Bernie has NEVER said that economic justice would automatically end bigotry.

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23. O'Malley actually did reduce police violence during his term as Mayor of Baltimore

...but let's not deflect for just a moment from your candidate. The criticisms are directed at Bernie with the aim of helping him increase participation of black voters in his campaign. Hillary's not deficient in that area; Bernie is. That should be simple enough for you to understand. If he's going to be president, I'll expect him to address these issues critics here have outlined as regularly and directly as I'd expect him to on the campaign trail. He's not going to be able to deflect from that by questioning Hillary's record or anyone else's.

But here's the thing. Starting your own thread and making up issues you think concern critics isn't responding to them, it's responding to your own contrived rhetoric; like saying, 'O'Malley not only never did a thing to stop police violence, but actually encouraged it by embracing the "broken windows/stop and frisk" mode of policing.'


I'll leave Hillary's record for Hillary supporters to defend. I'm certainly not going to be deflected to that in discussing your candidate here. But, to your false point about O'Malley:

___First of all, that policing tactic did not 'increase police violence.' The issue wasn't about police violence at all; it was about arrests for petty crimes in an attempt to put an end to the open-air drug markets in Baltimore which attracted so much of the violent crime that residents had to endure. At the time O'Malley took office in the 90's Baltimore was one of the most violent cities in America with record homicide rates and record rates of violent criminal behavior. Zero-tolerance was a police tactic which many urban areas similarly affected by crime and violence adopted at the time. While it was effective at cleaning up the streets of criminal elements in these drug-infested neighborhoods, it also drew in an untenable number of people into the dragnet who may or may not have played an active role in the rampant criminality which was plaguing the neighborhoods.

More importantly, not only did he campaign for the Mayor's office on a zero-tolerance policy, but it was being asked for, demanded, by many in the community, including some prominent members of the black leadership and clergy who were desperate to make the streets safe from the explosion of violent crime and drug activity. That's not to excuse the abuses of civil liberties, but it an explanation which belies the cynical reasoning that O'Malley was just practicing some political 'clean up the streets' stunt. There were real and consequential reasons for instituting the police strategy; a focus on reducing violent and aggravating criminality in the Baltimore neighborhoods which persists today.

"With nearly 10 percent of the population—60,000 people—addicted to drugs, more than 300 murders a year throughout the 1990s, only 16 percent of third-graders meeting state reading standards, 15 percent of teenagers neither in school nor employed, an unemployment rate twice that of the rest of Maryland, and somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 homes left vacant by the fleeing population, the city turned over to O’Malley was on life support."
http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_1_can_mayor_omalley.html

It's one thing to accuse his police dept.'s zero-tolerance policy of an abuse of civil liberties - it undeniably was, it was found unconstitutional by the courts - but the totality of his administration's efforts on policing and crime included a strong community outreach and consultation effort, as well as actual police reform. There were real and concrete successes during his term as mayor in reducing crimes, including criminal homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, arson and motor vehicle theft.

“What was positive was that there was zero-tolerance for criminals and drug dealers locking down neighborhoods and taking neighborhoods hostage,” said the Rev. Franklin Madison Reid, a Baltimore pastor. “Does that mean there was no down side? No. But the bottom line was that the city was in a lot stronger position as a city after he became mayor.”

Benjamin T. Jealous, a former president of the national NAACP who worked with O’Malley when Maryland abolished the death penalty in 2013, credited him for supporting a civilian review board as mayor and for a sharp drop in police shootings that occurred during that time. Jealous said O’Malley’s “mass incarceration” police strategy is “a separate issue” than police brutality, and “a conversation for a different day.”

“It was a period where a lot of mayors were doing whatever they could to try to reduce crime,” Jealous said.

It's actually a separate issue from the criminality surrounding the police killings and abuses today, and it's ludicrous to suggest, as critics do, that policies over a decade ago, policies which were supposedly ended by the administration which followed his term, are responsible for 'mistrust' between youth and police in that community today. God forbid someone assume he actually cared about keeping the community safe, with a murder rate that was six times higher than New York’s when he took office. Heaven forbid we focus on his reform of the police department to make officers more accountable, reform which NAACP's Ben Jealous says resulted in a sharp decline in officer shootings. Don't say a word about his community outreach, expanded minority hiring, creation of an independent civilian review board - don't mention that as governor he decriminalized marijuana possession and repealed the death penalty.

