Baltimore Gave A Violent Street Gang The Job Of Ending Violence - How Do You Think That Turned Out?
Baltimore has been as aggressive as any city in pushing the idea that somehow police are the problem and that less law enforcement means less crime. Central to this idea has been an initiative called ‘Safe Streets’. The idea is to have individuals who are not police “defuse” tensions and prevent violence in the city’s neighborhoods.
What perhaps no one understood, however, was that what the city was really doing was putting a dangerous street gang in charge of policing.
The city of Baltimore has this to say about Safe Streets.
“Since 2007, Safe Streets has been Baltimore’s flagship gun violence reduction program. Founded in 2000 by epidemiologist Dr. Gary Slutkin, Cure Violence is a public health approach that uses trusted messengers in the community to interrupt the transmission of violence. Violence interrupters spread anti-violence messages and encourage positive changes in individual behavior as well as community norms around violence. In 2007, the Cure Violence model pioneered in Chicago came to McElderry Park in East Baltimore.”
What the city does not say is that the “violence interrupters” it hires to work the Safe Streets programs are themselves “former” gang members. In the best-case scenario, that means they are reformed and are now working to stop others from following their example and ending up dead or in prison. In quite a few cases, what it means is that Baltimore gives these “former” gang members a paycheck and a license to go back on the street and go back to their old ways.
Particularly, in the case of a gang known as the Black Guerilla Family, it appears more than a few of the city’s new guardians have turned out to be just as violent and thuggish as they ever were.
In 2018 two Black Guerilla Family (BGF) gang members pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges, with prosecutors saying the pair conducted their gang activity while working out of a Safe Streets office. The two gang members, Ricky Evans, a/k/a Dorsey, and Shawn Thomas, a/k/a Bucky, sold drugs, stored weapons and held meetings at their Safe Streets offices, and even orchestrated murders from those locations. Evans was one of the top leaders in the BGF throughout his time working for Safe Streets.
That case was no aberration.
In 2013 it turned out that Nathan "Bodie" Barksdale a “former” drug dealer employed by Safe Streets to “interrupt” violence was actually still a member of the BGF and was, you guessed it, dealing drugs while on the city payroll. In fact, Barksdale was a senior member of the BGF when he was hired by the city of Baltimore to work in the Safe Streets program.
The Mayor of Baltimore at the time, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, had this to say about the Barksdale case.
"We know that Safe Streets works. I am not going to let one person destroy that progress."
At the time that Barksdale was apprehended, the city had known for at least three years that the BGF had infiltrated Safe Streets. In fact, the city had previously frozen funding to at least two Safe Streets sites because of connections to the BGF.
Nothing appears to have changed in Charm City. Last week the FBI raided the Bel Air-Edison Safe Streets location in connection with the apparent continuing penetration of the Safe Streets program by the BGF. Three employees of Safe Streets were placed on leave after the raid.
The supervisor of the Bel Air-Edison site has now been indicted. A firearm and materials used to package drugs were seized from his residence.
The Mayor is suddenly suggesting that there might need to be a review of the Safe Streets program going forward.
There have been warnings about Safe Streets for years. Questions have been raised about background checks and how the city chooses its “violence interrupters.” Most of these questions have been stonewalled with the city referring reporters to the non-profits like Catholic Charities that actually handle the money provided by the city and hire the Safe Streets personnel. Those non-profits have been singularly uncooperative.
Investigations have also pointed out that much of the money given to Safe Streets seems to get spent in unusual ways. One report noted that thousands of dollars had gone to buy shoes. In another case, employees from three Safe Streets sites — Sandtown-Winchester, Brooklyn, and Cherry Hill — used funds from the American Rescue Plan (ARPA) to travel to Los Angeles where they stayed at the 4-star Sheraton Gateway and billed Baltimore City for everything from airfare to refreshments at the hotel bar.
Baltimore was once a great American city. It has been run by criminals and lunatics for decades now, however, and the results are clear for everyone to see. The police have been told to back off. Gang members have been hired in their place. The people of Baltimore have been abandoned to gangsters and killers.
Baltimore gave a violent street gang the job of ending violence. How do you think that turned out?
Catholic Charities seem to be active in many spheres where crime is rampant especially along the border assisting with illegal entry into the US. Nothing really Catholic about them. Should Trump retake the WH, he needs to do a deep dive. Bet Baltimore officials are benefiting financially from using these "former" gang members.
Talk about inmates running the asylum...
Human nature is inherently evil, and if not controlled by internal morality it must be controlled by external authority. If not you get hamas.