BALTIMORE — A revised redistricting map for the Baltimore Police Department is now in the hands of the city council for approval.
"What this process does now is reunites 18 neighborhoods that were split up amongst districts for many years and also this map that we sent to the council also takes into account over 1000 pieces of feedback that we received from our community members," said Mayor Brandon Scott.
According to the mayor, the revision to the redistricting map was minor.
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It takes into account public concerns along with operational needs.
"Some neighborhoods that were originally proposed map that were in one district are now in another now. It's very small, it's mostly focused on that Mount York Road corridor and also two neighborhoods in Northwest Baltimore. Those are the main change points from the originally proposed map," said Scott.
Mayor Scott says this will mark the most significant change to district lines in more than 50 years.
"It's supposed to help with response times, its supposed to help with time for community policing," said Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison.
Harrison says the change is about balancing the workload between the nine police departments and making sure each location has the appropriate number of staff.
"Before now, what we had was some districts, we were staffing and maybe had not enough officers based off the large call volume and crime volume. And there's some districts that had a larger number of people that didn't have enough workload and so the workload was unequal and unbalanced. This now levelizes the workload in all nine districts and across 27 platoons, a morning shift, evening shift, and a night shift," said Harrison.
Moving forward, the redistricting map will be addressed every 10 years.
"You have to continuously monitor them over time because neighborhoods change, populations shift, things change within cities and you cannot continue to just use what once was, instead of focusing on what is and what will be," said Scott.
City council now has 180 days to review the changes and approve.
The new map could go into effect as early as beginning of 2023.
