2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumAmid Protests, Martin O’Malley Defends ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policing
As politicians and groups across the political spectrum join forces to address the U.S.’ mass incarceration and police violence crises, former President Bill Clinton and other officials who implemented ‘tough on crime’ policies in the 1990s now say they regret their actions.
But former Maryland Governor and Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, who promoted a regime of ‘zero tolerance’ policing in the late 90s and early 2000s, told ThinkProgress this weekend that he has no regrets from his time leading what he called “the most addicted and most violent city in America.”
“We had a horrible problem in our city with the proliferation of open air drug markets,” O’Malley said. “People wanted them shut down, so that’s what we did. Yes, enforcement levels spiked. But we saved about 1,000 lives, probably.”
O’Malley spoke to ThinkProgress just after addressing the Democratic Party Convention of New Hampshire, where he is vying for the nomination against Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Lincoln Chafee, and Lawrence Lessig.
Since he was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1999, O’Malley’s criminal justice record included denying elderly prisoners parole and conducting mass arrests for low-level offenses, like loitering. The city ended up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in a settlement for wrongful detentions.
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questionseverything
(9,645 posts)A. Dwight Pettit, a Baltimore lawyer whose clients have won numerous settlements from police brutality complaints, said O’Malley’s “approach to policing when he was mayor was disregard for the Constitution.”
“His philosophy was, ‘Put them in jail and figure it out later,’ and that will solve the crime problem,” he said. “It created a confrontational mentality with the police.”
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)And I could paste in 10 other quotes like that.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about it is that Martin O'Malley still defends it. He still thinks it is a good way to fight crime. In this case maybe the flip flop would have been a better move instead of doubling down on these disastrous policies. Apparently he has not learned from the mistakes.
questionseverything
(9,645 posts)the reporter gave him every chance to explain or apologize for his his view on this unconstitutional activity...he doubled down and said (paraphrasing here)...you look at what might work at the time....
the President is suppose to enforce the law of the land,the Constitution, clearly that would not be omalleys agenda
bigtree
(85,977 posts)...ask the NAACP what they think today.
Leaders at the NAACP — the group that brought the 2006 lawsuit against the city — said they no longer believe O'Malley should be held responsible for the police strategy. Gerald Stansbury, president of the Maryland State Conference of the NAACP, said the organization has a solid relationship with the governor.
He pointed to O'Malley's effort last year to repeal the state's death penalty — an NAACP priority.
"Clearly, the police problems go well beyond Martin O'Malley," Stansbury said. "There's been ongoing mistrust for some time."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-police-omalley-politics-20141007-story.html#page=2
“What was positive was that there was zero-tolerance for criminals and drug dealers locking down neighborhoods and taking neighborhoods hostage,” said the Rev. Franklin Madison Reid, a Baltimore pastor. “Does that mean there was no down side? No. But the bottom line was that the city was in a lot stronger position as a city after he became mayor.”
Benjamin T. Jealous, a former president of the national NAACP who worked with O’Malley when Maryland abolished the death penalty in 2013, credited him for supporting a civilian review board as mayor and for a sharp drop in police shootings that occurred during that time. Jealous said O’Malley’s “mass incarceration” police strategy is “a separate issue” than police brutality, and “a conversation for a different day.”“It was a period where a lot of mayors were doing whatever they could to try to reduce crime,” Jealous said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/as-mayor-of-baltimore-omalleys-policing-strategy-sowed-mistrust/2015/04/25/af81178a-ea9d-11e4-9767-6276fc9b0ada_story.html
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)Are we talking zero tolerance for certain crimes, such as dealing drugs? Or are we talking zero tolerance for jaywalking? Both have been tried, and both have been proclaimed big successes by the people who promoted them.
cpompilo
(323 posts)What he did to Charm City, I cannot forgive.
FSogol
(45,456 posts)first civilian review board over the police. He also doubled money for drug treatment.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)He seems to be talking a good game lately but I'm skeptical he actually means a lot of what he says.
