Baltimore homicides at 33-year low!
And Frederick Bealefeld deserves credit.
He’s the best commish at least since I’ve known Baltimore (which goes back now about 11 years and six commissioners). And unlike certain past commissioners (yes, Eddie, I’m talking about you), Bealefeld isn’t a felon.
[note: Convicted felon Ed Norris was a chicken-shit coward bastard to me on his radio show. I liked him then. I don’t like him now.]
The Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #3 is pleased to announce and support the1st Annual “Ed Norris Bike Ride” Fundraiser to be held on Saturday, March 28th, that will support the newly established Baltimore Metropolitan FOP Police Widows and Children’s Fund.
How can this be? I’m all for bike rides and raising money for good causes, but I don’t get it. My buddy Ed Norris is a convicted felon. Police are forbidden to associate with felons.
Granted, in Baltimore it’s hard to go out and not to associate with some felons. A nice guy who served me beer was a felon. Now I pretended I didn’t know that, but I always assumed that if the powers that were came down and tole me I couldn’t drink there, I would have found a new bar.
Anyway, if you’re not a police officer, by all means ride and raise money. If you are a police officer or a representative of the FOP, can you explain to me why Ed Norris is an A-OK felon but other felons aren’t?
I guess this is what’s on my mind: if you don’t have sympathy for police officers hanging out with familymembers who are felons, why do you think it’s OK for you to chooseto hang out with felon Ed Norris?
I tried to take the high road. I did!
But my friend just sent me this and I can’t resist. Thanks, buddy!
Here’s what my friend wrote:
Not that you needed me to but I took it upon myself to defend you by sending Ed a nasty gram.
Ed,
I listened to the show today and was very disappointed. You spent 3 breaks with Mike Wingler, an old washed up alcoholic who can barely put a sentence together. You listen to his lies and BS and treat him like a hero? WTF!!! Moskos comes on and you treat him like a piece of shit. I graduated the academy with Moskos and worked with him in the Eastern District. When working in the Eastern you don’t have to be on the streets for more than a day to realize what’s going on. He was a very good cop for the time he served. I worked in the Department from 1999 until 2003 and for those 4 years I never received any sense of direction much less a “strategy” from the brass. My job was to drive a beat up patrol car, chase 911 calls, clear corners, and take home an insulting salary. The streets were the same on my last day as they were on my first as they still are today. So if you want to pat yourself on the back for a job well done, go ahead. Good job Ed!!! Perhaps you should stop being so bull headed, take a step back, listen to criticism, and learn from it. If you would have done this earlier in life maybe you would still be a cop and not a DJ.
Why beat around the bush? Here’s what I think about Ed Norris as commissioner.
Like I already wrote: I think he was a good commissioner. Not as good a commissioner as hethinks he is, but then who is? I think he was better than the guy that came before and the guy that after him.
When Norris came in, the goal was to reduce homicides to 175. Ultimately he failed. Then he quit. Then he got convicted.
Norris likes saying how he led the nation in crime decline every year. Errr, kind of, sort of, but, no. Not really. But it says so in Wikipeadia! Yeah, right next to “citation needed.” First of all, there’s no official stat on crime decline, so it depends how you measure it. Let’s take murder. I like murder because it’s fun and easy (to count, that is).
Year — Baltimore Murders2000 — 262
2001 — 259
2002 — 253
Norris took over in March, 2000. That was the first year in a decade that Baltimore murders dropped below 300. It was a big deal. I even got a medal (we all did). Norris deserves credit. He did things that should have been done a lot early: put cops where the crime is, clear up cold-cases, talk about crime prevention, help get cops a raise, and try and get guns off the streets. He had the right ideas. He still does.
Since 2002, after Norris, murders are back up. In 2007 there were 282 murders. Like I said, Norris was doing something right. I’d guess he prevented about 30 murders a year as commissioner. That’s more than Iprevented last year.
But a big decline? Well, not really. The murder rate (that’s murders per 100,000 population–don’t forget, Baltimore was losing population this whole time) didn’t go down at all between 2000 and 2002! And when Norris couldn’t get the murder rate down any more, he quit. Well, there’s a longer story, perhaps for another time.
Biggest decline in the nation? No way. Let’s take New York City as just one example.
