Anyone with an illegal gun should be held responsible regardless, plus you know of course WSJ articles reposted only allow the reade to view the first paragraph
You asked what's the downside. So you are ok with that being the result then.
Baltimore Homicide Rate Has Officials Pointing Fingers
Politicians, law enforcement assign blame for sustained violence that mirrors some other cities
For the Rev. Donté Hickman, the recent spurt of violence in his church’s East Baltimore neighborhood—where six people have been killed since April—is disheartening.
“We thought we ended the fires that were burning, but those fires have turned into gunfire,” he said, referring to riots after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray from injuries the 25-year-old man sustained in police custody.
While Chicago gets more attention as being the center of urban crime in the U.S., Baltimore has long had a higher rate of homicide, and near-daily killings in 2017 have produced a nearly 20% increase in homicides from a year ago. With 193 homicides in a city of 615,000 people, Baltimore is on track for its highest per capita homicide rate on record and one of the highest in the U.S. in years.
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Other cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia are also contending with double-digit percentage surges in homicides. In Charlotte, N.C., homicides are up about 70%. After soaring last year, killings in Chicago are running 5% higher.
“We still see homicide numbers that are well beyond what they were even four years ago in a number of our cities,” said Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents police chiefs from the nation’s largest cities. “We just don’t want to go back to the days of the ’90s with the levels of violence we had.”
This year is the third in a row with elevated violent-crime levels in a number of U.S. cities, though not all have experienced consistently high murder counts and violent crime nationwide remains well below 1990s levels, said University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld. Both New York and Los Angeles have fewer homicides than Baltimore despite having several times its population.
“Baltimore has always been in the top tier of cities when it comes to lethal violence, but the surge especially this year is quite worrisome,” he said. “Baltimore is an extreme example of what I think is a broader problem.”
The spree in Baltimore, which police say is fueled partly by gang warfare over drug turf, has sparked a tense debate among officials about how to tamp down the violence. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who deployed National Guard troops to Baltimore to quell the April 2015 riots, has had pointed words for police, prosecutors and judges.
“We’re not doing as many arrests as we used to, and the ones that are getting arrested are not being prosecuted by the state’s attorney,” the Republican governor said in a recent radio interview. “The ones the prosecutors do take, the court system is not giving them the time that they should get—they’re letting them back on the streets to commit crimes again.”
Baltimore’s chief prosecutor, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, a Democrat, defended her office’s record. She said prosecutors work closely with police in her office’s gun-violence enforcement division and seek the strongest sentences possible in cases involving violence.
Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, echoed by Mayor Catherine Pugh, has called on judges to give tougher sentences for gun crimes. The police department analyzed 605 gun-related convictions since the beginning of 2016 and found 56% of defendants had more than half their prison sentence suspended—meaning they wouldn’t have to serve that time if they meet probation requirements.
The original sentences in the 339 cases averaged six years. Many of the convictions were for possessing a handgun without a state-issued license or carry permit, or for being a felon illegally possessing a firearm.
“They’re emboldened because they’re not being held accountable for the crimes they commit,” Mr. Davis said of gun offenders.
A spokesman for the judiciary didn’t respond to requests for comment on the analysis but said sentences are guided by many factors, including appeals court rulings and the Constitution.
Mayor Pugh, a Democrat who took office in December, is pushing for a mandatory one-year sentence for illegal handgun possession within 100 yards of a school, church, park, public building or other public place of assembly—a description that would cover much of the city. The proposal has drawn criticism from some City Council members who question whether it would deter criminals.
Meanwhile, gun arrests in Baltimore are down roughly 30% from last year. Mr. Davis points to his decision to dismantle a centralized gun unit after seven officers were federally charged with racketeering.
“The simple fact is we’re not arresting people with guns, we don’t have as many gun arrests,” said City Councilman Brandon Scott.
Gene Ryan, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police union, said one factor is hesitancy by officers who remain disillusioned by the prosecution of their six colleagues who were criminally charged in Mr. Gray’s death. None of the six were convicted. Mr. Gray didn’t have a gun when he was arrested for alleged illegal knife possession.
“It’s certainly in the officers’ minds: Could I wind up being charged and being put in jail for doing my job?” Mr. Ryan said.
He also said police are short-staffed, with less time for proactive policing. The department had about 2,500 sworn officers in late 2016, down from nearly 3,000 in 2012.
Overall arrests in Baltimore are down by about one-third since 2015, a trend that emerged after the six officers were charged and has continued into 2017.
Daniel Webster, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health who works closely with the Baltimore Police Department, said the public expects police to be “miracle workers.”
“You have a police force that is responding with fewer resources, less community trust and an epidemic of opioid addiction, and all of that is sort of landing in their lap,” he said.
Hanging over the debate is a court-enforced process to overhaul the Baltimore Police Department. The city and federal government agreed to a consent decree in January after a scathing Justice Department report alleged longstanding unconstitutional practices. An independent monitor hasn’t yet been chosen to manage the overhaul, which a federal judge will oversee.
For Mr. Hickman of Southern Baptist Church, guns are only part of the problem. “If the underlying issue is fear, and poverty, then we need to provide safety and we need to provide economic empowerment,” he said.
