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I don't think it was always this way. I remember visiting Baltimore as a kid in the early 2000s and being surprised by how clean Downtown was. Maybe 6 or so years ago, there was an article written for the in-flight magazine for Southwest Airlines about Baltimore and the author raved about how clean the city was. People obviously don't even consider negative consequences for littering to even be a possibility. Baltimore just generally does a terrible job of incentivizing pro-social behavior.

Sorry to hear that things haven't worked out well. Have you gotten any opinions from friends or other family? Has anyone else been around when you detect the odor?

I'm curious what his approval rating is.

I should have expected that you'd provide just as many ideas for how to reduce violent crime as you have datapoints to support the idea that a majority of black people want less police.

It seems that you're the one who is proving my point. The fact that black people don't think that cops will treat them fairly but STILL want them in their neighborhoods clearly shows that they believe cops can prevent and address crime. That's the only logical way to reconcile the 81% figure and the 75% figure. I don't buy that that large of majority of black people have no idea what they're talking about, and that's what you want me to believe.

I think we've gone back and forth about policing enough. We're not going to change each other's minds. But, I do genuinely want to know if you have any ideas for addressing the murder rate in the near to mid term. To put some rough numbers on that, how do we get under 200 murders in 5 years' time? Do you even think that's possible?

The sum total of your rebuttal to my claims is: "nuh-uh." You provide no data to support your positions, you flippantly disregard any actual evidence I point to, and you twist my words every chance you get. "Cops are bad" is an easy position to take, but there's a lot more nuance to this than it seems you're able to acknowledge.

I'm careening towards that cliché definition of insanity by trying again with some actual evidence and data, but here we go:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/police-reform-polls-white-black-crime.html

I don't know if 81% of black Americans saying they want police to spend the same amount or more time in their neighborhoods can be considered "near-universal", but this is America, so 81% agreement on anything is pretty damn conclusive. I've tried to find any polling that says a majority of black Americans want less police and less police funding. I can't find anything that says that because the opposite is true. Pew research found 76% of black Americans want more or the same police funding. Explain to me exactly how this is cherry picked.

Also, if policing can do absolutely nothing to reduce homicides, how do you explain the fact that BPD pulled back in 2015 and murders skyrocketed? Baltimore is neither the first nor the last city to experience very similar trends. Also, how do explain the fact that homicides plummeted in NYC in the 90s and inequality arguably just got worse? The evidence is clear that solving poverty is not as clean of a solution to crime as you think it is.

The overall trend still holds. Obviously, there are other problems in Baltimore that would prevent just throwing a bunch of extra cops into the streets from being an effective solution. You can try all you want to make it seem like I'm advocating for blind reliance on policing to solve all of our problems with crime, but I don't believe that and I never said that. In my initial comment, I said that creating the perception of swift and certain punishment was ONE WAY to reduce crime, and it can work here too. BPD needs to restore trust with our communities in order to be effective, and they clearly have a long way to go. But it's not as if Baltimore is so unlike any other city that policing could never be a viable option for crime deterrence. European countries have much larger police forces per capita than we do here, and their crime rates are significantly lower. There's a reason there aren't any large cities without police: Policing works, no matter how politically inconvenient that may be for you. Focused deterrence, violence interruption, and any other number of strategies can work here too and I'm glad they're being deployed. And, to reiterate what I said before, all of this should be in addition to materially improving peoples lives and outcomes. But, to cast policing aside as a way to deter crime is to spit in the face of the people who actually live in the communities torn apart by violent crime who are asking for more police.

There's data for that too: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/04/20/988769793/when-you-add-more-police-to-a-city-what-happens

Yeah, that all makes sense. Real world data on a bigger scale disagrees with your conclusions, though. The perception of punishment comes from largely from policing and the presence of police. We even have a local example that demonstrates that quite well. The aftermath of the Freddie Gray riots proves that when there's less policing, there's more crime.

