BALTIMORE — We are less than 48 hours away from celebrating the start of a new year, but now we're looking at some milestones city leaders have made this year.
WMAR-2 News' Brittney Verner sat down with Mayor Brandon Scott for a look back and ahead at what's to come.
Violence in Baltimore is the longest standing public health challenge in the city and for many neighbors, things don’t feel as if they’re changing for the better.
"We know that people are impatient. I'm impatient with how we can deal with this, and we're going to move as fast as possible. But we know we cannot make the mistakes of the past," Scott said.
Mayor Scott says since the launch of the group violence reduction strategy or GVRS in early 2022 in the Western District, which is historically the most violent in the city, there has been a 30 percent decrease of homicides and shootings.
"That's a great start that we're looking forward to expanding in the beginning of next year to the Central and Southwest Districts," Scott said.
And although it’s the third time the method has been attempted in Baltimore, it’s the first time they’ve started off small and tested it before expanding. And Scott says it starts with meeting those people who are most likely to be a victim or perpetrator of violence.
"We want you to stay alive, we want you to change your life, we're going to bring the resources to do that, whether it be job training, career, school education, drug counseling, behavioral health, or housing, wherever it is. But if you don't take us up on that, then you'll feel the full weight of local state and federal law enforcement," Scott explained.
This year, Safe Streets has mediated over 2,000 potentially violent conflicts. And even though Baltimore City police are understaffed, he says they've seized more guns than before.
"When you see our police department seize over 2,400 guns, more guns than they seize when they hit 500 more cops. That's significant work that's happening," Scott said.
Scott says one of the most frustrating parts of his job is seeking a revolving door of criminals committing the same crimes.
"So what can people expect to see going into the New Year that will give them hope for next year," Verner asked.
"As we were onboard a new states attorney and new governor, we know that we're going to have deeper partners on the other end, because I think it's also critical for our residents to be reminded that once our police officers go out and make an arrest for folks who commit murder, or have guns or commit a carjacking, and they go to other parts of the system, that's where we have to work with other people. That's where we have to hold other folks accountable and build better systems on the backend," Scott explained.
Laying a solid foundation, being consistent with violence prevention, and putting pressure on the people who have the authority to keep criminals behind bars is what Scott says is going to take to see a significant change.
"We've kept changing police commissioners, we changed this leadership, we changed that leadership. And when you look at cities around the country that have had sustained reductions in violence, one of the things that they have is leadership is stable, strategy is stable," Scott adds.
The mayor is hopeful that once those leadership changes happen violence in Baltimore will drop even further.
"I would love to be, today, to be further along, not having a 1% reduction in homicides and a 4% reduction in non-fatal-shootings that have those percentage drops be a lot heavier. But this is the foundation," Scott said.
Now Baltimore is one of the cities that the White House and National League of cities are turning people towards concerning how to build a community violence intervention ecosystem.
Mayor Scott said aside from the crime something else that he’s most looking forward to next year is the $41 million ARPA investment into Rec and Parks moving many of the projects out of the design phase and into breaking ground.