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)Not admitting errors. He still thinks that's a great way to fight crime. And that's being generous and assuming good motives. But really it's not a good way to fight crime, it's just a way to terrorize a community and create a powder keg for riots.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)bigtree
(85,977 posts)...I think there needs to be a complete focus on the totality of his policing efforts
...which included police accountability, an active citizens review board, and community policing.
Also, there should be an equal and fair concern for the lives impacted by the criminality and killings which made Baltimore one of the most violent and deadly cities in America before he took office. In that effort to reclaim communities from the open-air drug markets which plagued the lives of citizens forced to work, school, and live there, the totality of O'Malley's administration's policing efforts reduced violent crime by over 40% -well above the national average decrease at the time of 11%. That represents 100's of lives saved. He oversaw and fought for the ending of the death penalty, commuting sentences still on death row; signed into law the decriminalization of small amounts of pot; increased drug treatment, reclaiming lives in the process...
His police dept. changed the way incidents of police misconduct was reported and handled by establishing an active review board and a hotline for reporting police abuse or misconduct. Under his term there were over 100 'reverse integrity' stings of police conducted a year. They fully staffed the civilian review board including detectives on the board to investigate claims against police. They used technology to flag abusive officers who racked up complaints.
Also the numbers of arrests under zero-tolerance is skewed because it reflects repeat offenders, not new cases. What was happening during his term was an effort to clear the open-air drug markets which had been plaguing black majority neighborhoods. As O'Malley said in a response to criticisms, if those had been white-majority communities, there would be no question of the swift and thorough response to drug-related crime and violence which threatened and cost black lives, many young black lives. During his time as governor, recidivism was cut significantly, and incarceration rates were actually REDUCED in his terms to 20 year lows; and voting rights were restored to 52,000 individuals with felonies.
All of that says 'black lives matter,' at least to those black lives which were granted safe streets, prevention of violent crimes and killings and other opportunities to improve on their way of life. I've lived in Maryland for 45 years. These issues aren't just an abstraction to me, and neither are they to other members of the black community who are affected by these issues.
Those communities, not coincidentally voted repeatedly for Martin O'Malley in overwhelming numbers throughout his several, successive roles serving in public service in Maryland. That's as much of an endorsement of his efforts as anything anyone wants to portray in terms of support for his efforts.
jamilah ?@JamilahLemieux (for EBONY Magazine)
I spoke with @MartinOMalley on his criminal justice reform plan and addressing racism and engaging activists: http://ebony.com/news-views/omalley-debuts-criminal-justice-reform-plan-interview-503#.Vbtw_0uEz1o …
The former mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland spoke exclusively to EBONY about why he’s ready to challenge structural racism and how his record of service makes him more qualified than both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to change the culture of American law enforcement...
EBONY: Do you think that the nation is ready for this type of criminal justice reform plan?
MO: I absolutely do and one of the very important things that we can establish right off the bat is to require data to be recorded that measures police-involved shootings, custodial death [and] excessive use of force… we should require every department to monitor as courtesy excessive force complaints because the things that get measured are the things that get management attention and in the past we haven’t had that standard recording in our country. And I think we especially need it now, so that all of us as citizens will know whether our departments are doing any better this week, or this year, or this month than we were before in terms of reducing excessive force, reducing discourtesy complaints and police involved shootings.
EBONY: Are you ready to tell the entire country—not just the National Urban League or the NAACP—that you are ready to make addressing racism an important part of your campaign for presidency and, if elected, your presidency?
