Speaker after speaker at the Republican National Convention paid lip service to “blue lives matter” by expressing their abiding and unconditional support for law enforcement officers and their families.  None, however, expressed the slightest inclination to do anything about the primary threat to the lives of police officers, especially in our cities:  The widespread availability of firearms designed to kill people as efficiently as possible.  The bitter truth is that the culture warriors who dominate the Republican Party view dead cops as collateral damage in the battle to defeat gun control.

An incident occurred in North Miami, Florida, on the first day of the convention that illustrates how dangerous encounters with police officers can be not only for the police officers but also for innocent civilians.  An unarmed therapist was shot by a police officer while trying to help his autistic patient.  The officer’s union claims that the officer intended to shoot the autistic man, mistaking a toy truck held by the man for a gun, and shot the therapist by accident.  My guess is that regardless of whatever else we find out about the incident it will turn out to be another case in which the fear of the presence of a gun caused a tragedy or near-tragedy.

We have to feel for the injured therapist.  But we also have to be able to feel for the officer who fired the shots in order to understand the nature of what is happening in our cities and what needs to be done about it.  There is no doubt that there are racist police officers and there are police departments in which the systems intended to remove officers who pose a potential threat to the public do not work.  It also is true, however, that there are persons intent on harming police officers; there also are cities so awash in drugs, gangs, and guns that anyone who lives or works there, including police officers, is at risk of being shot.  At the end of the day it is the fact that every criminal, terrorist, gang banger, and troubled individual can get his or her hands on a gun that escalates bad situations into deadly ones.

This year the American Medical Association labeled gun violence a public health crisis.  The Republican platform labels pornography, but not gun violence, as a public health crisis despite the fact that approximately 30,000 men, women, and children die each year at the barrel of a gun.  The platform states that no additional gun controls are necessary and specifically opposes attempts to limit the size of magazines and restrict the ownership of assault rifles.

The Republican position stands in stark contrast to the views of the vast majority of the chiefs of police in our major metropolitan areas.  Police chiefs have a different perspective that comes from being responsible for the safety of the men and women under their command.  They also understand a few things that not everyone does.  They know, for example, that an officer must be taught that, if the officer waits to fire at a person until the person aims a gun directly at the officer, the officer is unlikely to be able to get a shot off before the person takes a shot at the officer.  In other words, if an officer does not recognize that an object in the hand of a suspect is a gun until it is aimed at the officer, the officer may wind up dead.  Is there any wonder that officers get nervous when they believe that a gun is present?

Police chiefs also realize that it is nonsense that only “skilled” shooters can do the type of damage done by the murderer who killed five police officers in Dallas.  A person with an assault rifle with a high-capacity magazine filled with armor-piercing bullets who finds a perch overlooking dozens of police officers standing together out in the open does not have to be a trained sniper to kill a lot of officers.  The chilling fact is that a more experienced gunman could have killed more officers.  It was the lethality of the weapon that mattered.

The group that represents the chiefs of the largest police departments in this country, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, has advocated for years for measures such as reinstating the assault weapon ban, banning high-capacity magazines, closing the gun show loophole in background checks, and banning internet ammunition sales.  Unless I missed it, no one from that organization was invited to speak at the RNC to discuss its recommendations.

The proposition by the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, that tougher enforcement of existing laws is the solution to the shooting of police officers is patently absurd.  Most people who decide to shoot it out with police officers expect to die.  How will the “law and order” approach deter them?  Does Mr. Trump believe that someone who shoots an assault weapon loaded with armor-piercing bullets at police officers from a parking garage is worried about going to prison?

As President Obama observed, many of our cities (including his own, Chicago) have become very dangerous places to police.  Here is the win-win scenario:  When police officers in those cities feel safer, the citizens with whom they come in contact, white and black, will be safer.  Here is my message to the Republican Party:  Spare us the blue lives matter rhetoric until the party demonstrates that it actually means it by taking concrete steps to protect the lives of police officers, including banning assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, and armor-piercing ammunition, and closing loopholes in state and federal laws that make a semi-automatic handgun available to almost any criminal that wants one.

July 22, 2016

Two recent incidents demonstrate that actions taken by officers of the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) cannot be viewed through a single prism.  Although the first incident underscores the fact that there remains a systemic problem involving the violation of citizens’ rights, the second incident reminds us that policing in a city awash in drugs, gangs, and guns can be dangerous and that our expectations of officers must be tempered accordingly.  It is unfair to jump to the conclusion that the second incident is a product of the type of police behavior exhibited in the first incident.

