Public policy intended to make things worse by reinforcing a utopian delusion

From Baltimore’s Thin Blue Line Is Broken by Maurice Richards.  The subheading is Nothing kills a police department faster than destruction of officer morale—and in the BPD, morale is dead.  Somewhat incendiary and provocative in terms of its forecasts, the article none-the-less also has more factual than I have sen anywhere else since the original incident, a street party in Baltimore back on July 2nd which resulted in 30 people being shot and two killed.  

Atlanta is a better version of Baltimore but it is worth keeping an eye on what there as there are many similarities between the two.  Both are black majority cities with black mayors, black majority police departments, black majority city councils, usually black police chiefs, and markedly understaffed police forces.  Atlanta is more prosperous but also prone to Woke policies but usually implemented in a weaker version.

The “thin blue line” symbolizes the police’s role in maintaining civilized society. The police are the barrier between the law-abiding and the criminal, the vulnerable and the predatory, order and chaos. Across the United States, police are under attack and the blue line is wavering. In Baltimore, it has broken.   

The Baltimore Police Department has been in crisis for years. The BPD operates under an onerous consent decree and is understaffed by 700 officers. Democratic mayor Brandon Scott’s “Group Violence Reduction Strategy,” apparently designed to replace cops with social workers, is responsible for much of the crisis. GVRS produced “Safe Streets,” Scott’s flagship violence-reduction initiative. The Safe Streets program hires ex-convicts and former gang members as “violence interrupters” to mediate conflicts between gang members, drug dealers, and other violent criminals. Safe Streets workers do not cooperate with the police.

In July, I observed in City Journal that Baltimore’s crime-enabling policies had culminated in the worst mass shooting in the city’s history. On July 2, 30 people were shot, two fatally, at an unauthorized “Brooklyn Day” block party in the Brooklyn Homes public housing project.

On August 30, Mayor Scott released the city’s agency after-action reports regarding the mass-shooting incident. The BPD, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC), and the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement—the agency administering Safe Streets—each submitted reports.  

Many Baltimoreans had hoped that city leadership would use the report as an opportunity to end misguided policies that had elevated concerns for criminals above those for victims. They focused much of their dissatisfaction on Safe Streets, which has evaded scrutiny for years. 

The critical issue affecting all BPD operations, including those on Brooklyn Day, is a massive staffing shortage. BPD officers were hopeful that in the wake of the Brooklyn Day disaster, acting police commissioner Richard Worley would finally address short-staffing and the resulting mandatory overtime, canceled off-days, and poor morale.  

Instead, Baltimore’s leadership ducked responsibility, remained committed to failed policies, and scapegoated the officers and command staff of BPD’s Southern District. The fallout has put the Baltimore Police Department on the road to extinction.

Interesting.  Atlanta Police Department (APD) is understaffed by perhaps 20% of more.  City Council flirted with defunding the police but shied away at the final vote.  Regardless, the predicates of the debate were unquestioned that APD was violent against black residents despite no evidence supporting that contention.  A handful of police officer were railroaded after a couple of incidents despite being exonerated once the cases got to court.

Instead, City Council began funding Atlanta Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative (PAD). 

PAD fosters a new approach to community safety and wellness by engaging in creative problem-solving to respond to community concerns, and addressing people’s human needs with dignity, patience and care. PAD provides an alternative to criminal justice involvement through two core strategies:

It is a joke within a joke and a pit of public money disappearing into the pockets of various community organizers and groups.

Atlanta Police Department is so understaffed that unless it is a call about a violent crime occurring at that very moment, you are looking at a response time of half an hour or more.  Or no responding officer at all.  

Were that not bad enough, you are encouraged to independently make the assessment whether substance abuse or mental illness might be involved and, if so, then call PAD instead of APD.  But PAD only operates between 7am and 7pm Monday and Friday.  And they similarly are understaffed.  

All of which is bad but apparently not nearly as bad as in Baltimore where the equivalent organization, Group Violence Reduction Strategy, actively works against the police department.  Leading to the civic catastrophe of July 2.

None of which gets covered in the mainstream media.  You have to wait for it to show up in the specialist press a couple of months later.  Overheated it might be, but at least it has some meaningful facts.