MO: Yes, I am and it’s been an important part of my entire calling to public service throughout my life. I think Dr. King summed it up when he said that one day, this generation of Americans will be called [to respond] not only for the evil acts of bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good. I think it’s irresponsible for us as citizens not to find ways to talk about this and I think that’s especially important in the public forum of selecting the next president of the United States. And that’s something that, as the mayor of Baltimore elected when our city had become the most violent in America that I’ve had a lot of experience with. And as governor, we reduced our incarceration rate. It was at a 20 year low and we did it by reducing recidivism by 15%. We restored voting rights to 52,000 people, we eliminated the death penalty and we decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. So I’ve had a long trajectory over 15 years in a very diverse space of talking about [these things]. And I tend to talk about them in the course of this campaign because this is part of the work we need to do to address what all of us share which is a pretty brutal racial legacy of injustice in our country that’s not limited to crime and punishment. It’s everything in America whether its’ education or housing or other things and I don’t know that we can address it together unless we do find ways to talk about it with one another.
EBONY: In terms of your law enforcement policy as mayor of Baltimore, is there anything you would do differently?
MO: I wish that we had been leaders in the newer technology, both in our state and as mayor, [such as] the body cameras and the cameras [in] police cruisers. We were early implementers of putting up public safety cameras to keep public spaces safe. I wish we had been just as early and proactive in the body cameras and cameras in cruisers...I also wish that I had done a better job of institutionalizing some of the practices in terms of policing the police that were implemented during my time, that I wasn’t able to institutionalize to carry on after my time as much as I would have liked…we promised three things: to improve policing, including how we police the police, and we also promised to greatly increase drug treatment funding, which we also did and to greatly improve our interventions in the lives of our most vulnerable young people…I committed to doing 100 reverse integrity screens a year, I committed to increasing the internal affairs division, I committed to a tracking and monitoring with an early warning system that is courtesy and brutality complaints. And I assigned independent detectives for the first time to a civilian review board so they’d had the power to investigate any case independently with the police department’s internal affairs division. And under the pressure of budgets not all of those things continued at the level that they had during our time…we reduced police involved shootings to their lowest levels in modern history. The three years where the lowest level of police involved shootings were during my time as mayor.
EBONY: Many Black voters feel taken for granted by the Democratic Party. How do you think that you can make people feel enthusiastic about casting that vote, or compel those who may otherwise stay home on Election Day?
MO: I think we have to have an honest discussion about the actions we need to take in our own times to make our entire criminal justice system more just for all people. I think that was the point of the Black Lives Matter [action] at that Netroots function. That’s what we need to do as a party. We can’t campaign a large and diverse coalition if we’re not able to speak to the concerns of everyone within that coalition. As a party, we have to be able to speak and put forward the proposals and the actions that aren’t just a matter of lip service but an actual commitment to new actions base on the facts and based on what we know now about our circumstances so that we can create and application of law that is much more fair and much more equal and colorblind.
read entire interview: http://www.ebony.com/news-views/omalley-debuts-criminal-justice-reform-plan-interview-503#.Vbtw_0uEz1o
read O'Malley's Comprehensive Law Enforcement Reform Plan: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251484008
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)This is not sound policy for fighting crime or protecting citizens. In Maryland, the average lifer who has been recommended for but not granted release is 60 years old. These men and women are past the age of “criminal menopause,” as some put it, and most pose no threat to their community. Even so, the Maryland Parole Commission’s recommendation is not easily attained: Between 2006 and 2014, it recommended only about 80 out of more than 2,100 eligible lifers for release. Almost none of those 80 or so men and women, despite meeting a stringent set of requirements, was granted release by the governor. Though Maryland’s Parole Commission still offers recommendations for lifers, they are disregarded. The choice given to judges to levy sentences for life either with or without parole no longer has any meaning.
bigtree
(85,977 posts)...commuting the sentences of those on death row to life.
He also restored the voting rights of tens of thousands of felons.
askew
(1,464 posts)were arrested and then released.
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)The arrests from the O'Malley era were not expunged.
When O'Malley was mayor people could within 3 years of being arrested without a charge apply in writing to have the arrest expunged. But they were required to sign an agreement not to sue the city over the arrest.