On April 16^th a BPD officer was caught on video forcefully removing 18 year old Tionne Jones from inside the doorway of his home without a warrant and placing him under arrest.  Charges of disorderly conduct against the 18 year old were dropped by the State’s Attorney upon recommendation of the “executive team” of the BPD after the video was posted online.  Making the situation more troubling is the fact that a BPD lieutenant had initiated the investigation of what he believed to be a breaking and entering and called the arresting officer to the scene.  Jones appeared guilty of nothing more than vociferously (and correctly) telling the lieutenant that he lived in the house and that police could not enter without a warrant.  For that he was pulled from his home, thrown to the ground, and arrested.

On April 27^th 13 year old Dedric Coleman was shot by Detective Thomas Smith after Smith confronted the teenager, who was carrying what appeared to be a semi-automatic handgun.  A foot chase ensued when Coleman disobeyed Smith’s initial order to stop.  It ended when Coleman stopped and turned toward Smith with the gun still in his hand and Smith shot Coleman in the leg and shoulder.  Whether Coleman pointed the gun directly at Smith after turning, and whether Smith heard what a witness described as Coleman’s statement that the gun was not real, are questions that remain under investigation.  The gun turned out to be BB gun virtually indistinguishable from a 9mm Beretta pistol when viewed from a distance.

The unlawful arrest of Tionne Jones falls into a familiar pattern.  All too often in Baltimore lieutenants and sergeants are involved directly or indirectly in such incidents, indicating that the challenge of changing the culture of the department is a daunting one.  Officers of the BPD must be expected to adhere to the law and to treat victims, suspects and witnesses in a civil manner even in the face of the torrent of verbal abuse to which many officers are exposed on a daily basis.  That is their professional responsibility and the only way to repair the department’s fractured relationship with the community that it serves.

On the other hand, it is not their professional responsibility to put their lives at undue risk.  Officers cannot be expected to refrain from actions that they reasonably believe are necessary to protect themselves from being shot.  The conduct of Detective Smith must be evaluated with an appreciation of the danger he faced.  Detective Smith had a duty to confront a teenage boy walking down the street with what appeared to be a 9mm pistol under the theory that it is better to prevent a murder than to solve one, and he had an absolute right to do so in a manner that reasonably reduced the risks to his own life.

In her response to the shooting Sen. Catherine Pugh hedged her support of Smith by suggesting that police “need to have the right training.”  Assuming that he was properly trained Detective Smith realized that if he waited to fire until Coleman aimed directly at him he was highly unlikely to be able to get a shot off at Coleman before Coleman took a shot at him.  Did we expect Smith to wait and hope that Coleman would not fire, or would fire and miss?  Even if he heard Coleman’s claim that the gun was not real, did we expect Smith to stake his life on the truth of the statement?

I have been a critic of discipline within the BPD and joined many others in calling for a “culture change” in the department.  On the other hand, we have to be as fair to police officers as we expect them to be to us and cannot ask them to disregard their own safety when doing their job.

April 28, 2016

The composition and manner of selecting the members of “hearing boards” constituted under the Maryland Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBR) has become a sticking point during the General Assembly’s consideration of HB 1016.  The proposal by Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis is the best and most constructive way forward.  The recommendation by Commissioner Davis is that all three members of a board be selected by the head of the law enforcement agency, which would return the LEOBR to its original language before it was amended years ago to allow the manner of selection to be determined through collective bargaining and binding arbitration.

I was an Assistant State’s Attorney for Anne Arundel for five years followed by 31 years in the Anne Arundel County Office of Law, retiring as Anne Arundel County Attorney in 2014. I had decades of experience with the LEOBR including advising internal affairs investigators during the course of their investigations, and prosecuting complaints before police hearing boards.  I also had occasion to counsel hearing boards during the course of their proceedings, and to advise police chiefs on the administration of discipline.

The General Assembly never should have removed the authority to initiate disciplinary action from the police chiefs who supposedly are responsible for maintaining the discipline of their departments.  In every other walk of life of which I am aware separating authority from responsibility in that manner would have been deemed unthinkably bad management.   In my experience the situation was at least tolerable, however, as long as police chiefs were able to select members of the hearing boards who shared their values on the need for consistent and effective discipline.  That was not enough for the FOP, which ultimately convinced the General Assembly to dilute the authority of police chiefs even further.

