BALTIMORE — After battling on the gridiron Sunday afternoon, Chicago and Baltimore were on the same team Monday; their mayors met to discuss similar strategies for public safety and violence reduction in their respective cities.
"We know how to make our community safer, and it's by leaning into those who know our city best," Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said, addressing a room of violence mediators, strategists and the news media.
Both cities have historic issues with violence, and the stats bear out improvements. Police data shows Baltimore has 50 fewer murders than this time last year; Johnson says Chicago just had its safest summer since 1965.
Mayors Brandon Scott and Brandon Johnson speak at mayoral roundtable about public safety
"We're taking the same approach. The full force of government has to participate to build safe and affordable communities," Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in Baltimore Monday.
Policing alone, the mayors agree, are not sufficient. They discussed focusing on quality of arrests, not quantity, intervening through hospitals and schools, and the work of local nonprofits like Roca in Baltimore.
Sheldon Smith-Gray is one of Roca's success stories, sharing the value of a personal approach to turn lives around.
"I teach the young men those life skills so they know we don't have to be the statistic that they think we are. We can literally be a sustainable person in the society," Smith-Gray said.
An In Focus look at Baltimore's crime numbers
Known for being outspoken against President Trump, Mayor Johnson criticized what he called a lack of federal support for the community approach.
"What we're demonstrating," Johnson said, "is that there's an approach towards community safety that doesn't involve armed masked men sticking long guns in the faces of poor people, and sending Black Hawk helicopters in in the middle of the night to terrorize communities. And so the big difference is really not even amongst us, it's unfortunately the lack of support that we're getting from the federal government."
Johnson says Chicago is a few years into a framework similar to Baltimore's and wants it to yield similar results.
"The hope is that as this work continues to drive our approach to community safety in Baltimore and Chicago, that others see it the way we are experiencing it, quite frankly," Johnson said.
Johnson shared interest in inviting this team to meet in Chicago to show the similar strategies at play in the Windy City.
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