ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The continued violent crime in Baltimore City has been on our radar for years now and Republicans are offering up their plan to combat the problem.
House minority leader, Nic Kipke, spoke about the violent crime problem that is elevating, most glaring is the Baltimore City homicide rate. The minority party is offering up tougher bills on crime, focusing on violent crimes.
"We need to get them behind bars, we need to stop the violence," Kipke said.
Kipke and others with the Republican party are expressing the frustration to the speed and severity of how they say Baltimore City leaders are handling violent crime issues.
"For political correctness we are allowing these people to go back on the street and harm others," said Kipke.
These bills deal with keeping prisoners behind bars and more transparency with how Maryland judges are handing down violent crime sentences. One of the bills would restrict how prosecutors and judges hand out plea deals to repeated violent offenders.
Another bill says at least 90 percent of a sentence must be served for violent crime offenders.
The Governor stated the first day of the session crime is his number one priority and the Republican party stated on Thursday that violent crime in our state deserves to be our priority this session. The minority party feels Maryland is getting out of step with the trends of other states.
"Most of America is seeing a decrease in violent crime, but violent crime is surging here in our state," Kipke said.
"It's outrageous and we have more people dying in Baltimore city than they have in New York City," Governor Hogan said. "We have 600 thousand people, they have 8.6 million people in New York City and they only had 308 murders, we had 348 murders."
