{"id":3356,"date":"2021-04-06T13:25:38","date_gmt":"2021-04-06T20:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2021-04-06T13:25:38","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T20:25:38","slug":"no-city-is-bad-enough-to-deserve-marilyn-mosby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356","title":{"rendered":"No City Is Bad Enough to Deserve Marilyn Mosby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marilyn Mosby is the State’s Attorney for Baltimore, known as “Charm City” less for its charm (which to be sure is there) than for its rampant violent crime.\u00a0 Ms. Mosby is perhaps best known for her astonishingly incompetent prosecution in the Freddie Gray case<\/a>, in which she indicted six police officers for their alleged role in the death, in police custody, of Gray, a small-time drug dealer.\u00a0 While there was at least an arguable case for criminal liability for some of the officers involved, Ms. Mosby pulled off the amazing feat of failing to win a conviction on a single count against a single officer.<\/p>\n

Undeterred, Ms. Mosby\u00a0 —\u00a0 who was a “progressive prosecutor” before progressive prosecutors were cool\u00a0 —\u00a0 has now launched a program to further corrode the already dicey daily life in Baltimore by, through prosecutorial fiat, de-criminalizing crime.\u00a0 My friend Sean Kennedy, a visiting fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute, has details on the sad story<\/a>, and the boatload of liberal deceit surrounding it.\u00a0 With his permission, I repeat his abundantly researched piece below.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In late March, Baltimore\u2019s chief prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, stepped to the microphone and triumphantly announced: \u201cToday, America\u2019s war on drug users is over in the city of Baltimore. We leave behind the era of tough-on-crime prosecution and zero-tolerance policing.\u201d Mosby will also allow prostitution, trespassing, open alcoholic containers, urinating and defecating in public, and \u201cattempted\u201d drug distribution.<\/p>\n

The reaction from the \u201cde-carceral\u201d left and news media was effusive, suggesting that Charm City\u2019s state\u2019s attorney (its elected district attorney) had offered the nation a model, since Baltimore\u2019s violent crime dropped last year as it rose nationally.<\/p>\n

The truth is that Mosby\u2019s plan, which she justifies with misleading statistics and glaring omissions, promises to make the city even more of a hellscape than it already is \u2014 a blighted, crime-and-corruption-ridden set that would be perfect for Hollywood\u2019s next post-apocalyptic blockbuster. Mosby\u2019s policy is a recipe for even more human misery, not a humane alternative to vice and violence.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s attorney presides over America\u2019s big-city murder capital, with one out of every 300 residents murdered under her six-year watch. Mosby is convinced that the cure to Baltimore\u2019s violent ills is to legalize open-air drug markets, street-corner brothels, and above-ground sewers.<\/p>\n

Touting the success of her libertine experiment…Mosby reeled off statistics to prove her case, with violent crime down 20 percent and property crime down 36 percent since mid March 2020, when Mosby declared a free-for-all on so-called nuisance offenses that she said \u201cpose no threat to public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mosby said she was making permanent a temporary policy to exercise prosecutorial discretion that she ushered in in March 2020 amidst the initial COVID-19 lockdown. After dismissing over 1,400 cases and quashing another 1,400 warrants for such crimes, Mosby bragged that 18 percent fewer individuals were incarcerated in Baltimore year-on-year.<\/p>\n

Mosby the Miracle Worker, you say? Hold on.<\/p>\n

In fact, the year before Mosby took office, Baltimore logged 211 murders in a city with a population under 600,000 and falling. That equates to a homicide rate of 35 per 100,000 residents. It has climbed past 300 for each year Mosby has been the chief prosecutor, hitting 348 killings in 2019, for a rate of 59 per 100,000 \u2014 a 65 percent increase since 2014.<\/p>\n

Last year, with 335 murders, the city clocked in at 57 homicides per 100,000 \u2014 twice the rate of Mexico and three times as high as Guatemala and El Salvador. That still shows a 59 percent murder increase under Mosby.<\/p>\n

A libertine utopia Baltimore isn\u2019t. And Mosby\u2019s selective data hides the bloody truth of Charm City crime, as she manipulates the media and public\u2019s understanding of what constitutes a violent crime.<\/p>\n

According to the FBI, four offenses make up the \u201cviolent crime\u201d figure: murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault (including shootings). Depending on the year, the last two categories combined make up 80 to 90 percent of all violent crime in Baltimore or any major city. Their volume means that even a modest shift in those numbers swings the overall violent crime rate wildly.<\/p>\n

For March to March, Baltimore saw robberies decline 38 percent and street robberies (the largest share of Baltimore\u2019s robberies) fall by 48 percent. That is 1,600 fewer muggings, which alone accounts for nearly 70 percent of Baltimore\u2019s violent-crime drop. All robberies combined make up 83 percent of the decline. This is hardly surprising, since with pandemic lockdowns and closures in place, stick-up artists had far fewer targets on whom to ply their trade. That trend is consistent with this year\u2019s 14 percent decline in robberies across similarly sized cities.<\/p>\n

