One of America's most violent cities has suddenly become less so-thanks to smarter policing

Tue Apr 22 11:50:40 MDT 2008

The following article about crime in Baltimore City appeared in The
Economist, and is an interesting editorial for your review:  

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Inner-city crime 

Back from the brink

Apr 17th 2008 | BALTIMORE 
>From The Economist print edition

One of America's most violent cities has suddenly become less so-thanks to
smarter policing

Getty Images

Getty Images

FEW places are gloomier than a ghetto on a cold, wet night. Boarded-up
houses back onto rubbish-strewn alleys. Shopkeepers shelter behind
bullet-proof glass. Doubled up on the pavement, a young woman sobs
uncontrollably, because she has just blown a week's wages in a bar. Passing
police officers establish that she has a home and advise her to go there
before she freezes. 

Outside a liquor store, a policeman pats down a suspect. The suspect's
trousers are halfway down his thighs. You might think this an impractical
fashion for someone who often needs to run away from the police. But the
suspect insists he is no longer a criminal. He has a good reason for
loitering for hours in the rain on a nearly derelict street notorious for
drug-dealing. He is waiting for someone, he says. 

The policeman laughs. His partner jokes that God should send a meteor to
destroy the whole street; being careful, of course, not to hurt anyone. 

Baltimore's police chief, Frederick Bealefeld, prefers not to rely on divine
intervention. With 282 murders last year among a population of 630,000,
Baltimore was one of the most violent cities in America. But since last
summer, the killing has slowed. The six months to March this year saw an
impressive 28% fewer murders than the same period a year earlier. Mr
Bealefeld credits smarter policing, and says he is cautiously optimistic
that the trend will continue. 

Television dramas such as "The Wire" may give the impression that Baltimore
is a hellhole. It is not. Most of the city is calm and pleasant. Only a
couple of areas are crime-ridden. And even in these areas, relatively few
young men commit-and are the victims of-the most serious crimes. Last year,
89% of those murdered in Baltimore had a criminal record. 

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Mr Bealefeld thinks the murder rate has fallen because the police are paying
more attention to the most violent offenders. One helpful new tool is a
registry for gun offenders which the mayor, Sheila Dixon, announced last
year. Like sex criminals, anyone who commits a crime using a gun must
register his whereabouts with the police as soon as he is convicted or once
released from jail. Failure to do so can get him imprisoned again for up to
a year. 

The logic is simple. Of the 135 people arrested for murder in Baltimore last
year, nearly half had a prior conviction for a gun offence. So it makes
sense for police and parole officers to keep close tabs on former gun
criminals. 

Like nearly every other large city, Baltimore has learnt from New York's
example in the 1990s and now uses computers to create up-to-date maps of
where crimes are being committed, so that officers can be sent where they
are most needed. Mr Bealefeld is also making more officers patrol on foot.
That way, they get to know the people they protect, who may in turn supply
them with information. That is crucial in a city where thugs have mounted a
"Stop Snitching" campaign, complete with T-shirts and a DVD, to intimidate
potential or actual informants. 

Baltimore's eastern district is virtually all black and poor. The police
officers who patrol it may be of any race, but none is poor and nearly all
live in nicer neighbourhoods. Their relations with the locals can therefore
be tricky. 

The ghetto is not homogeneous. Many residents welcome the police. The
elderly, many of whom cannot move out because they cannot sell their homes,
often call the police if they see drug-dealing through their curtains. But
younger residents, whom the police constantly stop and search, often resent
it. 

Your correspondent watched a white policewoman frisk a black female suspect
for drugs. The suspect hollered that she was being raped. Several witnesses
could see this was nonsense, but the policewoman blushed anyway. "She was
mighty talkative," said the policewoman, after finding nothing and letting
her go. 

One way the city tries to improve ties with troubled neighbourhoods is by
hiring mediators. These are typically people who grew up locally and know
when, for example, a young hothead is furious because another has stolen his
girlfriend. The mediators try to settle spats before they turn violent. 

A big problem for the police (and more so for respectable ghetto residents)
is the unfortunate truth that for many young men, gangster culture is
alluring. Apart from the low pay and the high risk of getting murdered,
drug-dealing is not a bad job, says Peter Moskos, a sociologist who spent a
year as a policeman in Baltimore's eastern district. You hang out with your
friends. People "respect" (ie, fear) you. You project glamour. You get laid.

You also become otherwise unemployable, says Mr Moskos. To survive on the
street, you learn to react violently and pre-emptively to the slightest
challenge. This is a useful trait for a drug-dealer, but, oddly, managers at
Starbucks do not value it. 

The police devote a lot of time and effort to stamping out the drug trade.
Nationwide, the war on drugs costs tens of billions of dollars each year,
but illegal drugs remain cheap and easy to buy. Catching addicts is easy: if
the police frisk enough people in druggy areas, they are sure to find a
crack vial or two. 

Snaring dealers is harder. On several street corners in east Baltimore, an
approaching patrol car will prompt several young men to start walking slowly
away. The police may be sure that they are dealing, but their wares will be
hidden under a rock. The man (or boy) who handles the drugs will not also
handle the money, making it hard to prove that a sale has taken place. The
boss will not have anything incriminating on him at all. 

Civil libertarians argue that America punishes non-violent drug offenders
far too harshly. Mr Moskos reckons that, at least in Baltimore, the people
jailed for drug possession are usually violent dealers whose more serious
crimes cannot be proven or whose plea bargains have been accepted by an
over-burdened judicial system. He thinks drugs should be legalised, though,
because their prohibition fuels a criminal economy where disputes are
settled violently. 

Ms Dixon, the mayor of Baltimore, dismisses this idea. She pins her hopes on
development. The ghetto is shrinking. The city's largest private employer,
the Johns Hopkins hospital and university, is expanding into the eastern
district, bulldozing derelict blocks to build nice homes for biomedical
researchers. It will be an economic engine for the area, Ms Dixon says. 

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