It's getting dangerous out there --- for politicians seen as coddling criminals

Tuesday's recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin by voters in San Francisco, one of the nation's most liberal cities, may be the best demonstration yet that a lot of Americans, including progressives, are frustrated by crime or at least a perception that criminals are not being prosecuted aggressively. That may not bode well for Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who has been dogged by a slew of controversies including, just to name the most recent, a severely understaffed team of prosecutors. But it also suggests issues of law and order, including Baltimore's continuing high homicide rate, will loom much larger in state and local contests across Maryland and beyond than it looked like they would just months ago.

This can be seen not only in how it's become a centerpiece issue for gubernatorial candidates like former Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler or ex-Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker, but in numerous public forums including the recent Baltimore City Council budget session where Police Commissioner Michael Harrison was scolded for not attacking gun violence with greater urgency. To such an unfair charge, the city's top cop had to patiently explain how his department's amplifier was perpetually turned to 11: "Our sense of urgency is set to the maximum and it stays there. It never ever turns off."

Whatever one may think of Baltimore's 300-plus annual murder count, it's difficult to see it as some new development. And yet that's exactly how a lot of primary voters — and candidates sensing their frustrations — are reacting. And that's likely for a variety of reasons, including some especially brazen recent killings and all the attention gun violence has received nationally in the wake of the mass shootings in Texas and New York.

In the recent opinion survey conducted for The Baltimore Sun and the University of Baltimore by OpinionWorks of Annapolis, 44% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans said they've changed their daily behavior because of their concern over crime. Gun violence is no longer about "they" or "them," it's become about "us" and "ours." Democrats may have thought that promoting gun control would be enough for their party loyalists. Boudin's loss strongly suggests that the issue is bigger than that. Whether it's really about crime or the perception of crime is another question. Crime statistics in San Francisco were mixed (with violence broadly in decline during the pandemic) but videos of smash-and-grab robberies flooded the airwaves as other signs of social ills like a rise in the homeless population became evident to local residents as well.

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Consider, for example, that San Francisco may have experienced an uptick in homicides last year but the total was still just 56, and that is in a city of about 875,000 people. Baltimore, a city of fewer than 600,000, recorded 337 homicides last year or six times as many. If liberals in San Francisco are capable of becoming panicked by Boudin's focus on how high incarceration rates have hurt minorities disproportionately instead of spouting populist "tough on crime" rhetoric, why would anyone assume that Maryland voters won't succumb to similar thoughts? And we should acknowledge that concerns over inflation and high gasoline prices have already soured many voters on their governmentm before crime even enters the picture.

Politicians can clearly sense the rising unhappiness. It's likely one reason why in Baltimore County, for example, some members of the county council aren't just complaining about problems in Baltimore County Public Schools, they are calling for the dismissal of the superintendent, who has held the post for only three years (two of them inconvenienced by a once-a-century pandemic).

None of this is to suggest, even for a moment, that concerns over homicides aren't justified. Of course, they are. But the danger here is that people will react in fear, not reason, and support counterproductive policies like the brutal "lock-them-all-up" mentality that helped poison Baltimore's view of the city's police department and, just as Boudin observed, led to disproportionate hardship for people of color.

Right now, we are on a rational road to curbing violent crime that seeks greater accountability from police and addresses many of the underlying causes, including the failed war on drugs, concentrated poverty, lack of job opportunities, underperforming schools and on. Such reforms take time to work, just as it took years for Baltimore's violent crime — and distrust of police — to reach the crisis stage. What would severely hamper such efforts would be for voters to lose patience and instead follow the old naval adage: "When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."

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Baltimore Sun
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