Then in 2007 when O'Malley was governor, he signed a law automatically expunging false arrests, but it was not retroactive.
So for all the false arrests under Mayor O'Malley, the survivors still needed to apply in writing to get their expungement.
On the bright side, the new law got rid of the rule that the person seeking expungement sign an agreement not to sue the city.
http://www.jotf.org/Portals/0/11-23-07%20-%20Sun%20-%20It%20is%20the%20law.pdf
So overall many many lives were still shattered by Martin O'Malleys record of unconstitutional, abusive policing. It contributed greatly to the climate of police terror that led to the the death of Freddy Grey and the riots.
bigtree
(85,977 posts)...leaving NO criminal record for the vast majority of those affected.
Those who claim 'lives were shattered' by the arrests for petty crimes are being disingenuous. Moreover, there is ZERO concern expressed by critics for the lives saved by the totality of the O'Malley administration's approach to crime in the affected communities.
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)2) How the hell do you expect people to keep track of every time the expungement laws change and they become eligible.
3) Why the hell were they falsely arresting tens of thousands of people with no intention of prosecuting?
4) Some of those people did end up with criminal records because they might have been found in possession of contraband, even though the initial cause for arrest was being black and outdoors.
Yes many lives have been destroyed by criminally abusive policing in Baltimore, much of it owing to O'Malley.
Denying that is denying the atrocious.
Critics of these policies do not think it can be justified in the name of saving lives or fighting crime BECAUSE THERE ARE BETTER WAYS TO FIGHT CRIME. You don't falsely arrest thousands of black men for STANDING OUTSIDE.
Not unless you are deliberately trying to get people to hate the cops and create a powder keg for riots. It's idiocy. It's state terror against a minority community.
FSogol
(45,456 posts)you just keep repeating your rhetoric. O'Malley was reelected by larger margins each time he ran. He was rewarded by the African American community for bringing a high crime rate down and improving the city. Shooting of citizens in Baltimore by the police were at an all time low during the O'Malley years.
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)we would probably start a war over it. It would be a UN resolution.
So thanks for popping in to offer sideways justifications for abusive policing and mass incarceration
bigtree
(85,977 posts)...was that the level of drug-related violence in our black neighborhoods wouldn't have been tolerated in white communities.
You've falsely conflated ONE policy of arrests for petty crimes with police brutality. The way in which O'Malley's administration responded to the record killings and violence in our black majority communities says 'black lives mattered' during his term in office.
I'm no more making excuses for 'abusive policing and mass incarceration' than you are for violent felons and murderers who plagued the lives of residents here while the bulk of police resources were deployed in majority white neighborhoods.
Btw, incarceration rates were REDUCED during his term in office. Under Governor O’Malley, Maryland drove violent crime down to 30-year lows, incarceration to 20-year lows, and recidivism down by nearly 15%
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)That's not a good way to fight crime. It creates a bad relationship between the residents and the police. A very bad relationship where the cops don't respect people's rights and the cops think they can get away with murder because violating people's rights is officially condoned.
I understand there were a lot of problems with crime.
And the government made a choice for a certain type of crime fighting strategy that led to a lot of abuse and violating people's constitutional rights, and a lot of black guys ending up in jail for petty bullshit like a little bit of drugs.
It led to people not trusting the cops, fearing the cops, not wanting to talk to them, and actually hating them.
It's not a good crime fighting strategy.
FSogol
(45,456 posts)Under Governor O’Malley, Maryland drove violent crime down to 30-year lows, incarceration to 20-year lows, and recidivism down by nearly 15%"
Just keep repeating your rhetoric and ignore the facts.
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts).
bigtree
(85,977 posts)...it was from the record rates of killings and other drug-related violent crimes in our black majority neighborhoods O'Malley faced when he was elected.
Violent crime and killings were reduced by over 40% during his term, outstripping the national average of 11% at the time.
