Martin O'Malley walks into West Baltimore community meeting - Mingles outside w/protesters

[bigtree]

Last edited Wed Apr 29, 2015, 07:42 AM - Edit history (3)

Gene Demby @GeeDee215 · 42m 42 minutes ago
Martin O'Malley just (apparently unexpectedly) walked into the community meeting here at an elementary school in West Baltimore.




Courtney Bettle @BettleCourtney · 33m 33 minutes ago
District7 mtg at Matthew Henson Elm schl w @prezjackyoung @councilmanmosby @GovernorOMalley




Gene Demby @GeeDee215 · 29m 29 minutes ago
O'Malley said he was overseas, but came home when he saw what was happening. To crowd: "I just want to thank you for loving this city."




Peter Crispino @PeterCrispino · 31m 31 minutes ago
O'Malley in prayer circle outside Simmons Memorial Baptist




Lis Smith ‏@Lis_Smith 2m2 minutes ago
Praying for the safety of Baltimore @GovernorOMalley




Peter Crispino @PeterCrispino
O'Malley appears to be by himself. No aides or security or anything. Now walking to join the main protest.




Cam Thompson WNEW @CamThompsonWNEW · 16m 16 minutes ago
Former Maryland Gov. O'Malley at Pennsylvania and North




Marcus Washington @WJZMarcus · 13m 13 minutes ago
#WJZ NOW: Martin O'Malley with East Baltimore pastor assessing the damage done in riot. @cbsbaltimore


Katie Wall @NBCKatie · 5m 5 minutes ago
Just spotted: Martin O'Malley comforting church members at the burned down senior center in East Baltimore.



AP Photo/Matt Rourke



Chris Dickens reads Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland and the former mayor of Baltimore, the names of people Mr. Dickens said had been brutalized by the police. Credit Jason Horowitz

NYT:

...a couple yards closer to the intersection, a young man named Chris Dickens read to Mr. O’Malley a list of young black men who he said had been victims of police brutality. “I’ve heard of them all,” Mr. O’Malley said. “I think it’s tragic and I think we all need to search for a deeper and better understanding. ...I buried 10 police officers too, half of them were black and half of them were white.”

Next came Ernest Taylor, who thanked Mr. O’Malley for getting him off drugs through a government prison program. “Ah, good man,” Mr. O’Malley said. “Say that again. Give me a big hug.”

When a reporter asked about some of the criticism he had encountered on the street, the potential presidential candidate said: “Most of the people have been very nice to me. It’s actually — you’ve got to be present in the middle of the pain, man. Everyone’s needed right now in our city.”

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My respect for him is growing. Good move, Governor O'Malley. n/t

[NYC_SKP]

2. I like what I'm seeing, Peggy.

I'm going to keep my eyes on this one.

[roguevalley]

22. ditto. reminds me of old school.

[pnwmom]

30. Yeah, great P.R. move. From the "get tough" mayor who helped make the police dept. what it is.

To put this into perspective, this was written by an investigative reporter who says he would vote for O'Malley anyway. But because of his other progressive positions -- NOT what he did to the police department in Baltimore.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-simon-on-baltimore-s-anguish

But that wasn’t enough. O’Malley needed to show crime reduction stats that were not only improbable, but unsustainable without manipulation. And so there were people from City Hall who walked over Norris and made it clear to the district commanders that crime was going to fall by some astonishing rates. Eventually, Norris got fed up with the interference from City Hall and walked, and then more malleable police commissioners followed, until indeed, the crime rate fell dramatically. On paper.

How? There were two initiatives. First, the department began sweeping the streets of the inner city, taking bodies on ridiculous humbles, mass arrests, sending thousands of people to city jail, hundreds every night, thousands in a month. They actually had police supervisors stationed with printed forms at the city jail – forms that said, essentially, you can go home now if you sign away any liability the city has for false arrest, or you can not sign the form and spend the weekend in jail until you see a court commissioner. And tens of thousands of people signed that form.

My own crew members [on “The Wire”] used to get picked up trying to come from the set at night. We’d wrap at like one in the morning, and we’d be in the middle of East Baltimore and they’d start to drive home, they’d get pulled over. My first assistant director — Anthony Hemingway — ended up at city jail. No charge. Driving while black, and then trying to explain that he had every right to be where he was, and he ended up on Eager Street4. Charges were non-existent, or were dismissed en masse. Martin O’Malley’s logic was pretty basic: If we clear the streets, they’ll stop shooting at each other. We’ll lower the murder rate because there will be no one on the corners.

