Dixon debuts crime plan: More cops, K-12 policing ‘curriculum,’ youth services

Former Mayor Sheila Dixon unveiled her plan Thursday for tackling crime in Baltimore, a strategy that focuses on stronger leadership at the top of City Hall, patching gaping staffing holes in the Police Department and doubling down on measures to prevent youth-involved crime.

In her campaign to return to City Hall, Dixon has at times hammered a tough-on-crime message and frequently reminds residents of the relative peace Baltimore experienced during her tenure as mayor from 2007 to 2010, when homicides dipped to the low-200s and her administration publicly denounced zero-tolerance policing.

Incumbent Mayor Brandon Scott, meanwhile, has presided over a drop in gun violence of his own: Baltimore saw its largest year-over-year drop in homicides on record in 2023, with deadly shootings falling below 300 for the first time in nearly a decade. But while Scott has touted his role in driving last year’s homicide drop, Dixon’s strategy, outlined in an 18-page memo, makes the case that stronger leadership and greasier wheels are needed to make Baltimore a safer city.

In broad strokes, the priorities outlined by Dixon don’t differ widely from those of Scott, whom she hopes to unseat in the Democratic primary this May, and one leading expert on Baltimore crime questioned whether the former mayor’s strategy brings anything “truly new” to the table.

At a news conference Thursday at The Ruth M. Kirk Recreation and Learning Center in West Baltimore, Dixon attributed last year’s reduction in homicides primarily to Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, who was inaugurated that year, though she commended Scott and other leaders for their efforts to reduce violence.

“When Ivan Bates won, what did he say? He said, ‘You want to commit a crime, bring your toothbrush.’ Believe me, those messages get out to folks,” Dixon said.

A major emphasis of Dixon’s strategy is on replenishing the ranks of city law enforcement. The Baltimore Police Department has been managing hundreds of vacant positions in recent years — a consequence, Dixon argues, of “heightened scrutiny and skepticism surrounding law enforcement” over the last decade.

To attract more talent into the Police Department, Dixon emphasizes the importance of pitching law enforcement to young people as a good, stable career path. That would include establishing “in-school K-12 law enforcement curriculum” and providing participants in YouthWorks, the summer jobs program operated by the city, with programming on career opportunities in law enforcement.

The strategy also argues that the barriers to entering the police force must be lower. Dixon plans to evaluate current eligibility requirements for taking the law enforcement oath, including fitness and writing exams, juvenile crime records, financial history and an individual’s past and present affiliations with outside groups.

Daniel Webster, a gun violence researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, wasn’t impressed by theses suggestions.

Police departments across the country are struggling with severe officer shortages, said Webster, who has studied gun violence in Baltimore for more than two decades. It’s legitimate for Dixon to bill herself as the “anti-crime mayor” and pledge to get more people into the Police Department, he said. But across the country “everybody’s trying to do the same best practices,” and so far “no one’s winning this game.”

Another point that stuck out to Webster was Dixon’s endorsement of “focused deterrence” policing, a model that zeroes in on the small group of people most likely involved in gun violence and seeks to draw them out of the game with a mix of social services and traditional law enforcement tactics. The approach has many adherents among criminal justice researchers, but it’s also already championed by the Scott administration in the form of his revived group violence reduction strategy.

That strategy got off to a promising start during a 2022 pilot run in the historically violent Western District, where it coincided with a 33% drop in shootings. And though Scott’s plans to expand it citywide are months behind schedule, Webster called the administration’s attempt at focused deterrence the most “wholehearted” he’s seen in Baltimore.

“There’s a lot of words here, but how many of them actually translate into something new or actionable is really open for debate,” Webster said of the Dixon plan.

Asked Thursday whether she would sustain investment in the anti-gun violence strategy or the public safety office Scott has funded to help with its implementation, Dixon declined to take a position.

Retired Judge Wanda K. Heard, who previously served on Baltimore City Circuit Court, said at Dixon’s announcement that Scott’s approach doesn’t take into consideration what neighborhoods affected by violence want from City Hall.

