No end in sight in murder city

Everybody says it can’t go on like this. But it does. The homicide count races toward 300, a figure that reflects actual damage only in the tiniest way. This is no longer about the hundreds of dead. Their lives are now beyond redemption. It’s about the thousands who continue to live in these neighborhoods where the grotesque violence goes on. They try to lead reasonable lives like the rest of us but instead worry about surviving each day.

Mayor Sheila Dixon is scheduled to meet with about 180 police officers this afternoon. She wants to make certain everybody understands her thinking about crime. There is, apparently, some question about this.

Dixon follows Martin O’Malley, whose stance on crime was tougher than that of any Baltimore mayor in recent history. This helped cut overall street crime pretty dramatically, though the homicide figures did not exactly plummet. Dixon’s approach was believed to be a little different. She comes from a time and place, and maybe a mind-set, that worried about police getting too aggressive, getting in people’s faces for reasons sometimes related as much to skin color, economic status and standing idly on a street corner as committing actual crimes.

This afternoon, she wants to tell them she expects police officers to be police officers. She thought they understood this already, but she’s getting hints from the Fraternal Order of Police that they’re not so sure. They think maybe she wants them to be social workers.

As this is an election year, every move is suspect. Councilman Keiffer Mitchell presses Dixon on crime, and Dixon presses back. Each wants the backing of the police union, and Dixon has the added pressure that the city and the FOP are now in the midst of intense contract negotiations.

But each knows, also, that this is a city where entire neighborhoods are bleeding, and if this doesn’t transcend politics, then shame on everyone.

“She wants to be real clear,” Dixon spokesman Anthony McCarthy said. “She wants police officers to target the ones with illegal guns, the ones who are recruiting children, the ones who are perpetuating violence.

“She’s not asking police to be feel-good social workers. She’s not anti-police. She has enormous love and affection for police. She understands she’s sending them out on a very dangerous assignment every night. But she also wants them to reach out to community leaders, people who have stayed in these neighborhoods through tough times. Now, some of these neighborhoods are coming back. We need the police to have a relationship so that when something’s out of whack, the police know it, they’re plugged into what’s going on in the daily life of a community. And that’s hard to do when there’s a level of mistrust.”

Dixon’s expected to meet today with 20 officers from each of the city’s nine police districts. Commissioner Leonard Hamm and his top commanders are not expected to attend. Hamm regularly meets with the mayor, and last week Dixon dropped in at the weekly meeting where district commanders examine recent trends and figure out how to stop them.

All of this is very nice. But there’s a pathology in too many neighborhoods that goes beyond City Hall’s famed ComStat and beyond statistical trends. Hamm has talked about this: the breakdown of families, the snap temper on street corners, the easy access to guns.

“I’ll tell you what I’ve seen over and over,” McCarthy said. “This mayor shows up in a neighborhood for a community meeting, and she’ll see guys standing on a street corner. She goes right to them. She asks them, ‘What do we need to do to change this?’ I’ve seen grown men cry in her presence. Or, last week in Federal Hill, she spotted a woman shaking a cup for change. ‘Where do you live? Do you have a home?’ She had a 10-minute conversation with her.”

The best police do this, too. It doesn’t mean they’re not looking for criminals. It means they’re showing a whole neighborhood that they understand life beyond the letter of the law.