Baltimore's woke mayor's calls to defund the police have come back to haunt him after the city's notoriously high murder rate climbed again in 2021.
Charm City saw 337 homicides last year, up from 334 in 2020, and well above the 290 that the city's Mayor Brandon Scott had hoped his new 'violence reduction' strategies would bring the homicide rate down to in 2021.
'We can't accept that this life loss is normal,' Scott, who last year led efforts to cut police funding by $22 million as a city councilman before pleading over the spring for $27 million more for the police department, told the Baltimore Sun Times.
Meanwhile, non-fatal shootings increased from 721 in 2020, to 726 in 2021.
Scott had laid out a plan to reduce murders by 15 percent every year. But instead of lowering murders to less than 290 deaths, the city reported 337 killings involving shooting incidents.
Among the victims were a 69-year-old woman who was killed in church by a man 'fresh off parole,' and a female police officer who was ambushed by her two assailants while she patrolled, and who died after being shot in the head.
The violent streak of shootings has kept increasing steadily since 2015. Democrat-led cities with mayors who have pushed to defund police - and later asked to 'refund' police departments - like Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington, D.C, now account for America's most violent cities.
The Charm City saw a slight increase in murders from 334 in 2020
Meanwhile, Baltimore's police department has pointed out that murder clearance has gone up from 32 percent in 2019, to 39 percent in 2020, and 42 percent in 2021.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, said it would take monumental efforts to root out the culture of violence in the city.
'It's not just what the Police Department can do, it's how we change the way people think,' Harrison said. 'We have to change culture, and that's a hard thing to do. That takes longer.'
Only 90 minutes into the New Year, Baltimore saw its first two homicides of the year.
Nonfatal shootings increased from 721 in 2020, to 726 in 2021 - roughly a 1percent increase
Meanwhile, Baltimore's police department has pointed out that murder clearance has gone up from 32percent in 2019, to 39percent in 2020, and 42percent in 2021
'We can't accept that this life loss is normal,' Mayor Brandon Scott, who last year led efforts to cut police funding by $22 million as a city councilman before pleading over the spring for $27 million more for the police department, said
Mayor Brandon Scott, who last year led efforts to cut police funding by $22 million as a city councilman, pleaded last year for $27 million more for the police department.
Then in October, Gov. Larry Hogan announced that Maryland would invest an additional $150 million in law enforcement as part of his 'refund the police' initiative.
He said that public officials need to steer more funding to law enforcement to maintain public safety, CBS Baltimore reported.
'Thinking you can improve law enforcement by defunding the police is like saying that you want to improve education by defunding the schools,' Hogan said. 'It's absurd and ridiculous.'
The mayor's anti-violence program, which tripled the city's violence intervention programs, and increased efforts to seize trafficked guns, did not slow down the yearly increase in murders as expected.
Police Commissioner Harris highlighted the need to change the culture, in order to combat the rise in murders, which are overwhelmingly violent in
