Sometimes a political event takes place that doesn’t make any sense. No, I’m not talking about the federal government shutdown, which, upon reflection, is perfectly understandable. The gridlocked politicians in Washington simply reflect the gridlocked nation that elected them.
The American people are badly polarized between two very different world views with little room for compromise or direction. How do you explain a nation that elects Barack Obama president in 2008, repudiates him by electing a Republican Congress two years later, and then elects Obama again in 2012?
But the inexplicable event I’m talking about is Gov. Martin O’Malley picking a nasty, gratuitous fight with Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, one of his closest political allies.
O’Malley is publicly criticizing the mayor for Baltimore’s spike in homicides. “I believe it has to do with the fact that enforcement levels and police response have fallen to 13-year lows,” he said.
If Baltimore police made more arrests, said O’Malley, there’d be fewer murders. In 1999, O’Malley ran for mayor as a crime fighter and, once elected, adopted a zero-tolerance policy that led to an era of mass arrests peaking at 100,000 (more than 20 percent of the adult population) during several years of O’Malley’s term.
Folks, mostly blacks, were arrested for minor offenses or on their way to church, weddings or work (20 percent of the arrests were dropped as baseless.) And many young Baltimoreans ended up with harmful, unwarranted arrest records. Appalled at the civil rights infringements, the ACLU and the NAACP filed a lawsuit against the city that resulted in an $870,000 settlement.
Nevertheless, O’Malley credits his zero tolerance policy with reducing crime and is critical of Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s targeted enforcement against gangs and guns. Under Rawlings-Blake, arrests have fallen more than half.
But this is a fight that O’Malley can’t possibly win on either the merits or on the politics.
Despite O’Malley’s election promise to reduce them to 175 per year
