Baltimore Saw Steep Fall in Police Numbers as Murder Rate Soared
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Wcbm
By Scott Malone
(Reuters) – Already beset by a public outcry over the high-profile death of a black man in police custody and a rising murder rate, Baltimore’s police department is facing another headache: it’s shrinking fast.
The number of uniformed officers in the mid-Atlantic city fell 6.1 percent last year and has shrunk by even more in the first half of this year, according to police data seen by Reuters and not previously reported.
The fall in 2015 was the biggest decline in police numbers among nine comparably-sized U.S. cities reviewed by Reuters. The police force in Detroit and El Paso shrank by 4.9 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively, while Denver and Las Vegas saw increases of over 5 percent. (Graphic: http://tmsnrt.rs/28SL0kK)
The reasons for the fall are unclear, but it comes at a difficult time when the number of murders and other violent crimes have risen sharply in Baltimore and many other U.S. cities.
