From City Journal:
A decade ago, Baltimoreans became lab rats in a fateful experiment: their elected officials decided to treat the city’s long-running crime problem with many fewer cops. In effect, Baltimore began to defund its police and engage in de-policing long before those terms gained popular currency.
This experiment has been an abject failure. Since 2011, nearly 3,000 Baltimoreans have been murdered—one of every 200 city residents over that period. The annual homicide rate has climbed from 31 per 100,000 residents to 56—ten times the national rate. And 93 percent of the homicide victims of known race over this period were black.
Remarkably, Baltimore is reinforcing its de-policing strategy. State’s Attorney for Baltimore Marilyn Mosby no longer intends to prosecute various “low-level” crimes. Newly elected mayor Brandon Scott promises a five-year plan to cut the police budget. Both justify their policies by asserting that the bloodbath on city streets proves that policing itself “hasn’t worked”; they sell their acceleration of de-policing as a “fresh approach” and “re-imagining” of law enforcement.
it hardly matters since cities are so 19th Century. The railrods mostly move cargo elsewhere, The jobs and employees are out in the surround, the airport is halfway to DC, the Interstates go around or under the urban cores, The harbors are for containers that are loaded onto trains to elsewhere, not prosecuting “low level” crime, as in california, will devastate small businesses and residents of modest means. The bangers with no options or hope will kill each other, so the problem will be self limiting. Maybe City Hall can get enough grift by taxing crack and hookers. Run armored buses into the tourist areas which will be surrounded with security fencing, but even that is a pipe dream, since some casino or Six Flags will build a “Historic Baltimore” attraction which will be cleaner and safer than the original.
I have been told for decades that people are holding on to property in East Saint Louis (IL) since taxes are low, especially with the buildings gone, and someday someone might want to build something, with a view of the Arch. Maybe, if they also are willing to finance a functional sewer system.