Baltimore Police Commissioner calls for more boots on the ground as department ...

Baltimore Police Commissioner calls for more boots on the ground as department ...
Baltimore Police Commissioner calls for more boots on the ground as department ...

The Baltimore Police Department is facing a staffing shortage of about 230 officers amid a nationwide spike in shootings and violent crime, including 18 homicides in the Maryland city over the past 10 days. 

Police Commissioner Michael Harrison addressed the staffing issues in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday, during which he noted that the department was at its biggest last year and budgeted for 2,648 this year. However, they had an approximate 10 percent decline and are now at 2,400.

According to the Baltimore Sun, the city has experienced 162 homicides so far in 2021 — 10 more than this time last year. Another 329 non-fatal shootings have been investigated, compared to 280 at this time last year, according to the police department.

Baltimore's staffing shortage is part of a larger trend in cities across the country, as officers have been leaving departments in droves amid protests calling to defund the police and an uptick in crimes against cops.  

The Baltimore Police Department is short about 230 officers below its budgeted 2,648, Police Commissioner Michael Harrison (pictured) said Tuesday

The Baltimore Police Department is short about 230 officers below its budgeted 2,648, Police Commissioner Michael Harrison (pictured) said Tuesday

Harrison addressed the staffing issues in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper

Harrison addressed the staffing issues in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper

The New York Police Department is down about 1,500 officers after 350 left last month and retirements jumped to 2,600 in 2020 as opposed to 1,509 in 2019, a department spokesperson told The Epoch Times

The Chicago Police Department lost over 700 officers since 2019, according to data The Epoch Times obtained from the department. In Minneapolis, 105 officers left the department last year, which is more than double the average attrition rate, according to city records. The Los Angeles Police Department lost nearly 600 officers since 2019.

And in San Francisco, Mayor London Breed said last month that she will fund at least 1,224 full-duty officers to patrol the city despite that number hovering in the mid-900s and continuing to drop with officers retiring, leaving for other police departments or simply leaving the profession altogether, Tony Montoya, head of the city’s police union, told Fox News.  

As for Baltimore, Harrison told Tapper: 'We're using every resource available, we're using all the time to force up and plus up the numbers so we could have more officers,' Harrison told Tapper. 'It's not just about law enforcement; it's community engagement. We need to build those relationships because we need the community's help to help us solve these murders so we could hold these bad actors accountable for terrorizing our community. That has been working better this year, but we need more of it now.'

Harrison, who became the department's 41st commissioner in 2019, has pioneered a number of community policing programs in Baltimore.

While acknowledging the nationwide spike in crime, Harrison said that Baltimore is seeing a unique uptick in the amount of domestic violence and close acquaintance shootings. 'People just have absolutely poor or no conflict resolution skills and are using guns to solve their conflicts,' he said.

This includes an early May crime in which a man burned down his house and shot dead three of his neighbors. It is still not clear what led to the violence on the residential street in suburban Baltimore, authorities said. The shooter, Everton Brown, 56, was fatally shot by police after killing Sara Alacote, 36, Sagar Ghimire, 24, and Ismael Quintanilla, 41.

Harrison spoke on CNN ahead of President Joe Biden's Wednesday

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