Less than a week after the city passed the 300-homicide mark for the year, Baltimore City Council members pushed forward legislation to create a violence reduction plan that involves not just the police department, but also a broad array of city agencies.
But as the Public Safety Committee passed amendments Monday to move the onus away from Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young’s office over to the city’s health department to create the plan, some city officials said the rushed process left out the heads of key city agencies.
During the contentious hearing on the bill, mayoral candidates debated about their devotion to ending the ongoing violence in Baltimore City.
City Council President Brandon Scott, with the near-unanimous support of the council, originally pushed legislation that would have required the Mayor’s Office on Criminal Justice, which advises the mayor on crime reduction, to publish a comprehensive crime plan every two years that brings together the school system, the housing authority, the health department and other agencies to tackle the root causes of Baltimore’s pervasive violence.
“We can’t say that only the police department is responsible for crime,” Scott said. “That hasn’t worked.”
Scott, who is running for mayor, has prodded the past two mayoral administrations to formally implement this kind of strategy. He said the bill he introduced aimed to ensure that “no other mayor in the future will have the option of producing a comprehensive crime plan or not."
The legislation also required the plan to include an analysis of criminal justice data, an assessment of holistic crime-reduction efforts beyond policing and the establishment of goals for stemming violence in Baltimore.
However, Hilary Ruley, chief solicitor in the city’s law department, wrote in a letter to the council that the bill would have to be amended to comply with the city charter.
“There can be no ordinance [that] directs the operation of the Mayor’s Office,” Ruley wrote.
She also said neither the mayor nor the city council can require a crime plan to be followed by the police commissioner. The Baltimore Police Department is under state control.
“Only the General Assembly," Ruley wrote, “can enact a law that directs the Police Commissioner with respect to a crime plan.”
One of two amendments passed Tuesday removed the language that compels the mayor’s office to create the plan and instead places the onus on city Health Commissioner Letitia Dzirasa. Several council members said it would be in concert with declaring the violence in the city a public health crisis.
“Agencies work toward what they’re being held accountable for,” Scott said at the meeting.
When Young stood beside the police commissioner in July to unveil the department’s five-year crime plan, he said a complementary, collaborative plan would be released in the coming weeks. Asked about those comments in relation to Scott’s bill, Young said Commissioner Michael Harrison’s initiative is “the only plan we have.”