In early September, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore took a brief walk through Park Heights. For weeks he had been sniping with President Donald Trump about crime in Baltimore, with Trump threatening to send in troops.

Looking to deter the president, Moore devised his own plan to fight crime in the city, which is in a three-year stretch of historic decreases. After concluding his walk, Moore stood in a church parking lot and told reporters he was ordering Maryland State Police and Maryland Transportation Authority Police to Baltimore, where they would “conduct proactive enforcement in high-risk areas.”

“Because even though Baltimore City is seeing some of the most impressive crime drops in the entire country, the work is far from over,” Moore said in a news release marking the police effort. “We can, and will, do more on public safety, because our people deserve nothing less.”

The plan was big news — it made the front page of The Washington Post — even if it wasn’t original. The two police forces already operate in Baltimore, and past governors including Larry Hogan had ordered similar surges.

So what exactly did Moore’s police surge accomplish? It’s hard to say.

After a month of being asked what the police agencies were up to — The Banner first sought Maryland State Police and Transportation Authority Police data on their September efforts on Oct. 6 — Moore’s office shared figures and details this week.

According to Moore’s office, the agencies intermittently patrolled three stretches of road across a 17-day period:

• From Sept. 5-7 and Sept. 13-15, the state forces patrolled U.S. 40, which includes the “Highway to Nowhere,” Orleans Street and Pulaski Highway.
• From Sept. 19-22. and Sept. 26-28, they patrolled the length of North Avenue.
• And they patrolled a stretch of road the governor’s office described as “N. Parkway to Gwynn Falls” from Oct. 3-6. It’s unclear what area of the city the governor’s office is referring to because Northern Parkway and Gwynns Falls Parkway don’t intersect.

The governor’s office said the state and transportation police in the first month of operations made 43 arrests for driving under the influence, 82 arrests on outstanding warrants and 29 criminal arrests. They conducted 1,378 traffic stops and issued 1,249 warnings. They did not say how many officers participated.

Those figures exist in something of a vacuum. Maryland State Police and Maryland Transportation Authority Police declined to share figures for arrests and traffic stops made in Baltimore for the same period in 2024. Maryland State Police publish annual reports listing enforcement figures for each of Maryland’s counties, but they do not include figures for Baltimore.

There is other data that shines a light on the efficacy of Moore’s police surge: instances of crime.

Moore’s office touted a 25% decrease in violent crime compared to 2024 across the areas state and transportation police patrolled. But the governor’s office counted instances of auto theft and larceny as violent crime when calculating the reductions.

Those offenses are property crimes, not violent crimes. Auto thefts across the city are down compared to 2024, and instances of larceny have remained the same.

Those patrol areas saw the same number of homicides, burglaries and aggravated assaults in 2025 as in 2024, according to data from the governor’s office. Citywide, all three categories are seeing decreases of varying size, according to data from the Baltimore Police Department.

But one category of violent crime, robbery, saw a marked decrease in areas where state resources were patrolling. In 2025, there were five instances of robbery in the three patrol areas during the periods when state and Transportation Authority Police were deployed. In those areas during the same periods in 2024, there were 34 instances of robbery, according to figures from Moore’s office.

There have been 810 fewer robberies citywide in 2025, compared to 2024, according to Baltimore Police data.