The city eventually got sued by the ACLU and had to settle, but O’Malley defends the wholesale denigration of black civil rights to this day. Never mind what it did to your jury pool: now every single person of color in Baltimore knows the police will lie — and that's your jury pool for when you really need them for when you have, say, a felony murder case. But what it taught the police department was that they could go a step beyond the manufactured probable cause, and the drug-free zones and the humbles – the targeting of suspects through less-than-constitutional procedure. Now, the mass arrests made clear, we can lock up anybody, we don't have to figure out who's committing crimes, we don't have to investigate anything, we just gather all the bodies — everybody goes to jail. And yet people were scared enough of crime in those years that O’Malley had his supporters for this policy, council members and community leaders who thought, They’re all just thugs.

[bigtree]

31. from the NAACP who brought the lawsuit over the arrests

The American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP sued the city in 2006 on behalf of 14 people who alleged their arrests indicated a broad pattern of abuse. O'Malley was running for his first term as governor at the time.

The city settled four years later, and agreed to retrain officers and allow an outside auditor to monitor "quality of life" arrests.

"There was, I think, a recognition within the Police Department and eventually at the political level that these strategies were counterproductive, which is what we had said from day one," said David Rocah, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland.

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."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-police-omalley-politics-20141007-story.html#page=1


“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.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/as-mayor-of-baltimore-omalleys-policing-strategy-sowed-mistrust/2015/04/25/af81178a-ea9d-11e4-9767-6276fc9b0ada_story.html

[Stellar]

34. O'Malley had better get those people out there on the stump to speak up for him

because he can't win without the black vote.

http://www.daggerpress.com/2015/03/25/maryland-watch-why-martin-omalley-cant-win-black-people-edition/

The Baltimore City Police force arrested over 100,000 per year, mainly black males, on “quality of life” crimes. 1 out of 6 citizens in Baltimore City were arrested, again, mainly African American men for such ridiculous charges as “sitting on a stoop and littering a candy wrapper.” Now this had another benefit for Mayor O’Malley.

[truebluegreen]

3. Evocative of what

Bobby Kennedy did when MLK Jr was assassinated.

Thank you, Gov O'Malley

[Koinos]

4. He's doing the right thing at a very difficult time.

Bernie is expected to run. I'm looking forward to Martin running as well: Two progressives to make our views heard.

[FSogol]

5. K&R. n/t

[seveneyes]

6. The one science where a prayer circle may show scientific results

Political Science.

[mopinko]

7. this is what i have been talking about w people on fb. we need a leader

who, instead of sending in the national guard, has the huevos to walk into the crowd and talk to people.
i honestly believe this is what it takes to defuse these tinder box situations. leadership. unflinching leadership.

[Koinos]

9. Well put!

[Koinos]

8. Walking with the people at Pennsylvania and North

Amazing picture of a man at home with the people of Baltimore.

[Cali_Democrat]

10. I really like what I see from him. nt

[dembotoz]

11. impressed

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

12. Well, he used to be the mayor! Good on him.

[ms liberty]

13. That's impressive. n/t

[mountain grammy]

14. Impressive.

[Cha]

15. I think his presence there is very supportive and calming. thanks bigtree

[Jackpine Radical]

16. This guy is kinda growing on me.

Might be a reasonable backup if by some weird mischance Bernie doesn't run away with the nomination.

[Iliyah]

17. I have always liked O'Malley.

How in the heck did a GOPer get elected after him?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

18. Compared to Hogan, who looked like he was in a complete daze all yesterday.

Right now, Maryland has to be missing that true leadership O'Malley brought.

[craigmatic]

19. Yeah no security but there's a cameraman.nt

[alcibiades_mystery]

20. ^^^^^^

What in the world?

[LiberalElite]

21. No, there's no "cameraman" -

these photos were taken by numerous individuals and a couple of media people who may have coincidentally been there because, you know, there's news going on in Baltimore.

[snooper2]

25. Martin is giving somebody a sad already ROFL

it's okay, he will win Iowa gently

[FSogol]

32. Maybe they'll get lucky and Michael Steele will have some more hit pieces on O'Malley

they can post here.

[bigtree]

23. » update: pics, NYT article in op

[bigtree]

24. »

[Prism]

26. Very admirable

I need to know a lot more about him, but his willingness to go into the community in person and talk to people who are living it is a refreshing change of pace.

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. I like this guy more every day. n/t

[Eleanors38]

28. He needs to "evolve" on the WOD.

[lumberjack_jeff]

29. I think some deeper analysis of why the drug trade thrives in communities like the avenue...

... is justified.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/15/a-dead-broke-notdeadbeatabaltimorerethinkswelfarepolicy.html

[Agschmid]

33. Kick.