As Baltimore pushes forward with the citywide expansion of its promising anti-violence strategy, law enforcement and public safety officials on Wednesday hashed out an array of challenges facing the city’s approach to violent crime, from a longstanding shortage of police officers to meager success this year in the city’s investigations into homicides.
The discussion before the City Council’s Public Safety and Government Operations committee comes as Baltimore has seen a slight dip in nonfatal shootings and a substantial reduction in homicides this year — with 91 killings through the end of April, compared to 138 at that point in 2022 — even as youth-involved shootings have surged, getting off to the deadliest start of the year for teens since at least 2015.
Here are the key takeaways from Wednesday’s wide-ranging hearing:
Homicide clearance rate trending below national average
Baltimore is used to seeing a majority of its more than 300 homicides go unsolved each year, but the police department’s 2023 homicide clearance rate is clocking in below last year’s. After this article was published, the Baltimore Police Department said numbers presented Wednesday to City Council were inaccurate but could not explain why. A spokesperson for the agency pointed to comments made by the deputy commissioner during the hearing clarifying that the actual homicide clearance rate so far this year is 40%, compared with 48% at the same time last year.
Councilman Mark Conway expressed concern about the current homicide clearance rate. Available solutions to issues such as detective shortages don’t seem likely to cut it, he said, asking law enforcement leadership to think about ways the council could target funding for homicide investigations when they’re hashing out the police budget over the next two months.
While the department has concerns about its clearance rate, too, Deputy Commissioner Richard Worley responded that there are cases in the pipeline that they expect to boost their numbers soon. The department’s “biggest problem” tends to be getting witnesses and victims to participate in their investigations and identify shooters, Worley said, leaving investigators to rely on video and other technical aids.
Shantay Jackson, director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, said her staff was figuring out ways to serve as a bridge between reluctant shooting witnesses and victims to step forward and help solve crimes.
Adding to the challenge is the department’s ongoing workforce shortage, Worley emphasized. The city is down around 500 police officers, law enforcement officials reported.
But the deputy commissioner also predicted the department will have its homicide clearance rate over 50% by year’s end. “No pressure to my homicide detectives,” he added.
Officer shortage is an issue, but citizens complain of cops staying in cars
Councilman Zeke Cohen, who earlier this year announced a bid for City Council president, expressed frustration Wednesday that check-ins with the Police Department always seem to return to the department’s officer shortage.
“We can talk about 500, 400, 300 short until we turn blue in the face,” Cohen said. “But it’s not moving the needle.”
The top complaint Cohen hears from constituents, he said, is about seeing police officers sitting around in their cars, giving the appearance that they’re idling on the job. It’s frustrating to keep hearing about staffing shortages given the optics of officers sitting in their vehicles, Cohen said.
The department does need to do a better job of getting officers out of their cars, Worley responded, but he also pointed to several factors that may be skewing the perceptions of residents observing police.
Officers can now do paperwork in their vehicles that once required a trip back to the station.
At the same time, Worley said the department’s staffing problems mean that many officers are clocking substantial overtime, and some of them may simply need a “breather” during lengthy shifts.
The Group Violence Reduction Strategy enters new districts
Following a promising pilot of Baltimore’s revived anti-violence approach in the Western police district last year, Mayor Brandon Scott announced an aggressive plan to scale the Group Violence Reduction Strategy across the rest of the city.
But while the historically violent Western District saw a dramatic 33% drop in homicides and nonfatal shootings while the program was piloted last year, questions around the capacity of a strapped police department and a local network of anti-violence nonprofits loom over the expansion.
Bringing the strategy into the Southwestern district hasn’t relied on boosting manpower beyond the close to 40-member Group Violence Unit that led work in the Western last year, police leadership explained Wednesday. Instead, the department is leaning on its existing, specialized “district action teams” to focus attention on the targeted work of the Group Violence Reduction Strategy, Worley said.
But even as the department looks to redirect existing resources to sustain the strategy’s momentum, not every district will benefit from the resources available in the Western and Southwestern districts. Both have two district action teams, as does the central — where the strategy is slated to expand by middle of this year — but the majority of the city’s police districts have only one.
Conway said after the hearing that it’s possible these specialized teams can turn their attention to the Group Violence Reduction Strategy as it expands to their districts, but it’s also possible the city sees other types of crime rise as a side effect. “Therein lies a lot of the question,” he said.
Lawmakers propose a new arsonist registry
Also discussed before Baltimore’s Public Safety and Government Operations committee Wednesday is a proposal to create a registry of people who have been convicted of arson before and are charged in a second offense, a move that comes after numerous high-profile building fires over the last few years.
The database, outlined in legislation proposed by Councilman Kristerfer Burnett, would require people charged in a second offense of arson to register on a list of offenders. First-time offenders would receive a warning about the registry, Worley told council members.
Councilwoman Odette Ramos spoke in favor of the idea, noting the importance to her district in particular, after four rowhomes in the Abell neighborhood burned down last year in what neighbors feared was a hate crime targeting one residence that was flying a pride flag.
The committee unanimously approved Burnett’s legislation Wednesday. It is slated to get a preliminary vote before the full City Council next week.
This story has been updated to add comment and updated figures from the Baltimore Police Department on its homicide clearance rate.