The current case involving Lt. Victor Gearhart of the Baltimore Police Department illustrates the folly of the current law.  Gearhart sent several offensive tweets including one calling for State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby to be “deported” and stating that demonstrators “act like animals.”  Common sense informs us that Commissioner Davis not only had the right but the obligation to remove Gearhart from his supervisory duties over patrol officers for comments likely to inflame relationships between those officers and the citizens that they are supposed to protect and serve; Davis has every reason to dissuade his sergeants and lieutenants, the department’s front-line supervisors, from encouraging subordinate officers to view law-abiding citizens (and the State’s Attorney) as the enemy.

Unfortunately, Gearhart may well be correct under the LEOBR case law that his transfer was “punitive” in nature under the LEOBR and that he was entitled to have a hearing board consider his case before being transferred.  Under the collective bargaining agreement between the FOP and the city Gearhart not only has the right to a panel selected at random by computer, he also has the right to exercise three peremptory challenges against the members that have been randomly selected.  Two of those challenges may be used to strike the member chosen as chairperson.  The Commissioner has no peremptory challenges.  In other words, with any luck Gearhart will be able to weed out any of his fellow officers who might be inclined to share the Commissioner’s view on the need to refrain from incendiary rhetoric.  The General Assembly needs to fix this situation, not make it even worse.

I do not believe that it will necessarily improve the process to allow civilians to be members of hearing boards, although such a measure could increase public confidence in the process.  I believe that the current system can be made to work if a police chief is empowered to select hearing board members who exercise independent judgment but who also share and reflect the chief’s belief in the need for a well-disciplined force.

March 25, 2016

I am sure that the members of the Baltimore City Council had the best of intentions when they voted to place a proposed amendment to the city charter on the ballot creating the Children and Youth Fund.  More than anything else, however, the proposal is a sad reflection of a city council adrift and grasping at straws on how to narrow the widening gulf between the city’s needs and its resources.  If the mayor’s veto is overturned and the amendment is approved by the voters of the city 3% of the city’s discretionary spending will be “earmarked” each year for programs for children and youth; the earmarked funds in effect will be exempt from the city’s normal budgetary process.

The regressive practice of binding a city by law to spend money for specific purposes other than through an annual budgetary process has largely been purged from modern municipal government, and the fact that the city council is attempting to resurrect it is a measure of its desperation.  There is a more reasonable way for the council to achieve the intended result that does not undermine the principles on which sound budgeting is based.

The theory embraced by the city charter, and by the charters of all home rule counties in Maryland, is that each year a budget is prepared and approved after a comprehensive review of all of the needs and demands for money, carefully balancing one priority against the other.  To do that the Baltimore city administration now employs a modern budgetary technique known as “outcome budgeting” that, in the words of the Bureau of the Budget & Management Research, “aligns resources with results that matter most to citizens.”  The results are organized around six “priority outcomes”:  Better schools, safer streets, stronger neighborhoods, a growing economy, innovative government, a cleaner city, and a healthier city.  The most important job that the Mayor and City Council do each year is to prepare and approve the budget of city government.

The practice of earmarking money for expenditure outside of the normal budgetary process fell into disfavor primarily because it removes the flexibility from budgeting and relieves certain expenditures from undergoing the same type of oversight and scrutiny given to other expenditures.  The city has many needs, and those needs may vary from year to year.  In the context of finite resources fencing off a certain amount of money for a particular need inevitably means that another need will go unmet.  If in a particular year a future mayor and city council determine that the need for spending on public safety, public health, or some other important purpose outweighs the need for spending 3% of the discretionary funds on programs for children and youth they nevertheless will be unable to move any of the earmarked money to the more pressing need, forcing the city to consider an increase in taxes instead.

As a guaranteed pot of money, earmarking also tends to reduce the rigor with which proposals for expenditure of the earmarked funds are reviewed:  The money in the Children and Youth Fund must be spent each year regardless of the merits of specific proposals for expenditure.  Supporters of the proposal anticipate that a board would be created to review applications from groups that want some of the money.  Is there any doubt that marginal applications will be approved simply because the money is there and must be spent?

