A day after Baltimore’s top prosecutor pulled out of the city’s anti-violence initiative, Mayor Brandon Scott responded with an olive branch and an attempt to set the record straight.

Ivan Bates, the Democratic state’s attorney, sent Scott a pointed letter Tuesday saying he was terminating his office’s coordination with the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, commonly known as MONSE.

Scott, in a responding letter delivered Wednesday, called Bates’ decision “inexplicable” and urged him to reconsider.

“No agency is perfect, and we welcome good-faith engagement on how to improve our operations,” Scott wrote. “In order for that to happen, we all need to be at the table. I do not want you to feel that your concerns are not being heard.”

Almost immediately after winning the Democratic primary in 2022, Bates found himself at odds with Scott on a host of issues.

The disagreements include policy: what to do about squeegee workers, whether police should write citations for minor offenses and how to address juvenile crime. They’re also political: Bates backed Scott’s opponent in last year’s mayoral race.

Caught up in their latest fracture is the Group Violence Reduction Strategy, which MONSE oversees and is Scott’s hallmark anti-violence initiative. Known as GVRS, the program is a coordinated effort among City Hall, Baltimore Police and prosecutors that targets the people most likely to engage in violence.

Baltimore is in the midst of a historic reduction in homicides and nonfatal shootings, and 2025 is on pace to see the fewest killings since at least 1970.

“We cannot afford to jeopardize this work,” Scott wrote to Bates.

But Bates’ abrupt withdrawal could undermine that progress — though the state’s attorney said he did not foresee an impact to public safety.

Bates’ complaints in his Tuesday letter ranged from the murky — recipients of MONSE funds operate in secrecy, he argued — to the minute — the mayor rebuffing his meeting requests. He accused the office of having a “cloak of secrecy.”

Late Wednesday, Bates sent a second letter to Scott contending the mayor did not “fully appreciate the gravity” of the issues he raised.

“The decisions I make as State’s Attorney are not ‘inexplicable,’” he said. “They are to maintain the integrity of the criminal justice system and protect the rights of victims, witnesses and defendants while reducing violence and improving public safety.”

MONSE has been at the core of Scott’s efforts. The mayor created the agency as soon as he took office in 2020, bolstered it with federal money and has referred to it as his administration’s “lead agency in the public safety space.” But the office, which treats violent crime as a public health problem, isn’t law enforcement and is limited in what information it shares with authorities.

This has regularly been a sticking point for Bates.

Council President Zeke Cohen, who has been an ally to both men, said he would encourage them to hash out a solution before cutting ties. Cohen said any disruption in communication between city agencies opens the door to violence.

“What I’ve emphasized to the state’s attorney and to the mayor anytime I speak to them is that we are one city and we’re one team and we have to be able to figure out ways to work with each other,” he said.

“What we are doing is working, and so, for me, it’s important to maintain that commitment to partnership,” he added.

Scott, in an effort to “assuage” some of Bates’ concerns, made few concessions to the state’s attorney in his Wednesday letter. Instead, he sought to explain why MONSE operates the way it does.

Take victim services, for example. MONSE offers assistance to crime victims and witnesses, a somewhat common practice, but on an expanded scale. A federal report from 2021 showed crime victims in Baltimore are treated poorly and that they typically would receive services from the state’s attorney’s office only if they were involved in legal proceedings, which usually means an arrest has been made.

MONSE provides services to people who aren’t eligible for the state’s attorney’s help.

However, Bates said MONSE doesn’t always communicate who is receiving what services, which can create difficult situations for prosecutors at trial. Those benefits are typically disclosed to the defense and, if they aren’t, criminal cases could be in jeopardy.

But Scott said MONSE was sharing the names of its victim services clients at a weekly meeting of that agency, Bates’ office and Baltimore Police. Those meetings were canceled at Bates’ direction in late October “without explanation,” Scott wrote.

Bates also took issue with a program meant to divert youth offenders from the criminal justice system. Participants in the program, known as SideStep, sometimes received payment from nonprofits the city funded — which Bates has argued amounts to paying them not to commit future offenses.

Bates said the city would not provide a list of program participants to his office, which in turn prevented his office from fulfilling its “constitutional duty to victims of crime.”

Scott said Wednesday that he understood some of Bates’ concerns about the program, noting it was a pilot that has since been refined. He stood fast, however, on his administration’s refusal to disclose the list of participants, arguing he was barred by state law. In Maryland, juvenile criminal records cannot be disclosed, even by subpoena, he wrote.

The mayor rebuffed a proposal from Bates to create a task force including representatives from his office, Baltimore Police, the Office of the Inspector General and the city solicitor’s office to work through concerns about MONSE. Scott said any group discussing such issues without himself, members of his administration and the leaders of MONSE would be “woefully uninformed.”

Scott added that the task force proposal ran counter to an agreement the pair brokered with the help of esteemed Baltimore attorney Billy Murphy in 2024. The men agreed to meet regularly to avoid miscommunication and jointly issued a curt statement.

As Murphy did then, Baltimore leaders this week urged the men to find consensus for the sake of the city.

Mark Anthony Thomas, president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, encouraged everyone working to improve public safety in Baltimore to cooperate, citing the city’s historic decline in violent crime.

“This progress did not happen by chance: it came from coordination, trust, and a unified approach that aligns public agencies with the philanthropic community and neighborhood leaders — among others,” he said. “When alignment breaks down, the consequences for communities are immediate and severe.”

Even with their public rift, Scott and Bates were sure to emphasize in their letters a shared commitment to public safety. Roger Hartley, dean of the University of Baltimore’s College of Public Affairs, said the split being out in the open is cause for speculation.

“To have a dispute like this out in the public between local elected officials will lead some of us to question whether there are political motivations here, even potentially a run for higher office,” he said.