Officer Alex looks at the police "progress" of Baltimore, Maryland
The Wire. The HBO series that made Baltimore, Maryland (aka “Bodymore, Murdaland”) gangsta’ way, way before the Freddie Gray riots did.
The city is a fascinating lesson in theory-vs-reality in so many areas it’s tough to pick one to narrow it down…but brace yourselves: being a Copper, I’m going to go with the law enforcement angle.
Since the riots of 2015 a great deal has happened: A consent decree by the Department of Justice, a series of scandals resulting in indictments of an entire policing unit (the Gun Trace Task Force, aka the False Evidence and Corruption Team), and most recently the resignation of an officer after yet another viral video of a black officer using excessive force against a black man (the rage being why he wasn’t prosecuted rather being than allowed to resign), but it’s what hasn’t happened since 2015 that is making the real news to me.
The Baltimore PD has gone from being a proactive department (initiating street corner field interviews, stopping suspicious vehicles, etc.) to simply being reactive to 911 calls for help and the most basic calls requiring reports for insurance purposes and the like.
You don’t need to be a professor to guess what the result of this is, but I’ll provide a quote from one anyway. Peter Moskos, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor (and former Baltimore officer to boot) says “Cops are doing as requested: lessening racial disparity, lessening complaints, lessening police-involved shootings.”
All those numbers are just great right now, and if those are your metrics of success, we’re winning. The message has clearly gotten out to not commit unnecessary policing.”
And as a result, in 2017 Baltimore has set its own record for homicides while managing to decrease officer contacts with suspicious people (aka, “people yelling the name of a drug for sale from a street corner”) by 70 percent.
The city has become both the Rock and the Hard Place for policing. Do your job, and if you’re nice or act firmly, they will comply. It’s that simple! But we know it’s not.
The next step is to be nice, be firm, and if they don’t comply, if you can’t guarantee the outcome, you’re going to be fired, prosecuted, and likely wind up on national and global television. The answer to your average BPD beat cop? You walk away if they don’t comply.
Which naturally also isn't going to happen, so they just don’t bother doing anything at all.
These cops do the minimum and answer 911 calls for help and deal with the basics on the street but they don’t do proactive policing for fear of becoming a global villain and losing their homes and any future job prospects.
Cause, meet Effect.
Is this right? Absolutely not. But is it reality? It absolutely is.
As Prof. Moskos can attest, Baltimore now indeed has lessened racial disparity in the BPD ranks, fewer complaints, and fewer police involved shootings and deaths…but the cost of that is now fewer cases being solved and fewer crimes being prevented in advance in order to reduce the potential for violence between police and young black men through proactive policing.
Like it or not, people with violent tendencies tend to be violent, and dealing with them day in and day out leads to (brace yourself!) violent encounters.
Firing and or prosecuting officers for being too cautious now is the proposed solution. And the effect? Let’s talk about who is going to step up and fill that slot because most smart people don’t take low paying jobs with high physical, and now financial and legal, risk.
I’m very interested to see how this problem is going to be solved now that politicians and activists are in complete control of this reclamation process.
They have complete ownership of both the problem and the solution, so no more excuses...but I certainly hope the situation changes because currently you couldn’t pay me to do anything other than drive around Baltimore today.
Let’s take another look in a year, shall we?
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.