Listening to the discussion by the council it is clear that some members are frustrated by the constraints of the city’s “executive budget system,” in which the council lacks the power under the current budgetary system to add or increase items of expenditures not recommended by the mayor and approved by the Board of Estimates in the annual budget submitted to the council for final approval.  In other words, the council cannot now take money from some other purpose in the budget submitted to them and use it to add or increase an item of expenditure for a program benefitting children and youth.

If that is the problem, then solve that problem without creating a worse one:  Propose a charter amendment that allows the council to “transfer” funds to a purpose that benefits children and youth from some other purpose even if it means adding or increasing an item of expenditure not recommended by the mayor and approved by the Board of Estimates.  Such a charter amendment would slightly modify the executive budget system without destroying the integrity of the entire budgetary process.

February 9, 2016

Lt. Victor Gearhart of the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) has drawn attention to himself on Twitter with a series of tweets expressing his personal views on current events in the city, including referring to demonstrators as “animals” and questioning why black-shirted members of the 300 Men March anti-violence group “dress like ISIS.”  He suggested that both State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and her husband, Councilman Nick Mosby, should be deported; both are African-Americans and the implication seems pretty obvious.  [“City police union official is reassigned after tweets,” The Sun, January 27, 2016.]

Gearhart’s views may not reflect the views of the police department, and I know from working with Commissioner Kevin Davis while he was the Anne Arundel County Police Chief that the tweets do not represent his views.  Much more problematic, however, is whether the tweets reflect the views of the members of the organization that elected Gearhart to represent their interests as officers, sergeants, and lieutenants in the BPD.  Gearhart is the first vice president of Lodge No. 3 of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a position that he has held since 2014.  Gearhart is not an official spokesperson for Lodge No. 3 but union members will have a hard time persuading anyone that they elected persons to lead them who have attitudes and beliefs contrary to their own.

Lodge No. 3 has been an unyielding opponent of all efforts to reform the BPD, to the extent of denying the existence of any problems needing reform.  The union has vigorously opposed any changes to the Maryland Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights and the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation requested by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.  [“Baltimore police union critical of upcoming probe,” The Sun, October 6, 2014.]  The mayor, State’s Attorney Mosby, and former Police Commissioner Anthony Batts all have been the subject of vehement attacks by the union.  Gearhart’s public comments took a particularly negative turn last year, after he sent an email urging younger officers to leave the BPD if they had a chance:  “Any officer with less [than] 10 years on [the force] is a fool if they are not looking for a better police force to jump to. Youngsters, vote with your feet!”

I do not know whether Gearhart is an example of the “embedded racism” of which the BPD has been accused but I do know he sets a terrible example as a supervisor within the department and as a leader within the union.  How can a police lieutenant justify speaking like this in public?  His destructive attitude is precisely what the city does not need and, in my opinion, he should be fired.

January 27, 2016

A letter to the editor of The Capital from a reader on the subject of the reimbursement of Anne Arundel County by Baltimore for the costs incurred by the county in responding to last April’s riots referred to Baltimore in an angry and disparaging tone.  [“Reimbursement,” The Capital, January 16, 2016.]  The attitude reflected is a common one and serves an important psychological purpose for the person holding the attitude:  Blaming the citizens of the city and their leaders for the pattern of violence in the city makes it easier for the person to disclaim any personal responsibility to try to help.  It also ignores the fact that we share responsibility, as a society, for creating conditions in Baltimore that make it increasingly more difficult for its residents to escape the cycles of poverty and violence.   The city has become a poverty trap from which escape is harder than ever for reasons that are beyond the control of the people who live there.

Coincident with America’s industrial revolution was a population shift from farms to cities.  The rural poor became the urban poor, but cities like Baltimore did reasonably well as long as there were ample manufacturing and other jobs for low and non-skilled workers in or near the city and trolleys and buses to get the workers to those jobs.  Those jobs are gone, and the unemployment rate in some of Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods exceeds 50%.  An inferior educational system further reduces opportunity.  Unemployment and grinding poverty do not relieve fathers of their responsibilities to their children or excuse criminal behavior but it is foolish to believe that the absence of any realistic hope of finding a decent job is not going to have a negative effect.

