On Monday, Baltimore police officials joined a massive, unusually diverse interfaith gathering organized to pray for an end to violence in Baltimore.
What are Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III and his department doing as law enforcement officers to stop the bloodshed? They’re engaged in a new strategy to go after “bad guys with guns,” not the drug trade.
This recent piece in the Christian Science Monitor puts it together nicely (for those who haven’t been following local day to day coverage of what Bealefeld is doing.)
It shows how Baltimore, and other cities employing this strategy, are getting promising results. It offers some reason for optimism . . . and for marveling at how this sea change has come in under the radar.
They’re not creating any Hamsterdams or using the d-word that got former mayor Kurt L. Schmoke in so much trouble (decriminalization). But they’re acknowledging the same reality.
“This law enforcement philosophy is born of the growing acknowledgment that millions of dollars and arrests have done little to slow urban America’s drug trade, and that a fresh strategy is needed to further reduce violence in the country’s toughest cities,” wrote the author of the piece, Stephanie Hanes.
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