General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: So... Martin O'Malley? [View all]FSogol
(47,584 posts)You can't name a major city in the US that didn't employ zero tolerance policing in the 1990s-early 2000s.
Every major city switched to that form of policing in the mid to late 90s because of the drop in NYC's crime rate. By the mid 00s, everyone was moving away from it due to over-policing, arresting innocent people, profiling, etc. He employed those policies when he arrived as Mayor, but moved away from them for the reasons stated. The number of arrests dropped each year in Baltimore as did the crime rate.
By the end of his Mayoral term he moved away from that policy. He did not employ those methods as Governor. Unlike say, Giuliani, O'Malley changed, evolved, and modified his approach until he got a fairer/more workable system.
From a 2010 article in the Baltimore Sun:
In a joint statement with the plaintiffs, the police department said it has agreed to institute policies that reject the "zero tolerance policing" and establish a range of appropriate officer responses to minor offenses. The department will issue written directives that spell out the elements of common minor offenses to ensure that officers are aware of the scope of their authority, and will train every officer on the new policies for offenses, the statement said.
Arrests in the city have fallen by the tens of thousands since O'Malley became governor, and the ACLU and NAACP said in the statement that they recognize that the current city leadership has taken steps to address the issue and "applaud those efforts."
The efforts to link a current police brutality case in Baltimore to a man who hasn't been the mayor there for 7-1/2 years is pretty ridiculous.