Over the past year, as he has criss-crossed the country, O’Malley has talked about alleged police misconduct in places such as Ferguson, Mo. and North Charleston, S.C. On Saturday, he called Gray’s death “another awful and horrific loss of life.”
“Whether it’s a police custodial death or a police-involved shooting,” O’Malley said, “we all have a responsibility to ask whether there’s something we can do to prevent such a loss of life from happening in the future.”

Earlier this month, at a civil rights event convened by the Rev. Al Sharpton, O’Malley said his crime-reduction efforts as mayor saved many lives. “There are a thousand fewer black men in Baltimore who died violent deaths over the last 15 years than otherwise would have died had we not come together.”

... yet some critics think it's just fine to blame today's problems with the Baltimore PD on policies a decade ago.

O’Malley (refers) to 1999-2009 data from the FBI, which tracks crimes reported to law enforcement agencies. Part 1 crimes are serious crimes that are likely to be reported to police, and are divided into violent and property crimes. These crimes include criminal homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, arson and motor vehicle theft.

FBI data confirm his calculation. The overall crime rate (the number of crimes per 100,000 people) fell by 48 percent during that decade, more than any other large police agency in the country. Specifically for violent crimes, the Baltimore City Police Department saw the third highest drop (behind Los Angeles and New York City) during the period.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/28/omalleys-claim-about-crime-rates-in-baltimore/

This political griping today about a disbanded police policy during a term as mayor which ended over a decade ago looks to be a way for some to deflect from that point and obscure O'Malley's successes in bring those violent crime numbers down. That's not just some abstraction to the people in those communities who have to deal with those criminal acts and enterprises every day.

Leaders at the NAACP — the group that brought the 2006 lawsuit against the city — said they no longer believe O'Malley should be held responsible for the police strategy. Gerald Stansbury, president of the Maryland State Conference of the NAACP, said the organization has a solid relationship with the governor.

"Clearly, the police problems go well beyond Martin O'Malley," Stansbury said. "There's been ongoing mistrust for some time."

Tying O’Malley to Baltimore is an old political saw. When you tried to run for governor of Maryland, Republicans ran ads with flashing police lights, talked about how O’Malley would do for Baltimore what he did for Maryland. O’Malley won statewide twice though, boosted by those same Baltimore neighborhoods that he is now blamed for turning into powder kegs.

From 2000-2010, the incidents of crime in Baltimore dropped 43 percent, outpacing by a stretch the 11 percent drop that the nation saw during that period. The violent crime rate dropped by 40 percent. Graduation rates rose. Median home prices doubled. A new biotech park was built on the city’s east side. A new performing arts center was built on the west side. O’Malley was obsessed with numbers and metrics, and set up a 311 call center to track citizen complaints. A program called Project 5000 enlisted volunteer attorneys to help deal with the city’s massive vacant home problem as titles to those homes was eventually transferred to individuals and non-profits for redevelopment. The school system was pulled back from the fiscal brink. CitiStat, designed to track crime, helped bring the crime rate down and created a budget surplus of $54 million that was then reinvested in schools and programs for children. At last, the population stabilized. It was no longer necessary to flee, if you could. The number of college educated 25-to-34-year-olds living within three miles of downtown Baltimore increased 92 percent in the ten years after O’Malley became mayor, fourth among the nation’s 51st largest metro areas.

Time Magazine named O’Malley one of the five best big city mayors in America. Esquire named him the best young mayor in America. CitiStat won Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government “Innovations in American Government Award.” . .

It's interesting how disconnected critics of his zero-tolerance policy are from his overall approach to crime in Baltimore which saw the violent crime rate drop on a wide range of offenses, many of those which could well have resulted in deaths. That overall approach included the institution of a community policing program; a focus on police accountability which resulted in a sharp reduction in police shootings; and a crime tracking program which was hailed as a major innovation by Harvard and others.

It's also notable how violent crime has increased years after his term, coinciding with a drop in the number of arrests. I find it remarkable how much criticism there is about an arrest policy which coincided with a reduction in violent crime, and the failure to even acknowledge the actual lives saved as a result of his police department's efforts.