalties for those who illegally possess handguns. Those who illegally possess handguns are the clear and present danger in the city of Baltimore and we must ensure we are using every resource at our disposal to hold them accountable.
 
I will work with the Governor to reconvene, but also reboot the Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee (CJCC). We MUST look at the violence from a higher level to ensure we are utilizing best practices from around the nation to effectively address the issues in our city. By reinstituting the CJCC, we can bring together academics, criminal justice professionals, policymakers, data scientists, health officials, social leaders, and others to examine and recommend high-level strategies to analyze, prevent, and respond to crime more efficiently and effectively. Along with the reformation of the CJCC, I will immediately form Focused Development Teams. All of our city agencies, along with our state and federal partners, must all be part of the solution. Through a collaborative approach involving the BPD, State's Attorney's Office, Parole and Probation, Juvenile Services, the Office of African American Male Engagement, Social Services, the Department of Public Works, and a reconvened Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, we can do more than arrest bad guys. Our Focused Development Teams will intervene and proactively counsel and monitor "at-risk individuals", while we address quality of life concerns, spur community improvement, protect victims and witnesses, treat trauma, and rebuild the community's trust in the police department.
 
My administration will end this sense of lawlessness by directing the police department to enforce laws and hold people accountable while policing constitutionally and in an equitable manner."

"In November, we announced a comprehensive crime plan that set forth 20 concrete strategies that Baltimore City has never undertaken that we have pledged to pursue to drive down violent crime. Former Councilwoman Rikki Spector wrote about our crime plan in the Baltimore Sun: "It is smart, concrete, detailed and realistic. It is tough and progressive, rejecting policies of mass incarceration and cash bail and rooted in principles of rehabilitation and restorative justice. It is the plan of a person who, as a federal and city prosecutor and deputy attorney general of Maryland, actually fought crime.... The plan is innovative and fearless, willing to do what others have refused." Veteran columnist Frank DeFelippo said that I had “put forth, no doubt, the most comprehensive crime-fighting plan of anyone, including the police department and the Justice Department." Finally, former Baltimore County Police Chief Jim Johnson—whom we would expect to play a leadership role in City Hall on crime—said this: "His plan for public safety will drastically reduce violent crime. I strongly believe that Thiru's vision for this community will make us all safer.

Here are three key features of that plan. First, I have pledged to expand Baltimore's camera network by using aerial surveillance to aid detectives with violent crime investigations and a rebate program to encourage residential and commercial property owners to purchase and register their cloud-based security cameras with BPD. (We advocated for this rebate program back in November before the City Council’s recent engagement on this proposal, though to be sure several individual neighborhoods— like Patterson Park—have already encouraged homeowners to purchase these cameras to improve community safety.)

Second, we will launch 12 simultaneous wiretap investigations targeting gangs and drug organizations in the city's deadliest neighborhoods, culminating in coordinated arrests of 150-250 violent criminals. We know this strategy works not only because it has been adopted in other cities across the country, but also because it delivered measurable results in Baltimore just a few years ago in communities previously ravaged by murders and shootings such as Cherry Hill and Greenmount East.

Third, we will bring additional resources to bear and deploy them strategically to drive down crime. This means more federal prosecutions of carjackings, commercial robberies, and firearms violations and more violent crime prosecutions by the Maryland Attorney General’s office. It means recruiting 600 more police officers through a college cadet program, focusing on burglaries where forensic evidence is often potent, and going after certain murders in a newly-constituted cold case unit. And it means maintaining an anonymized database of violent repeat juvenile offenders to make sure their cases are being handled appropriately.

For the full plan, please visit thiru2020.com"

"My goal is to reduce crime with a comprehensive approach. Investing in our youth, rebuilding communities, and increasing support for job training facilities are key to reducing crime in Baltimore.
 
The strategy uses a data driven approach that established new focused patrol areas and activity zones where the level of crime is highest. These micro-targeted areas and zones represent over a third of all gun related incidents have occurred since 2015.
 
It is critical that under our consent decree, we focus on recruitment and retention for BPD.
 
I understand that this is a systemic, cross generational problem. Crime reduction involves more than law enforcement alone. My comprehensive violence reduction strategy is strengthened by city agencies working in close partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and focuses on five key areas: Prevention, Intervention, Enforcement, Rehabilitation, and Re-Entry."
Connect with GBC
#Bold4Baltimore