Under Mosby\u2019s tenure, violent crime did not fall. In fact, it skyrocketed by 33 percent before last year. And that\u2019s because she\u2019s not very good at her job. While she publicly claims an astounding 93 percent felony conviction rate \u2014 85 percent for homicide, 91 percent for gun crimes, and 98 percent for narcotics \u2014 she fails to mention that those numbers exclude cases that she dismissed while claiming credit for convictions on a lesser charge, including in homicide cases. If the denominator is small enough, Mosby looks impressive. But the truth is [different].<\/p>\n

She drops or loses more than\u00a040 percent of her felony cases<\/a>\u00a0and fails to prosecute and imprison gun offenders. Shockingly, in 2018, Mosby secured convictions for\u00a0only 18 percent<\/a>\u00a0of \u201cfelon in possession of a firearm\u201d cases \u2014 a known precursor offense to violence. Even worse, of those convicted, most don\u2019t see the inside of a jail cell for long, or even at all, despite Maryland\u2019s statutory five-year minimum sentence. An analysis by the\u00a0Baltimore Sun<\/em><\/a>\u00a0showed that 43 percent received less than a year in jail and 13 percent got no jail time at all.<\/p>\n

And for homicide, Mosby isn\u2019t getting very impressive results. Of the 202 murder cases resolved since 2017 (out of 1,300 murders in that period and 2,000 since she became state\u2019s attorney), Mosby has secured guilty verdicts in 38 percent of them, while pleading out another 26 percent. Many of those pleas received lesser-charge convictions, including gun possession and obstruction of justice, as well as light sentences, in some cases only a few months in prison.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mosby\u2019s refusal to prosecute so-called \u201cvictimless crimes,\u201d such as prostitution and drug possession, obscures the bleak reality in Charm City. The drug of choice isn\u2019t pot but heroin \u2014 now\u00a0laced with highly dangerous fentanyl<\/a>. And contrary to Mosby\u2019s claim that addicts will benefit from her new leniency, fatal opioid overdoses, which were already extremely high in Baltimore, jumped by\u00a017 percent in the six months<\/a>\u00a0after her order.<\/p>\n

But Mosby went further and extended her non-prosecution to \u201cattempted distribution,\u201d which is not a Maryland statutory term. Mosby has been equally fuzzy on whether there is a possession threshold.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0telling exchange<\/a>\u00a0at a city-council hearing after Mosby\u2019s announcement, one councilman asked the police commissioner: \u201cIf someone is walking around downtown with a backpack with three bricks of cocaine, I\u2019m assuming that you will arrest them versus if someone is walking around downtown with three grams of cocaine, I\u2019m assuming that you will not arrest them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s top cop replied: \u201cI don\u2019t know that the state\u2019s attorney has defined the threshold other than I do recall her saying simple possession in any amount.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sky\u2019s the limit!<\/p>\n

Now Baltimore\u2019s DA allows sex workers to walk the streets without fear of police harassment. Shame on those taxpaying homeowners who disapprove of open-air brothels clogging their streets with used condoms and lecherous men! Meanwhile, sex workers are themselves often controlled by\u00a0human traffickers and pimps<\/a>\u00a0and addicted to hard drugs, with no recourse to escape.<\/p>\n

Forcibly removing them from that hell might be the best thing to happen to these desperate women (and men). A trip to the city jail gets them off the streets and away from the predators who employ them and an opportunity to connect with social services. Instead, Mosby plans greater street outreach, presumably in the belief that handing a working girl a business card under the watchful eye of her pimp will be a game changer.<\/p>\n

None of this even addresses how useful sex workers and junkies (and small-time dealers) are to the police as informants and witnesses to violent crime. They know the players and the gossip and can go where police can\u2019t. Mosby is stripping police of their leverage to get valuable intelligence needed to nab the real bad guys. As it is, Baltimore police make an arrest in\u00a0barely a third of the city\u2019s annual killings<\/a>, and taking the cops\u2019 eyes and ears away won\u2019t likely make their job any easier.<\/p>\n

For both addicts and sex workers, there is a better way, but it requires accountability and enforcement. Hawaii\u2019s Steve Alm, previously a judge and now Honolulu\u2019s chief prosecutor, pioneered a program that uses \u201cswift, certain, and fair\u201d incarceration through its \u201ctough love\u201d model. Defendants are assessed and offered treatment or resources and then ordered to meet certain requirements (e.g., staying sober and out of trouble). If they don\u2019t, they immediately receive a preordained term in jail (e.g. 30 days). After their confinement, the process starts again, but the penalties ratchet up.\u00a0It works<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 with a 72 percent reduction in drug use and a 55 percent drop in rearrests for participants. Actions should have consequences and accountability matters.<\/p>\n

