No one is arguing Baltimore doesn’t have a crime problem.
As my colleague Lee Sanderlin reported recently, seven people were killed last month in the city — bringing the total number of homicides this year to 91.
Ninety one.
The depth of the problem is evident in the celebration that this comparatively low number elicited. At this time last year, 129 people were dead at the hands of someone who wanted them that way.
You might ask, is last year the best comparison we can make?
There were 19 homicides last year in all of Montgomery County, where the population is twice Baltimore’s.
The contrast is similar for almost any category of crime. So, when President Donald Trump says “we’re going in,” hinting that he’ll put the National Guard on Baltimore streets because of crime, some people cheered.
“The first duty of elected officials is to keep people safe,” Maryland’s own Freedom Caucus said. “If President Trump is willing to step in and help protect our nation’s capital, then Governor Wes Moore should be willing to work across the aisle to protect the citizens of Maryland.”
Oh boy. Seven Republicans searching for relevance in Annapolis decide to chime in from the bleachers.
Trump’s threat is not about crime; it’s not even about Baltimore or Chicago or any other of his favorite municipal punching bags, all run by Democratic mayors who happen to be people of color.
This is not about, as this teensy group of Maryland lawmakers would have you believe, keeping Grandma from getting carjacked.
It is about power.
Nationalizing law enforcement, normalizing troops on American streets — this is about handing the president the ability to quash political dissent with intimidation and force.
Even if a recent court ruling found his use of the Guard in California illegal, even if it deters his plans for other states, Trump wants to create an ultimate American executive.
L’etat c’est moi, if you prefer how the Sun King said it. Or if cartoons are your thing, He-Man said “I HAVE THE POWER!”
Here’s an even better perspective.
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
That’s what the first Republican president said, and it’s clear Abraham Lincoln’s political descendants are failing the test.
Yes, crime is said to be down in Washington weeks after the president called out the Guard and then gave it authority to carry weapons. Governors from West Virginia and other GOP-led states sent their own units to help.
Media reports indicate it’s fallen by half.
Of course crime is down.
An armed military presence discourages people from going out, whether for larceny or linguine. Restaurant and tourism numbers are down, too.
If this were purely about crime, the president would have started with cities that have the worst numbers, all in Republican-controlled states.
Days after widespread media attention focused on sky-high crime rates in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana, Trump mused about New Orleans.
“Do we go to Chicago?” the president asked Wednesday, “Or do we go to a place like New Orleans where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite tough?”
Les bon temps rouler.
It wasn’t about crime when gun manufacturers focused on fear in the early 1960s to put a gun in every home. A decade later, it was more about political unrest than illegal drugs when President Richard Nixon declared war on crime.
To the joy of the Maryland Freedom Caucus, deploying the National Guard as law enforcement along MLK Boulevard in Baltimore will lower crime numbers in the short run.
But Guard members will not address the roots of crime, poverty, jobs, ignorance, greed and anger.
While Trump plays at being the uber mayor, Baltimore’s Brandon Scott has been focused on the actual hard work of reducing crime.
“We are all in this together,” Scott said. “Only together can we continue to build on and sustain these achievements.”
He’s done it by treating violent crime as a public health crisis, a symptom of multiple factors. He’s benefiting from national trends of crime being down, but it required political courage to go beyond dated ideas like “broken windows” maximum enforcement.
Through the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, it’s working. Maryland and the Scott administration can rightly cheer historic reductions in crime in the state’s biggest city.
A 50-year low is remarkable, and proof that treating crime as more than an individual robbery or homicide — no matter how sensational Grandma getting carjacked seems — is the right approach.
If this were about crime, Trump would be spending time in Baltimore looking for ways to encourage other cities to follow its example.
Instead he’ll figure out how to go around Gov. Wes Moore and mobilize the Maryland Guard, or worse, spark another constitutional crisis by sending in Guard members from another state without Moore’s approval.
If Trump sends the Guard into Baltimore, the city and state should treat it for what Trump’s actions are — a provocation.
It would be an attempt to generate a reaction so the president and the all-white Maryland Freedom Caucus can crow about what a horrible place majority-Black Baltimore is, how bad its Democratic leadership is.
Moore, Scott and Attorney General Anthony Brown are reportedly looking for the right legal response to Trump’s brazen power grab.
For the rest of us, the correct response to the Guard patrolling MLK Boulevard or the Inner Harbor area will be patience, refusal to cooperate with injustice and peaceful protest.
When it leaves, Baltimore can get back to the hard work of making a better city.
Power in this country derives from the people, and only the people can take it back from someone who is so badly misusing it.
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