Year — NYC Murders2000 — 667
2001 — 649
2002 — 587
New York’s murder rate dropped more than 10% when Baltimore, under Norris, was stagnating. And this is aftermurders in New York had already gone down by two-thirds (the so called “low-hanging fruit”).
The problem wasn’t Norris’s vision. And by and large the rank-and-file, myself included, supported him. His problem was implementing his policies.
Ultimately my jobwas judged by arrest number and not crime prevented. I would have loved to have been brought into the district-level problem-solving meeting and asked how I thought we could do a better job? I have ideas. But that’s not how it works. In police departments, ideas come only from the top.
I’m telling you, his “plan,” despite what he wants to believe, didn’t change my day-to-day patrol job one bit. Is that his fault? Yes and no. I don’t blame him personally. But as the man in charge, well, it is his problem.
The weak link is middle management–the 4 layers in the chain-of-command between the commissioner and the patrol officer. Middle management believes, in this case for very good reason, that they’ll outlast this outsider boss. Just kiss ass, say yes, play nice, stay out of trouble, and hope for promotion. Meanwhile cops like me, at the bottom, go about and do their job same as it ever was.
I wantedto write my book on the great crime drop in Baltimore. Too bad it didn’t happen.
When I’m criticized for my book (usually it’s me that is criticized and not my book), I hear the same two things again and again: 1) who does this college boy think he is? and 2) what gives you the right to be an “expert” since you were only a cop for 20 months?
First of all, going to college is a good thing. And if you want to be professor, it’s kind of required.
And I don’t call myself an expert. Being a cop doesn’t make you an “expert” on policing any more than being a criminal makes you an expert on crime.
Sometimes other people do call me an expert. Usually media types (and who am I to argue?). But here’s the thing, being an expert isn’t about having done something all your life or even being able to do something well. That makes you a professional, or a master. An expert is someone who can both understandand explainsomething. That’swhat makes you an expert.
And I have this question for high-ranking police officers who think a lowly patrol officer has no idea what’s going on. You, sir, in headquarters, what makes you think you’re an expert about my job here and now?
When’s the last time you patrolled 8 hours? When’s the last time you walked the beat at 3am? How do you have any idea what is really going on with police and crime in mypost? Who, sir, do you think youare?
That reflects a problem with police departments everywhere (Baltimore under Norris included). Higher ranking officers lose touch with the streets. This isn’t personal. It’s organizational. If you’re trying to reduce crime in my post, why not talk to the patrol officer. Nobody ever does.
I do know a lot about policing. And if you’re good at asking questions, you can learn from those who know more than you (that’s called research). Would I have known more after 20 years on the force, of course! If you’ve read my book, I’ll take the criticism. I just don’t often hear criticism from those who have read my book.
If you’ve worked the streets 20 or more years and resent me for writing a book about my brief tenure, I got this to say: write your own damn book!
Please.
Really. I’d love to read it.
So I was the Ed Norris Show. It was brutal. Brutal anddirty because they only attacked me after I was off the air. I got thick skin; I just wish I could have defended myself. He was too polite to me on the air and too harsh afterwards.
I think the problem is that 1) I don’t think he ever read my book (despite what he said), and 2) he had read that damn City Paperarticle that is filled with errors and misrepresents my views of Ed Norris. The article quotes me as saying: “Under Norris… there was the idea that we could just arrest our way out of the problem…. It was all about stats and not about actual strategy.” That’s not, as you might imagine, my complete views on the job performance of Ed Norris as Baltimore police commissioner.
I think he was a good commissioner. Not as good a commissioner as he thinks he was. But I think he was a lot better than what came before and after him.
Anyway, he read the City Paper’squote and took it personally. I could see he was getting snippy with me, but I wouldn’t bite because I got nothing against the man (well, actually I do, but that has more to do with his departure and felony conviction than his tenure as commish).
I do know you can’t arrest your way out of the drug problem. And I do believe there’s a problem in any plan working its way down from the top of the police organization to the bottom (where I was). Like the childhood game of operator, no matter what he said, by the time it filtered down through the ranks, it came down to “make arrests and keep them off our back.”
I did like that my sergeant’s wife called in to defend me. But they ignored her and kept going back to the City Paper.
Anyway, it’s still good to be on his show. Even bad publicity is good publicity.