BALTIMORE — As the month of July wraps up the city of Baltimore is sitting just under 200 homicides, at 194.
A local officer is calling for a more immediate approach to getting violent crime reduced across Baltimore.
On Wednesday and Thursday, less than a week after the mayor unveiled the city's crime prevention plan, two teens, both 15 years old, were shot and an officer on the front lines is weighing in sharing how and if he believes the current administration's approach will actually produce results.
"We want nothing more than seeing this administration succeed in their goal," said Sergeant Clyde Boatwright, the President of the Maryland State Fraternal Order of Police.
But the son of Baltimore has some critiques.
"As a person who's lived in Baltimore my whole life, spent the last 21 years in law enforcement, I was disappointed," Boatwright shared.
To explain why, he used an analogy; a victim gets admitted to the hospital with a gunshot wound to the head.
"And they go to the hospital and the doctor says we'll treat your gunshot wound to the head after we take your appendix out so this long term plan does not address the immediate need," Boatwright explained.
He says a more proactive plan to fight crime at its lower levels needs to be up for consideration if Mayor Scott plans to keep homicides beneath 285 this year.
"If you address the blight, if you address the gambling and you address the loitering and things like that, they are a good deterrence from preventing serious crimes," he said.
But he says the city is following the pattern of other major cities who are experiencing historic levels of violence embracing a different narrative.
"We cannot show one American city where the social justice experiment has worked, not one," he pointed out.
He says instead the policy of ignoring lower level offenses enables higher level crime. and adversely impacts recruitment, and retention of officers on the front lines.
He says he'd like to see a plan that allows officers to go after crime and do the jobs they were hired to do.
"That's the sense of lawlessness that we're seeing across the country where people are being violently assaulted either beaten, stabbed or shot because there's no consequence. nobody's going to hold them accountable," he concluded.
