BALTIMORE (WBFF) – Baltimore City’s top prosecutor announced her pandemic-era pause on prosecuting low-level crimes would become permanent, citing declining crime numbers, but the data doesn’t paint such a positive picture, according to some experts.
 

Marilyn Mosby, City State’s Attorney, announced that drug possession, some sex workers and other misdemeanor offenses would no longer be prosecuted. In the announcement, she said data indicated violent crime dropped during the period when the same policy was in place during the pandemic and 911 calls for similar offenses dropped as well.
 

“Clearly the data suggests here is no public safety value in prosecuting these low-level offenses,” Mosby said.
 

Mosby said drug arrests declined 80% in the last year, but the Baltimore Police Department was already instructed by Mosby not to make such arrests during the pandemic.
 

Violent crime, defined by the Baltimore Police Department, includes robberies, shootings, murders, rapes and aggravated assaults. Incidents in that violent crime category declined nearly 18% in 2020 compared to 2019.
 

Mosby took office in January 2015 after winning her first election; from 2014 to 2019, violent crimes surged 35%. Sean Kennedy, with the Maryland Public Policy Institute, said only street robberies are significantly down, citing the pandemic as the likely culprit since robberies are often crimes of opportunities and with more people at home, the opportunity isn’t as prevalent.
 

“To see any decrease is a relative decrease over her time,” Kennedy said. “Homicide is still at elevated levels since she came into office.”
 

Baltimore City has had a murder rate that surpassed 300 for six years in a row. As of March 29, there have been 69 homicides in 2021, two more than the same time in 2020. Non-fatal shootings are also higher than 2020, with 139 people having been shot in Baltimore City.
 

“Baltimore is not a safe place in the rest of the world so to suggest that you reduced crime marginally is not to say that Baltimore is safe,” Kennedy said.
 

As for the minor crimes now not being prosecuted, Kennedy said it could make it more difficult for police to continue their work on other crimes, equating her decision as “decriminalizing crime” and “taking another tool out of the toolbox” for BPD.
 

“Marilyn Mosby is not doing her job when it comes to the most important task of her office which is to keep the people of Baltimore safe so when she’s not doing that,” Kennedy said. “How do we trust her to redouble her office and focus on crime when she hasn’t been focused on crime in the last five years.”
 

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