Baltimore Cops Say, "We Told You So"

by JASmius



The Ferguson effect:

Batts has several explanations for what’s happening. One is a flood of prescription drugs on the street, being used for recreational purposes, that were looted from pharmacies during the April rioting. “There’s enough narcotics on the streets of Baltimore to keep it intoxicated for a year,” Batts said Wednesday. “That amount of drugs has thrown off the balance on the streets of Baltimore.” (This is, City Paper notes, a bit exaggerated.) Batts also said that officers have been patrolling in pairs rather than the normal solo beats, which effectively halves the number of patrols.

The FOP offers a bleaker, though related, rationale for the decrease in arrests: Officers are afraid, its leader says. On the one hand, they’re beset by hostile citizens who carefully monitor every arrest, crowding around officers who are just trying to do their jobs and capturing the detentions on camera, lest they turn into another Freddie Gray situation. On the other hand, police are also afraid a prosecutor will haul them in front of a jury. After Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged six of their comrades with a range of [grotesquely exaggerated] offenses in Freddie Gray’s death, they say that they don’t know when they might be charged with a crime, just for doing their jobs.

Of these, the second concern seems more potent. “The criminals are taking advantage of the situation in Baltimore since the unrest,” said local FOP President Gene Ryan. “Criminals feel empowered now. There is no respect. Police are under siege in every quarter. They are more afraid of going to jail for doing their jobs properly than they are of getting shot on duty.” [emphases added]

This is not about Freddie Gray, anymore than the torching of Ferguson was about Michael Brown.  They were just pretexts.  Exploitable opportunities.  However culpable any or all of the "Baltimore Six" were in Freddie Gray's death, the Black Klan used that situation to declare and wage war against the BPD, and whatever physical casualties they couldn't inflict on their "enemies," their "champion" Marilyn Mosby inflicted "legally".  Or at least, she tried to.

One more time, life is, at its essence, about incentives.  If powerful incentives are created for the cops to back off, not take chances, and not do their jobs for fear of being ambushed and assassinated or shanghaied before Mrs. Mosby's kangaroo court, the result is going to be criminal empowerment and runaway crime and mayhem.  Which, ironically, disproportionately inflicts more pain and suffering and death upon African-Americans than any other demographic.  Whereas if the cops are allowed to do their jobs without fear of politicized, racist reprisal, the incentives for the criminal element to retrench are powerfully enhanced.

You can have a safe "Charm City," Baltimoreans, or you can have what's depicted in the pic above.  And y'all chose the latter.

And that, no cop made you do.