Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2007-07-23 07:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

Here we were, on the night after Leonard Hamm lost his job as police commissioner of Baltimore City, in the darkness outside the Chinese carry-out at Pennsylvania and Clifton, where maybe a dozen boys in their early teens gathered to kill a little time.

The clock was moving toward 11:15 p.m.

At North Avenue and Eutaw that night, there were four teenage girls, and a kid who couldn’t have been older than 10 who was carrying a 2-year-old in her arms, followed by a couple of kids zipping around the corner on bicycles.

The clock moved toward 11:30.

On Fairmount Avenue on the east side 15 minutes later, there were children not yet in their teens racing up the street, oblivious to the homeless man pushing a shopping cart packed with his possessions, while two little girls strolled down the block arm in arm.

Now the clock moved toward midnight.

A slight question: Where were the parents of all these children?

And another question: Is there someone out there who thinks a new police commissioner can reach into people’s homes and tell adults to watch their children at night in a city where so many young people, aimless and angry and disillusioned, routinely get themselves in such deep trouble?

Everybody at City Hall said Leonard Hamm had to go, and everybody dances around the real problem.

Mayor Sheila Dixon needed him to go, because he was becoming a political liability in this election season.

Her biggest challenger, Councilman Keiffer Mitchell, keeps pointing to the homicide figures, which head toward 200 while we try to get through July.

But homicides are only the headline item.

More and more, kids are getting sucked into these gangs, which offer a sense of belonging they aren’t getting at home.

They also offer them better weaponry and better protection when they have to go behind bars.

Does anybody think a police commissioner can offer the emotional security these kids need, and the loving parents, so these kids don’t have to tell themselves gangs are the only place they can get some attention?

We live in a city once divided by race that is now, more and more, divided by economics.

We do ourselves a disservice when we focus strictly on the crime.

It is a fact of life, but our lives consist of more than crime.

During the weekend, we had the annual Artscape festival, which draws hundreds of thousands of people from the whole metro area, and every kind of racial and ethnic background, and it touches all hearts.

There were little black girls in pink ballet outfits dancing to “Rhapsody in Blue” in front of the main Maryland Institute College of Art building.

Nearby were couples in native costume dancing to Latino music, and others a little later doing the polka while a country band played to a big crowd up the street.

In this city, there’s music for everyone and room for everyone.

We are not a people who define ourselves merely by the way we harm each other.

We gather for our festivals to celebrate ourselves and to make the happy discovery that most of us like being with each other.

It is not the job of a police commissioner to play social worker.

Whether it’s poor Leonard Hamm, who now pays the price for social pathology beyond the reach of a cop’s nightstick, or the interim commissioner, or someone else who will take over the job — the problem remains the same.

We have thousands of disaffected young people.

They are smarter than we imagine.

They look around and see parents who aren’t paying serious attention.

They arrive exhausted in school after staying out late on the street.

From their neighborhoods off in the distance, they see the lights of downtown, and they believe this is a world that will never be their own.

So they make their own lives, and their own rules, and in their anger and frustration, some of this involves crime.

And we imagine we can fix this by the mere act of finding a new police commissioner.

Leonard Hamm is a decent man, and a Baltimore City lifer, who wants the best for his hometown.

In many ways, the city’s thriving, and its best days are ahead of it. But in some ways, it self-destructs.

Hamm gave it his best shot.

But there are places where a police commissioner cannot go.

One of them is inside people’s homes. Another is inside their heads.

Now what do all the brilliant political leaders think they can do about that?

Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com