After recording a 10 percent decline in Baltimore homicides and a drop in overall crime in 2014, city officials said Thursday that the Police Department would focus in 2015 on strengthening relations with the communities it serves.
"If people in this city do not feel safe in their neighborhoods or respected by their police officers, none of these results or statistics mean a thing," Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts told reporters during a news conference to outline law enforcement plans for the new year. "Public trust has to be job one."
Batts and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake pointed to declines in every major crime category in 2014, including homicides, shootings, robberies and burglaries. But the mayor said more work is needed to meet her goal of increasing the city's population by 10,000 families.
She spoke of putting more officers on Baltimore's streets, working with the U.S. Justice Department "to bring additional accountability and transparency" to city police, and launching a "thoughtful and comprehensive body camera program" to record officer interactions with the public.
"We cannot grow Baltimore without making our city a safer place for families," she said.
Demonstrators in Baltimore and across the country have protested the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Eric Garner in New York and other black men at the hands of police.
The Justice Department is conducting a "collaborative review" of the Baltimore Police Department in response to complaints of excessive force and other misconduct. The Police Department has paid at least $5.7 million in court judgments and settlements in more than 100 lawsuits alleging excessive force and other police misconduct since 2011.
Batts, who joined the Baltimore department in late 2012, said the number of complaints about the use of excessive force dropped by 46 percent and about police discourtesy fell by 53 percent in 2014. He said the number of people shot by police declined from a record 33 in 2007 to 11 in 2014, and that the number of lawsuits against the department has fallen "dramatically."
"This department has a mandate to have a reverence for human life," he said. "I demand this organization to have a reverence for human life. It's in our policies, it's in our training, it's in our cultural norms. We will have a reverence for all human life."
As part of the effort to strengthen relations with the public, Batts has invited community members — some of whom joined him at the news conference, held at a small park on Auchentoroly Terrace in Mondawmin — to serve on the boards that review officers for promotion.
"That's right," he said. "Community leaders that stand here today have sat and they were part of selecting the leadership of this organization.
"Moving the promotional process based on merit and community involvement is the future of this organization. Adding community members to the process helps us promote officers who reflect community values and community ideas and community standards."
Rawlings-Blake said "Baltimore can learn from its past."
"Previously, we experienced decreases in crime, yet in certain neighborhoods they felt under siege due to high numbers of arrests," she said. "In 2014, we made progress getting that balance right."
She praised the city police.
"We have hundreds of dedicated, hardworking men and women who put their lives on the line each and every day they show up to work to make our city a better place to live," she said.
"A key focus for me in 2015 is doing what I can to make sure that while we hold bad cops accountable, we do more to acknowledge the overwhelming majority of the officers who are doing their jobs the correct way every day."
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