Marilyn Mosby does not agree. Her announcement was curiously timed five days after news broke that federal prosecutors had convened a\u00a0grand jury to investigate the prosecutor and her husband<\/a>, who is the city-council president, for financial crimes.<\/p>\n

Mosby, a self-declared \u201cprogressive change agent,\u201d says she is being persecuted for her politics \u2014 by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris\u2019s Justice Department. Previously,\u00a0she attacked the city\u2019s inspector general<\/a>\u00a0for reporting that Mosby, who earns $240,000 a year, was on undisclosed exotic and luxury junkets (e.g., all-expenses-paid trips to Kenya and Portugal) for 20 percent of her work days in 2018 and 2019. Never mind that it was Mosby who requested the probe to clear her after the media discovered discrepancies in Mosby\u2019s filings.<\/p>\n

Even as Mosby excuses criminals for their actions, she seeks to blame others for her own woes. A federal judge presiding over her case may not be as forgiving, however. Just in the last five years, two former mayors of Baltimore and a police chief have faced a judge for their own crimes.<\/p>\n

Decriminalizing crime will only bring Baltimore more misery. If misery loves company, Baltimore under Mosby is a company town.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marilyn Mosby is the State’s Attorney for Baltimore, known as “Charm City” less for its charm (which to be sure is there) than for its rampant violent crime.\u00a0 Ms. Mosby is perhaps best known for her astonishingly incompetent prosecution in the Freddie Gray case, in which she indicted six police officers for their alleged role in the death, in police custody, of Gray, a small-time drug dealer.\u00a0 While there was at least an arguable case for criminal liability for some of the officers involved, Ms. Mosby pulled off the amazing feat of failing to win a conviction on a single count against a single officer. Undeterred, Ms. Mosby\u00a0 —\u00a0 who was a “progressive prosecutor” before progressive prosecutors were cool\u00a0 —\u00a0 has now launched a program to further corrode the already dicey daily life in Baltimore by, through prosecutorial fiat, de-criminalizing crime.\u00a0 My friend Sean Kennedy, a visiting fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute, has details on the sad story, and the boatload of liberal deceit surrounding it.\u00a0 With his permission, I repeat his abundantly researched piece below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prosecutors"],"yoast_head":"\nNo City Is Bad Enough to Deserve Marilyn Mosby - Crime & Consequences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No City Is Bad Enough to Deserve Marilyn Mosby - Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Marilyn Mosby is the State’s Attorney for Baltimore, known as “Charm City” less for its charm (which to be sure is there) than for its rampant violent crime.\u00a0 Ms. Mosby is perhaps best known for her astonishingly incompetent prosecution in the Freddie Gray case, in which she indicted six police officers for their alleged role in the death, in police custody, of Gray, a small-time drug dealer.\u00a0 While there was at least an arguable case for criminal liability for some of the officers involved, Ms. Mosby pulled off the amazing feat of failing to win a conviction on a single count against a single officer. Undeterred, Ms. Mosby\u00a0 —\u00a0 who was a “progressive prosecutor” before progressive prosecutors were cool\u00a0 —\u00a0 has now launched a program to further corrode the already dicey daily life in Baltimore by, through prosecutorial fiat, de-criminalizing crime.\u00a0 My friend Sean Kennedy, a visiting fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute, has details on the sad story, and the boatload of liberal deceit surrounding it.\u00a0 With his permission, I repeat his abundantly researched piece below.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CriminalJusticeLegalFoundation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-04-06T20:25:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/FB_DefaultLJ.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Bill Otis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Bill Otis\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356\",\"name\":\"No City Is Bad Enough to Deserve Marilyn Mosby - Crime & Consequences\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-04-06T20:25:38+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d089f7e65aa652190318c44070da5e6e\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"No City Is Bad Enough to Deserve Marilyn Mosby\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/\",\"name\":\"Crime & Consequences\",\"description\":\"Crime and criminal law\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d089f7e65aa652190318c44070da5e6e\",\"name\":\"Bill Otis\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?author=6\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"No City Is Bad Enough to Deserve Marilyn Mosby - Crime & Consequences","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3356","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"No City Is Bad Enough to Deserve Marilyn Mosby - Crime & Consequences","og_description":"Marilyn Mosby is the State’s Attorney for Baltimore, known as “Charm City” less for its charm (which to be sure is there) than for its rampant violent crime.\u00a0 Ms. Mosby is perhaps best known for her astonishingly incompetent prosecution in the Freddie Gray case, in which she indicted six police officers for their alleged role in the death, in police custody, of Gray, a small-time drug dealer.\u00a0 While there was at least an arguable case for criminal liability for some of the officers involved, Ms. Mosby pulled off the amazing feat of failing to win a conviction on a single count against a single officer. 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