BALTIMORE — With summer now in the rearview, the city of Baltimore's public safety committee is taking a deeper look at the police department's response to summer crime and what the data says about it.
Councilman Mark Conway, the chare of the committee expressed a need for clarity on crime to top stop staffers at Baltimore PD.
"We want to know what’s working, what’s replicable, what isn’t working, what the barriers are holding BPD back," said Conway.
On Wednesday afternoon, BPD administrators highlighted arrests, guns seizures and amount of arrest warrants served sharing a 12 percent increase of adult arrests from this time last year, a 15 percent increase in guns recovered and 40 percent increase in gun arrests; however, homicides over the summer were up with 6 more lives cut short to violence this summer than the same time last year.
Regarding nonfatal shootings, the 226 in summer 2021 are up to 245 in 2022.
"The people of Baltimore that we were elected to represent and every police officer in Baltimore takes an oath to serve are concerned, angry, disillusioned, scared," Conway said.
Newly promoted deputy commissioner Richard Worley made note of what the department sees as progress.
"We had a slight increase in homicides during the summer months, the main key though is since the summer has ended officially i guess labor day, as of today the first time in about 5 or 6 months that we are one down in homicides. At some point during the summer we were 21 homicides above last year’s total," said Worley.
He says so far there are no plans to amend the current crime plan that BPD's following, which includes the GVRS.
Also according to Worley, the city’s deployment of the group violence reduction strategy in the western district is showing some promise ahead of the city’s plan to scale it up in the future.
Worley also reported that the Western District is down 33 percent homicides, down 22 percent in nonfatal shootings and their overall robberies are down 15 percent attributing it's progress to bpd's partnership with the state's attorney's office and MONSE.
Other concerns came into question though with the prevalence of repeat violent offenders.
"I am concerned because we keep hearing it from residents and others like, 'hey he just got arrested' so we know that there are repeat offenders," said Councilwoman Odette Ramos.
"Once we make the arrest what happens with the court system when they’re released really doesn’t have anything to do with us. Our job is just to continue to make the arrest and to try to present good cases," Worley responded.
With repeat offenders, illegal guns on the streets, and a slowly improving homicide clearance rate, councilman Glovers calling for stronger strides heading into fall.
"It’s simple things that’s going to the corner store to get a carton of milk or eggs. They fear because of the gun violence that’s going on in our community and all I’m asking is that BPD just step up a little more and be present patrolling the area. Give these seniors, legacy residents what they deserve and that’s a safe neighborhood," Councilman Glover told WMAR2 News.
