Unlike other cities, Baltimore’s homicide rate did not spike in 2020: it soared earlier, in 2015, and has remained elevated ever since
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskThat a police officer should be accused of dealing in drugs and firearms ought to be extraordinary enough. Yet the arrest was only the latest of a series in Baltimore, stretching back five years. In 2017 eight members of thewere arrested. All had been members of a Guns Trace Task Force, which was created to build meticulous cases against gun smugglers, but morphed into a violent, unaccountable gang.
Before his funeral two weeks later, anger at the police department reached boiling point. After days of peaceful protests, teenagers who had walked out of school started looting a pharmacy. By nightfall, buildings across the city were ablaze and dozens, if not hundreds, of businesses had been looted. Before Gray’s death, homicides in Baltimore had averaged around 200 a year, a big number for a city of only 600,000. But almost immediately afterwards, the rate began climbing.
Rebuilding a police department is challenging at the best of times. Doing it when droves of cops are retiring and the murder rate is sky-high is, as Mr Harrison says, like “constructing a plane while flying”. It does not help that some Baltimore cops are sceptical. One former city official recounts a story of a training session in which officers were being taught how to de-escalate a situation involving a mentally ill woman. When asked what to do, one shouted out “taze her”, to laughter.
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