Nearly a quarter of the people in Maryland living below the poverty line live in Baltimore.  There is no greater economic disparity between a state and its largest city in the United States.    By almost all measures Maryland is the most affluent state and Baltimore is one of the poorest cities in the country.  In Maryland only the citizens of Montgomery and Howard Counties are wealthier than the citizens of Anne Arundel County.  Baltimore is going to need plenty of help to turn things around.  Absorbing the costs of helping the city restore order last April is the least that the citizens of Anne Arundel County can do.

January 16, 2016

Recent editorials in The Capital have suggested that the operations of the Anne Arundel County Ethics Commission and Board of License Commissioners should be reviewed.  Add to that list the Board of Appeals.  The board’s actions in a case brought before it by the Laurel Racing Association is an example of why changes to the composition and powers of the board are long overdue.  [“Judge orders county Board of Appeals to drop Laurel Racing case,” The Capital, December 31, 2015.]

Long story short, the Board of Appeals disregarded settled Maryland law on the finality of administrative decisions in order to revisit past calculations made by the Department of Public Works (DPW) in the course of determining how much water and sewer capacity would be required for the proposed redevelopment of the race track property.  The board in effect substituted its judgment for that of the engineers in DPW and issued a decision that would have resulted in a windfall to the property owners costing county water and sewer ratepayers approximately $5 million had the decision not been overturned by Judge Silkworth of the Circuit Court.

The board has undergone few changes since the adoption of the county charter in 1964, while county government has changed significantly.  The county is now governed by a complex set of laws administered by engineers, planners, and other professionals.  The primary role of the board is to apply county law to the facts of a case, which means that members of the board have to interpret county laws and make judgments as to whether standards and requirements set forth in the law have been satisfied.  It is a role performed in most modern governments by legally-trained administrative law judges or hearing officers.  None of the seven current members of the board are lawyers.  Ask yourself if you would rather seek an opinion on a legal matter from a lawyer or from a panel of seven non-lawyers.

To add to the absurdity the board hears, on a de novo basis, appeals from decisions by the County Administrative Hearing Officer on applications for administrative re-zonings, critical area reclassifications, zoning special exceptions, and zoning variances.  A de novo appeal means an entirely new hearing, as if the hearing held before the Administrative Hearing Officer never occurred.   Although the County Charter does not require the Administrative Hearing Officer to be a lawyer, all of them since 1964 have been experienced, highly-competent lawyers.   The proposition of having cases decided by an experienced, legally-trained hearing officer reheard and re-decided by seven lay persons is not only wasteful, it is a systemic invitation for the type of incorrect decision rendered in the Laurel Racing Association case.

The seven part-time members of the board could be replaced by three legally-trained administrative law judges who also would serve on a part-time basis.  If de novo appeals were replaced with appeals based on the record created before the Administrative Hearing Officer the county could save a considerable amount of money and produce better results.  This area of the country has an abundant number of retired and semi-retired judges, federal and state administrative law judges, and lawyers who would love to serve part-time as members of a reconstituted Board of Appeals at reasonable compensation.

I make this recommendation without much hope of persuading the County Council to pursue it.  The reasons for my pessimism are two-fold.  First of all, the County Council currently appoints the members of the Board of Appeals, with the informal arrangement being that each member of the council gets to name one member.  It is one of only two “patronage” positions that a member gets to fill.  Secondly, it is an accepted fact within the county that the private land use lawyers who regularly appear before the board tend to exercise an inordinate amount of influence over the decisions of the lay members of the board.  It is likely that an experienced cadre of administrative law judges would not be as susceptible to the influence of the local land use bar, and that group of lawyers would lobby heavily against the change.

January 3, 2016

Last week the University of Baltimore (UB) and Towson University announced that they will end the joint Master of Business Administration (MBA) program that triggered a lawsuit against the institutions and the State of Maryland based on a 1992 decision by the Supreme Court known as United States v. Fordice.  According to the Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education the action by UB and Townson is not nearly enough to solve the disparities caused by the state’s history of favoring publically-funded traditionally white institutions at the expense of Maryland’s historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).  The Coalition has a proposed “solution” that is as polarizing as it is absurd.

In order to remedy the effects of past discrimination within Maryland’s higher education system the Coalition proposes merging UB into Morgan State, and transferring programs in computer, electrical and civil engineering and information systems from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) to Morgan State, fulfilling the vision of Morgan State by its president, David Wilson, as a “comprehensive, urban research university.”  In other words, his vision would be achieved by eviscerating UMBC’s enormously successful engineering programs and taking over UB’s equally successful law and business programs.   Instead of developing its own successful programs Morgan State would attempt to transplant successful programs from other institutions.  Whether these programs would continue to flourish after being uprooted and moved is an open question.

