Blame the Dems for Baltimore’s Problems

The last Republican mayor of Baltimore left office in 1967, nearly 50 years ago. How has Charm City fared under a half century of hard-leftist politics? Democrats are the authors of anything that happens in Baltimore, which has the ideological diversity of P’yongyang. Thus, they own all its outcomes — successes, but mostly failures. As my favorite National Review author Kevin D. Williamson wrote, “no Republican, and certainly no conservative, has left so much as a thumbprint on the public institutions of Baltimore in a generation.” Five decades of Democratic rule has turned out to be, as our current foolish mayor said, quite enough “space to destroy.”

Former Baltimore mayor Martin O’Malley initiated the mass incarceration program as part of his zero tolerance approach to crime. Thousands of people were arrested for minor offenses, and the police turned into a full-on drug war paramilitary force. In 2004, our police commissioner — this is the person in charge of the police — was sent to prison for corruption. Two detectives were caught dealing drugs the year after. This depravity perseveres to the modern day: Recently cell phone videos emerge at what seems a rate of one per week of some 200-plus pound police officer slamming some kid around — in a school. The city has paid out more than $12 million since 2011, with our taxpayer money, to settle claims of police brutality. Democrats bray for “police reform,” but these things occurred under their watch. The circumstances of Freddie Gray’s death aside, the administration and police surrendered to vandals on the west side of the city during the 2015 riots and were unable to maintain order. At least they kept the murder rate low. Oh, wait, there were 344 murders last year, the highest ever per capita.

 

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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-party-over-20160510-story.html