It's not my theory, bud

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence

I agree with you that most of these people are lucky to have even a sliver of an opportunity for a productive and healthy future. But, if everyone in the city who had little to live for was willing to kill, our murder rate would be much much higher. If poverty was inextricably tied to crime across the board, homeless people would be killing each other all the time, but that's obviously not the case. Let's not strip impoverished people of their agency and ability to make choices. The vast majority of poor people don't choose violence. The conclusion that some people are simply willing to inflict harm on others while others are not is unavoidable.

It's not super complicated. Most people generally want to control their own destiny, which most often means controlling whatever resources are available to them. In rich neighborhoods, that means money...so going to school, getting a job, and/or starting a business are the ways to control that resource. In poor neighborhoods, there is little money, so one of the few resources available to control is territory. So, some people will inevitably assert claim to it and fight over it.

>car-theft best practices

Hmmm...is there a pdf for that?

Baltimore has created a culture where there is no reason not to commit crimes and solve problems with guns, because there is so little chance of being held accountable for it. We need to convince people that they will be worse off if they pull the trigger, and we have not yet done that. An actual perceivable threat of jail time is one way to do that. Studies have shown that creating a perception of the swiftness and certainty of prison time reduces crime. Lengthy prison sentences are not required, but there needs to be consequences. Programs like the Group Violence Reduction Strategy also aims to convince people that pulling the trigger is not their best option and has shown promise so far. It's all about incentives. With an ineffective police force and criminal justice system, all the incentives are in place for murder to flourish. Of course, we also need to be addressing poverty, blight, bad schools, food insecurity, etc. But, if we're not pursuing approaches to reduce crime in the near to mid term, we're not actually serious about saving lives.

She sucks

Well, first, see my edit. Also, I definitely think there's a link between poverty and crime. I don't, however, think that we should treat poor people as if they have no agency and that society has forced them to become criminals, like the mayor, perhaps unintentionally, implied. That's a disservice to the vast majority of poor people that don't resort to crime. There is heaps of evidence that crime rates can be affected by many factors other than poverty. It's negligent to sit idly by and refuse to pursue other avenues of reducing crime simply because poverty exists.

To say Baltimore is "pretty safe" if you're not involved in drug culture is highly misleading. Residents of marginalized neighborhoods are leaving the city in droves. Mistaken identity killings, deaths/injuries from stray bullets, people afraid to leave their homes, constant problems from open air drug markets, kids getting recruited into gangs...all these things make Baltimore unlivable for huge swaths of people who have no connection to drug culture whatsoever. It's easy to say that only Trumpians have negative opinions of Baltimore, but that's just what you see in Facebook comments or on Fox News. Thousands of people living here absolutely hate it and are desperate to get out, and to downplay their plight does no one any good. We don't need to convince people that the city is safe if you look a certain way and live in a certain neighborhood. We need to convince them that parts of the city desperately need help, and they should have a shred of empathy for the people living there who are legitimately suffering.

It also doesn't help that the mayor literally said that poor people are more likely to be criminals.

EDIT: I misrepresented what the mayor said. Here's his exact quote: "Folks that are experiencing poverty are folks that are gonna commit crimes."

I don't think you're totally wrong, but York definitely has a Central PA feeling about it that neither Baltimore nor Philly have. Even though York is closer to Baltimore than Philly, I think the 95 corridor plays a big role in similarities between cities.

Philly has more total wealth, sure, but Baltimoreans actually have 10% higher income per capita.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure people are aware of that.

Pittsburgh lost population from 2010 to 2020. There are surely good things happening, but booming is a bit of a stretch.

Who said Boston?

Not to scare you away from buying, but builders can always hide things. I bought a rowhouse earlier this year, and the inspector didn't find anything major. Well, a few months in, the floorboards in the kitchen started to buckle. After some investigation, we found out that the flippers had built an addition on the back end of the house, and put the framing of the floor directly in contact with wet ground. All of the wood is rotting. It's a code violation. Based on the documentation I got from the city, it appears to me that the builders were able to close up the floor without letting the housing inspector see what they'd done. Of course, the construction was approved. There are some things an inspector just can't see.