It is worth noting that it was the failure by Morgan State to offer an MBA program attractive to either black or white students that preceded the decision by UB and Towson to initiate the joint MBA program in 2005.  At the time the number of students enrolling in the Morgan State program had dropped to 28 from 62 a decade earlier.  Robert Caret, then president of Towson and now chancellor of the University System of Maryland, referred to the “dwindling enrollment” in Morgan State’s MBA program and told the hard truth:  “Morgan simply has not delivered for the citizens of Maryland.”

Earl Richardson, at the time president of Morgan State and now an adviser to the Coalition, claimed that the failure of Morgan to attract more students was primarily due to a lack of state funding.  That claim discounts the importance of leadership; UB established its MBA program in 1972 at a time when UB was struggling financially.  The program flourished because of the dedication and commitment of leaders like former UB President H. Mebane Turner, not because state funding, when it began in 1975, was any more generous than that provided to Morgan.

Fordice remains a controversial and confusing decision.  It requires states that had racially-segregated publically-funded systems of higher education to eliminate all practices that tended to perpetuate the adverse consequences of the racially-segregated systems and reduced the educational opportunities available to students of the HBCUs.  “Suspect” practices include the systematic underfunding of HBCUs and program duplications that result in disadvantage to HBCUs and decreased academic choices for their students.  Program duplication is permissible, however, if based on “sound educational justification.”  The problem with Fordice is that the standard for determining whether a state has complied with its obligation to remove all vestiges of segregation for its higher education system is vague; Justice Scalia stated that the standard lacks clarity and is incomprehensible and, based on the decisions by lower courts applying Fordice, he has proved to be correct.                

To place Fordice in perspective it is worth noting that the decision does not require a state to maintain the existence of a HBCU.  The decision was not intended to protect institutions; it was intended to ensure that the educational opportunities available to black students are the same as those available to white students.  Justice Thomas raised the concern that Fordice could prompt states to merge or eliminate publically-funded HBCUs as one means of removing the vestiges of a segregated past, a measure some states have considered.

Nothing good will come of Morgan placing itself in an adversarial position with its sister institutions, especially after proving itself unable to compete with them based on the merits of its programs.  As both UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski and UB President Kurt Schmoke stated in affidavits, the solution to Morgan’s programs should not include setting back the state’s overall higher education system.

November 29, 2015

Earlier this month Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said that the increase in crime in Baltimore was “atrocious” and that the murder rate was “out of control.” He stated that it was “horrible situation” to which a solution must be found.  Solving all of the problems that are behind the cycle of poverty and violence in the city will take a long time, but there is one problem for which something can and should be done with some of the state’s estimated $500 million budget surplus.  There are programs in the city that keep at-risk children in school, off the streets, and out of trouble, and these programs need to be expanded as soon as possible.

These programs address the following problem:  There are too many children in Baltimore who, by the time they are teenagers, are lost to life on the streets where recourse to violence is second nature.  Gang and drug-related violence is appalling but no phenomenon in Baltimore is a more alarming sign than the vicious attacks by groups of young people on victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The brutal assault on a 70 year old retired police officer is just the latest example.  Something has gone seriously wrong with the value systems of these young men and women.  Why?

One theory that tends to polarize reactions along racial lines is the absentee-father theory.  The theory is that the absence of fathers from the lives of their children, particularly their sons, makes it less likely that children will have the type of moral upbringing that helps keep them in school and out of trouble.  According to a survey released by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2013, more than 19 million children across the country — 26% — are living without a father in the home.  Among African-American children in Baltimore the rate is 69%.

Critics of the theory complain that it fails to acknowledge how institutional racism and wrong-headed social and economic policies have contributed to the plight of poor black families.  We need to put that debate aside because, regardless of how we have gotten to this point, the situation is dire:  As confirmed by a landmark 30 year study by Johns Hopkins sociologist Karl Alexander released last year 49 percent of black men from low-income backgrounds in Baltimore had a criminal conviction by age 28.

