Crime and Policing in Baltimore Post Freddy Gray

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The surge of shootings and killings that followed has left Baltimore easily the deadliest large city in the United States. Its murder rate reached an all-time high last year; 342 people were killed. The number of shootings in some neighborhoods has more than tripled.

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Millions of police records show officers in Baltimore respond to calls as quickly as ever. But they now begin far fewer encounters themselves. From 2014 to 2017, dispatch records show the number of suspected narcotics offenses police reported themselves dropped 30 percent; the number of people they reported seeing with outstanding warrants dropped by half.
The number of field interviews – instances in which the police approach someone for questioning – dropped 70 percent.

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"In all candor, officers are not as aggressive as they once were, pre-2015. It’s just that fact," says acting Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle, who took command of Baltimore's police force in May. Tuggle blames a shortage of patrol officers and the fallout from a blistering 2016 Justice Department investigation that found the city's police regularly violated residents' constitutional rights and prompted new limits on how officers there carry out what had once been routine parts of their job.

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Gearhart and other officers say no one ordered them to make fewer stops or take fewer risks.

"We didn't have to tell them," he says. "We just said these are the facts, this is the situation, and if you want to risk your career, have at it." That reaction fits a wider pattern. Nearly three-quarters of police officers who responded to a Pew Research Center survey last year said high-profile incidents had left them less willing to stop and question people who seem suspicious.

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