The Rawlings-Blake administration has allocated more than $400,000 over two years for an anti-violence program, even though a similar approach already has been tried by Baltimore police and federal prosecutors — with great success, and at a fraction of the cost.
Last year, when Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced that celebrated criminologist David Kennedy would come here to establish Operation Ceasefire, the widely acclaimed program he created two decades ago, it sounded like a good idea. But I did not know, until I read it Sunday in The Baltimore Sun, that Kennedy's National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College in New York would get $415,000 for its expertise.
("You know what an expert is?" the late, great Baltimore sports commentator Charley Eckman used to say. "That's a guy from out of town.")
And considering that a similar program has been operating in Baltimore since 2006 — with no large fee paid to anyone — the Ceasefire expense starts to look unnecessary and unwise
Some background:
In the late 1990s, when Kurt L. Schmoke was in his last term as mayor, Kennedy tried to establish Ceasefire in Baltimore. It didn't work out so well — Kennedy blamed its failure on political wrangling within law enforcement — and the program floundered.
After Martin O'Malley was elected in 1999, Kennedy met with the new mayor to see about moving the program forward. But O'Malley was not the least bit interested in Ceasefire; he was interested in zero-tolerance policing and arresting a lot of people — a strategy at odds with the targeted-enforcement and intervention model at the core of Ceasefire. So Kennedy took his program elsewhere, and he became a rock star of criminology.
His Ceasefire is built on a logical premise: Warn the relatively small number of people most likely to commit violent crimes that they could go away for a long, long time if they continue to cause trouble. Probation agents identify felons on parole, especially repeat offenders, who reside in a community beset with drug dealing and violence; police and prosecutors summon them to face-to-face meetings ("call-ins") and warn them about the harsh penalties they face should they violate conditions of parole. The ex-offenders are offered a way out of criminality with educational or vocational programs, mentoring and other services.
I get that Kennedy is The Man, but it's not as if the city couldn't have a Ceasefire-style operation without him and that six-figure expense.
In fact, such a "call-in" program has existed since 2006, a collaboration of the U.S. attorney's office and city police, part of Project Exile, the federal program created in the 1990s to put pressure on gangs with guns.
So, while it wasn't called Ceasefire, it certainly looked like Ceasefire.
Leonard Hamm was police commissioner at the time, Fred Bealefeld his deputy, and Sheryl Goldstein director of the Mayor's Office on Criminal Justice. Rod J. Rosenstein was — and still is — the U.S. attorney in Baltimore; Jason Weinstein, then chief of his violent crimes section, arranged the "call-ins." I attended the first one held in the Western District in 2007.
Twelve felons on parole or probation sat at tables and listened as Weinstein, a police colonel, a second prosecutor and Bealefeld told them about the harsh sentences that awaited should police catch them again with guns or drugs. The idea was to shake the men up and offer help; the Police Department's "Get Out of the Game" unit stood by to offer it.
"We're prepared to get you help or get you out so that no one else in this city gets hurt," Bealefeld said. "Look around this room — all these people here to talk to you. In my line of work, that's a clue. This ought to be a clue to you."
Weinstein, now in private practice, said the program was most effective between 2006 and 2012, with murders down 30 percent, shootings down 40 percent and adult arrests down 43 percent. Homicides hit a three-decade low of 197 in 2011. The only extra cost for the call-ins, Weinstein said, was a federal grant that paid the salary of an ex-offender who served as a mentor for program participants.
Though some call-ins have been held since 2012, changes in City Hall and the Police Department made sustaining the program more of a challenge, Weinstein said.
Rosenstein said the U.S. attorney's office participated in four call-ins as part of Ceasefire during the last year, but no additional ones are scheduled.
That's because Ceasefire is struggling again: Its $75,000-a-year local director resigned and a new one just took over.
Here's an idea: Instead of earmarking $415,000 for a New York-based program, just get a local, low-cost call-in team back together.
"The program worked," Weinstein said, "because there was a level of trust among law enforcement agencies and between law enforcement and the community that is obviously not there now. But it wasn't there when we started in 2006, either, and we found it. Baltimore can find it again."
Dan Rodricks' column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. He is the host of "Midday" on WYPR-FM.