People working in the trenches in Baltimore aren’t wasting time debating.  They are doing something about the problem.  Joe Jones founded the Center for Urban Families (CFUF) in 1999.  In a 2013 interview with CNN he stated that most men come in the door looking for help getting jobs.  But Jones believes that jobs are just the first step, and that the key to creating real change in Baltimore’s troubled communities is ending what he calls “the cycle of father absence.”  “If we don’t crack the code of men having babies for whom they’re not responsible for, all of our efforts to build a better Baltimore will be limited.”  CFUF runs a program called Responsible Fatherhood.  [“A Fresh Start for Absentee Fathers,” CNN, September 19, 2013.]

Last spring, Renaissance Academy Principal Nikkia Rowe hired four men to mentor 20 students each based on her “strong belief that human beings change their behavior based on deep, interpersonal relationships.”  She added:  “Ultimately, it’s about our children not necessarily having the benefit of relationships.”  Grades are up and suspensions are down since the program began and Principal Rowe is looking for the money to hire more mentors.  [“For At-Risk Kids, Mentors Provide Far More Than Just Homework Help,” NPR, October 29, 2015.]

Baltimore’s recreation centers have been another source of support for at-risk children.  Earlier this year Brandi Murphy, director of the Lillian S. Jones Recreation Center, told NPR:  “We are mom, dad, aunt, cousin. They come here to get what they don’t have at home.  There are some parents that even to this day, I’ve had some kids for two years and still haven’t met them.”  [“In Baltimore, Rec Centers Provide So Much More Than Just Fun,” NPR, June 23, 2015.]

Programs like these work.  They keep more of Baltimore’s children in school, out of gangs, and off the streets.  The little voice in our heads that tells us the difference between right and wrong started as the voice of someone who cared about us and whose approval was important to us.  For many children from Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods that someone will have to be a person from outside the home.  If Governor Hogan wants to address the cycle of violence in the city he should consider spending some of the state’s estimated $500 million budget surplus on services to Baltimore’s at-risk children using these programs as a model.

November 5, 2015

The expectations for Kevin Davis, recently confirmed as Baltimore’s permanent police commissioner, must be tempered by the recognition that he faces two separate problems, one over which he has more control than the other.  One problem is the rate of murder and other violent crime in the city.  The other problem is what Davis’s predecessor referred to as “the cycle of scandal, corruption and malfeasance” in the Baltimore Police Department (BPD).  The problems do not have the same causes, nor can they be fixed in the same manner.  Unless Davis succeeds in changing the culture of his department, however, the BPD will be unable to do its part to help turn back the tide of violence sweeping the city.

Nothing Davis does will produce immediate or dramatic reductions in the rate of murder and other violent crime.  Baltimore is plagued by chronic unemployment, grinding poverty, and an underperforming education system.  It is awash in drugs, guns, and gangs.  Too many boys are raised without fathers and, before they are teenagers, are lost to life on the streets where recourse to violence becomes second nature.  The social ills that are to blame for the spike in violent crime are not the fault of nor can they be fixed by the Baltimore Police Department (BPD).  It is pointless to hold Davis responsible for something over which he has little control.

On the other hand Davis can, if given the proper tools, shape the conduct of his police officers, require officers to treat the citizens that they are sworn to serve with dignity and respect, and restore the trust and confidence of the citizens in the department.  Improvements to the relationships between officers of the BPD and members of the public ultimately will make the department more effective at solving crime.  If the department becomes more effective at solving crime it can begin to chip away at the rate of violent crime.

The challenges of policing Baltimore should not be understated.  It is because of those challenges, however, that the need for effective discipline is greater.  Any army can maintain its discipline on the parade ground, with each soldier staying in step within evenly spaced ranks and files.  It is harder but more important for an army to maintain its discipline when under fire.  Although the military analogy may raise some hackles it is important for those of us who are not police officers to acknowledge that police work, particularly in a city like Baltimore, is on occasion dangerous and requires courage.  It also requires self-restraint.  No matter how fast the adrenaline is pumping, the impulse to use excessive force (or spit on a hand-cuffed suspect) must be controlled.  That requires discipline.

When discipline breaks down the consequences must be, in Davis’s own words, “swift and certain.”  Disciplinary action in the BPD has been anything but swift and certain.  Davis needs to   explain in detail what must be done to repair the process and, if necessary, and he needs to lobby legislators to make changes to the law governing the process.

October 27, 2015