“The things that I’m most excited about [in Dixon’s plan] are the focus on engagement and collaboration,” Heard said. “I think that Mayor Scott believes that the pressure is on him to fix crime. And he can’t fix it by himself. He can direct people to do things. But collaboration requires that everyone come together and work together for a solution.”

Heard praised the decline in homicides, but said residents affected by an increase in car thefts are suffering from a drop in quality of life.

“I can’t go to work if my car gets stolen. I can’t feed my family if someone smashes my car windows and it will cost me hundreds of dollars that I don’t have to get them fixed,” she said.

The first female mayor of Baltimore, Dixon exited in disgrace. She was convicted of embezzlement in 2009 after she took gift cards intended for the poor. She stepped down in 2010, after pleading guilty to perjury in a separate case.

Dixon came in second to Scott in the Democratic mayoral primary four years ago and has been quick to apologize on the campaign trail for mistakes from her time in City Hall. Polling by The Baltimore Banner in September showed Dixon with a double-digit lead over Scott among likely Democratic voters.

In a statement, Scott’s campaign manager Nicholas Machado argued that Dixon’s pitch gives an inaccurate portrayal of her record on crime, including when it comes to zero tolerance policing and the trends from her tenure in office, like rises in property crime and rape.

“If imitation is the best form of flattery then Sheila Dixon said a lot of good things today about the work Mayor Scott has already led to help Baltimore achieve record crime reductions,” Machado said.

One hallmark of Scott’s approach to crime has been his investment in nonpolicing methods. The first-term Democrat hasn’t advocated for cuts to the the police budget as he did as City Council president, and has invested close to $50 million in federal pandemic aid to fostering public health approaches to violent crime in Baltimore. That infusion has gone to local anti-violence groups and standing up the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, which today has a staff of more than 40 people.

What exactly is responsible for last year’s steep drop in gun violence may be impossible to parse.

Scott has pointed to his own holistic approach, but gun violence also receded in many cities around the country during 2023. Researchers, criminologists and community organizers have pointed to a combination of many things that may have helped Baltimore finally drop below the threshold of 300 annual homicides.

To handle the police staffing crisis in Baltimore, BPD has relied heavily on overtime. A report released last week from the state Office of Legislative Audits found the department paid out $46 million in overtime costs during the 2022 fiscal year and identified more than 100 officers who worked over 1,000 overtime hours during that stretch.

Such grueling hours and a lack of salary bonuses need to be remedied through financial offers, incentives for veteran officers to remain engaged and other measures, Dixon argues.

At the same time, Dixon calls for a “major culture shift” to restore relationships between the community and police, promising to weed out bad cops and “get officers out of their cars” to engage with residents. The plan floats putting more officers on bicycles and restoring the city’s horse mounted unit.

Dixon did credit a member of the Scott administration Thursday, Deputy for Public Safety Mayor Anthony Barksdale, saying, “I’m glad the mayor took my suggestion to bring him on board.” A spokesman for Scott said the mayor did not hire Barksdale upon Dixon’s recommendation.

While Dixon’s plan emphasizes shoring up the Police Department, it also promises its own focus on non-law enforcement approaches, highlighting the work of nonprofit anti-violence groups in the city and calling for greater investment in diversion programs that dole out services, rather than punishment, to low-level teen offenders.

Probation for youth offenders also needs to be extended, Dixon argued, both to protect public safety and to help connect teens with support programs.

The biggest factor for a successful crime-fighting strategy, Dixon argues in her plan, is leadership.

“The crime we face in our communities today doesn’t look the same as what we faced when I was Mayor,” she says in the memo. “What hasn’t changed, however, is the role that a strong Mayor plays in holding all stakeholders accountable for results.”

Webster, though, struggled to identify ideas in the Dixon plan that he found novel. The Johns Hopkins professor said it’s important to understand the vastly different contexts between Dixon’s tenure as mayor in the late 2000s and today. While Dixon’s leadership may have contributed to the drop in homicides, violence was falling nationally over that same period.

Dixon’s message harkens back to a time when residents might have felt safer in Baltimore, Webster said, but the reality is you can’t go back there.

“Will she be up to the challenges of 2024 and moving forward?” he asked. “That’s an open question.”

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