BALTIMORE — Mayor Brandon Scott is up for re-election in 2024. Scott has a lot of opponents, including Sheila Dixon who also once ran the city of Baltimore.
However, as the year comes to an end, Mayor Scott is reflecting on the year; the successes, failures, and what’s to come.
Scott said he is finally seeing progress on the promises he made to Baltimore during his campaign, but a lot of work still needs to be done.
“Baltimore is on pace, we're going to have under 300 homicides for the first time, since 2014 which is a big thing. Now we have under 300, that's not good enough for me,” Scott said.
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Faces of Baltimore City's murder rate
Murders, public safety, and youth violence were all key parts of the discussion with Scott when analyzing how this year's projected goals measured up.
“This is why we've been focused on carjackings and why they're down 20% and working with the department to make sure that they are focusing in and making arrests using our tools like license plate readers, and everything else that we have,” Scott said.
Although carjackings are down, auto thefts in Baltimore City are up.
“We're going to continue things like the wheel locks, we're going to continue, as you know, with our lawsuit with Hyundai and KIA, myself and other mayors around the country, because they have a role to play in this as well. They knew they had a faulty product and they did nothing to prevent this from happening,” Scott said.
When it comes to homicides the goal was to reduce homicides by 15%, right now homicides are down 21%.
“We're going to be focused on guns. We're going to be focused on removing guns from the street, people who are using them, but also manufacturers and traffickers. Whoever is on the path that helps the violence happen in the city, everybody will be held accountable. But one group, one group has seen an increase in non-fatal shooting victims. And that's young people,” Scott said.
Partly because of the Brooklyn Mass shooting that claimed the lives of two people and injured 28 others the majority of whom were minors.
“I still know that we should have done better as a community and as a city on that, and you know from our after-action reports and the actions that we've taken. But I still want to make sure that moving forward we do everything that we can to prevent something like that from happening again. Seeing so many of our young people become victims of violence is still something that keeps me up at night,” Scott said.
The Brooklyn Mass Shooting after-action report prompted many changes to public safety, including how the community is being policed, taking it from one patrol officer to three overseeing the area. This happened during a youth curfew mandate between May and September of 2023, and city leaders claim youth-involved homicides were down compared to the same time last year.
However, Mayor Scott still believes tackling youth violence starts with investing in youth programs, something the city hasn't seen too much of in the past.
“When budgets had to be balanced, that's where they went. They went to close rec centers, whether it was in 2009, when Boceck Rec Center was closed and our power centers were eliminated, or the years before them. And what we've been able to do is start to undo some of that," Scott said. "We had eight ribbon cuttings from Rec and Parks facilities, from rec centers to pools to playgrounds. Investing in our young people as a part of our over $100 million capital plan for Rec and Parks."
"We're going to give you all these opportunities. But those of you who we catch continuously doing these things, you're going to be held accountable, and we're going to be working with our state partners, making sure that that happens after we make the arrest as well,” Scott said.
And Scott said deeper partnerships at city state and federal levels are making a difference.
“To have a governor who understands and knows that Baltimore is the most critical part of Maryland, we have an alignment now that we haven't had in quite some time. Everybody from the President of the United States, the leader of the free world himself, down to the Mayor of the City of Baltimore, are locked in step and Baltimore has to understand how important that is for us as a city,” Scott said.
Mayor Scott hopes to see progress in tackling youth violence on the State level when the session starts in January.