2019-08-03_The_Economist

18 United States The EconomistAugust 3rd 2019

2 sive force. In 2017 the department entered a

consent decree with a federal court requir-

ing it to reform.

Some members of the Baltimore police,

both former and current, claim that the

falling out with city leaders left them feel-

ing without support. So they pulled back,

they say—less often getting out of their

cars to attempt forceful, proactive enforce-

ment. “The idea of clearing the corner was

central to Baltimore,” says Peter Moskos, a

former patrol officer in the city who is now

a professor of criminology. “But cops said,

‘ok, if you don’t want us to clear the cor-

ners, we won’t’.” The data bear this out. In

the year before Gray’s death, police were

making 3,000 arrests a month. Since then,

arrests have dropped 36%.

But another explanation contends that

the more important shock to behaviour

after the unrest was not among the police

but among Baltimore’s residents. Events

like Gray’s death shake community trust—

meaning that co-operation with police in-

vestigations and even reporting of crimi-

nal offences drops.

In the aftermath of a highly publicised

incident in Milwaukee in 2004, when an

unarmed biracial man was severely beaten

by off-duty white cops, three sociologists

found that residents in black neighbour-

hoods were much less likely to call to re-

port crimes for up to a year afterwards. This

coincided with a significant spike in homi-

cides. In Baltimore, there are good reasons

to distrust the police. Last year federal

prosecutors convicted members of an elite

police squad, the Gun Trace Task Force, of

widespread corruption. Instead of taking

illegal guns off the streets, the unit planted

evidence on innocent civilians and robbed

drug-dealers and then resold the goods.

In this account of things, a frequent tar-

get of ire is Martin O’Malley, who was

mayor of the city from 1999 to 2007 before

becoming governor of Maryland, for his

policy of aggressive policing to deter viol-

ent crime. Mr O’Malley, who still lives in

the city, defends his record. He notes that

crime declined while he was in office, and

that the damning dojreport only exam-

ined conduct after 2010.

Mr O’Malley gives two reasons why the

city is “having to take the same real estate

twice”. First, “Baltimore stopped policing

the police. Stopped supervising, stopped

following up on citizen complaints of dis-

courtesy, excessive force and other things,”

he says. Second, the number of cops fell

from a high of 3,278 in 2002 to 2,514 today.

“One of the most violent cities in America

decided to cut its police force by about 25%,

and there wasn’t even a whimper of objec-

tion from the city council or any of the edi-

torial powers in town,” he says.

The riots “exposed that sort of soft un-

derbelly in the police department”, says Ja-

son Johnson, a former deputy commis-

sioner for the bpdfrom 2016 to 2018. “The

homicide department has barely enough

detectives to solve homicides. It was a kind

of awakening to the criminal underground

in Baltimore.” Shootings and homicides in-

creased, but there was no increase in the

number of detectives, nor any improve-

ments to antiquated technology or dilapi-

dated training headquarters.

Catch a killer

In 2018 only 43% of homicide cases were

cleared. “When cases start to pile on top of

one another, you have more acts of vio-

lence that people are inclined to avenge,”

says Daniel Webster, a professor at Johns

Hopkins University who led a homicide re-

view for the city. Mr Webster argues that al-

though most people want more cops on the

beat, the real need is more resources for se-

rious investigations.

Compounding the problem in Balti-

more was a nationwide surge in demand

for illicit opioids. For decades, Baltimore

has had a serious heroin problem concen-

trated among poor black people. Today Bal-

timore has morphed into a drug destina-

tion. Officers and residents describe

middle-class teenagers and housewives

driving in from the suburbs to score drugs.

Mr Scott, the city council president, says he

finds it ironic that after decades of ignoring

heroin epidemics in predominately black

cities such as Baltimore, the rest of Ameri-

ca is now suffering.

Nobody really knows how many drug

users there are in Baltimore. The most reli-

able data come from the city morgue. In

2007, opioid overdoses claimed the lives of

256 Baltimoreans—four-fifths from her-

oin. By 2018, that number had more than

tripled to 814 deaths as fentanyl, an ex-

tremely potent synthetic opioid, supplant-

ed heroin. Baltimore has the highest opioid

fatality rate of any city in the country, twice

that of West Virginia, which is the worst-af-

fected state.

“Business is booming from the drug

dealers’ perspective,” says Mr Johnson, the

former deputy police commissioner. “And

in black-market business, competition

usually means violence.” Violent crime in

Baltimore, as in every city, involves a small

network of people and a clutch of city

blocks. Much of it revolves around the drug

trade, and avenging past deeds, whether

slights or slaughters. Of those murdered in

2018, 84% had previous arrest records—as

did 86% of the suspects.

The problems of crime and addiction

are difficult, but they should not be insur-

mountable. Sadly, Baltimore has endured

so much turbulence at its highest echelons

of power in recent years that new plans

have scarcely had time to be drafted. Since

Gray’s death, there have been five police

commissioners—some fell foul of the

mayor while others fell foul of the law. In

May the mayor herself, Catherine Pugh,

was forced to resign from office after a

scandal involving bulk purchases of her in-

sipid children’s book by companies who

did business with the city. She is the second

mayor to have to resign in a decade.

The next mayor will face huge chal-

lenges. “We are a city that doesn’t have a

transit system, we don’t have fast broad-

band, we have an ageing water system,”

says Seema Iyer of the University of Balti-

more. Vacant buildings depress property

values, provide places for criminals to hide

and scare off prospective businesses. The

city’s schools are decrepit. Having stabil-

ised at the time of Freddie Gray’s death, Bal-

timore’s population is now falling again.

It is tempting for lawmakers in Annapo-

lis, the state capital, and nearby Washing-

ton, to blame the city for its troubles. Cor-

ruption and poor policing are certainly

unforced errors. People of all political

stripes have high hopes for Michael Harri-

son, the freshly appointed police commis-

sioner from New Orleans, though he will

need longer than the now-customary one-

year term to change much. Still, many of

the forces buffeting Baltimore and its poor-

est residents are outside its control: history

weighs heavily. To dig itself out of its rut,

the city will need help. 7

Shooting up

Sources:BaltimoreCityHealth

Department;Maryland

Department of Health

*Deathsinvolvingmultiple

opioidscountedineachcategory

†First six months at an annual rate

Baltimore, number of opioid deaths

By selected drug*

2

0

200

400

600

800

1,

2007 09 11 13 15 17 19†

Total deaths

Heroin

Fentanyl

Prescriptionopioids

Fewerstops,moreshot

Sources:BaltimorePoliceDepartment;FBI

Baltimore

Arrests,’000 Murdersper100,000people

1

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

1990 95 2000 05 10 15 18

Martin O’Malley ’s

mayoralty

Freddie

Gray dies