LEADERSHIP THAT WORKS: Protecting Maryland's Families and Neighborhoods

Goals and Values for a Safer, More Secure Maryland

Martin O’Malley and Anthony Brown believe making our neighborhoods more secure is a goal that every Marylander shares. Improving public safety – everywhere in Maryland – is an absolute must if we are to realize the full potential of our state’s promise. O’Malley and Brown believe that we should bring police and neighbors together to fight crime. But, local police departments, churches, community groups and parents can only do so much against our common enemies of drug addiction and violent crime. The state government needs to take responsibility as a partner and get back into the fight against crime. Maryland needs leadership that works to protect Maryland families and neighborhoods.

Paths to Progress

As Maryland’s next Governor, Martin O’Malley will:

• Crack Down on Sexual Predators and Enhance The Amber Alert System. Martin O’Malley will crack down on sexual predators with tough, new penalties for offenders, increase tracking efforts of offenders including the use of GPS devices to monitor their whereabouts at all times, and better inform the public when offenders enter their neighborhood.
  
• Increase Supervision and Tracking of Violent Parolees. Martin O’Malley will strengthen Maryland’s weak Department of Parole and Probation. Repeat violent offenders will be strictly supervised, by well-trained officers with the most modern technical support and training who work in tandem on the streets with local police departments. O’Malley will also work to recruit new state correctional officers and ensure veteran officers receive the pay they deserve.
  
• Double Assistance to Counties for Violent Crime Prevention and Improved Performance of Law Enforcement. Martin O’Malley will double the violent crime grants and technical assistance to every county which chooses to enhance public safety through performance-measured policing and other proven technology enhancements.
  
• Reform Maryland’s Ineffective Juvenile Justice System. Martin O’Malley will significantly reform Maryland’s ineffective juvenile justice system with earlier intervention, a more streamlined system and better collaboration with local governments who have the best shot at providing the services needed to turn around young lives.
  
• Reduce Violent Crime By Expanding Drug Treatment Options. Martin O’Malley will expand drug treatment options across the continuum of care for those in the criminal justice system and for the uninsured. Study after study has proven that increased access to drug treatment can help eliminate many of the causes of violent crime.
  
• Reduce the Number of Repeat Offenders by Improving Maryland’s Workforce Re-entry Programs. Martin O’Malley will improve our workforce re-entry programs in order to better prepare the 8,000 people each year who leave prison with nothing but a bag of old clothes and hopelessness. In the long-run, we must focus more on pre-release efforts that line up housing and job interviews to reduce crime and costs to society while also ensuring that we better monitor and track parolees.
  
• Crack Down on Surges in Crystal Meth, Gang Violence, Vehicle Theft And Other Crimes. Martin O’Malley will act quickly – either through legislative or executive means – to help communities address new or evolving crime patterns. Many of Maryland’s neighborhoods have been touched by crime waves involving crystal methamphetamines, gang violence or vehicle theft. By quickly giving police and prosecutors the resources they need to tackle these problems before they become epidemics, O’Malley will improve public safety for everyone.
  
• Fight the Scourge of Gang Violence with a Comprehensive Anti-Gang Strategy. Martin O’Malley will develop and introduce legislation that puts in place a comprehensive anti-gang strategy for Maryland. This measure will give law enforcement the tools they need to fight the scourge of gang violence by defining criminal gang membership and prohibit it in the State of Maryland. The O’Malley strategy also would require the Maryland State Police to maintain a registry of convicted known gang members and make that registry accessible to local law enforcement, judges, prosecutors, court commissioners, and corrections officials. O’Malley will work with other states to develop interstate compacts to share this gang registry data to remove the gang members’ anonymity and give our region’s law enforcement professionals the information they need to protect us.

A Record of Progress

• Bringing police and neighbors together, Martin O’Malley and the hard-working people of Baltimore helped cut the city’s violent crime by nearly 40% since being elected in 1999. This is the steepest decline among all major U.S. cities since 1999, and violent crime is at the lowest levels since the 1960s.
  
• Martin O’Malley put more cops on the streets as part of a comprehensive plan to reduce crime. By increasing police officer salaries, O’Malley was able to recruit and retain more officers.
  
• Martin O’Malley tackled the scourge of drug-addiction and led the fight to double the funding available for drug treatment. These efforts have helped Baltimore reduce untreated addiction at a faster rate than almost any other American city and helped more citizens become productive neighbors.
  
• Martin O’Malley created a better, more effective police department in Baltimore. He implemented the ComStat initiative that allowed Baltimore to hold its police department accountable for performance and better determine if the programs it was using were effective. O’Malley also created a system of security cameras in Baltimore’s most troubled neighborhoods to give the police another tool to make the streets safer.
  
• Martin O’Malley’s Operation Safe Kids – a partnership to help at-risk youth led by Baltimore’s Health Department – has achieved a 43% reduction in arrests for young people in the program.
  
• Martin O’Malley ended a decade-long run of more than 300 annual homicides in Baltimore and reduced the average annual homicides by almost 18% when compared to the 1990s.
  
• Recognizing his innovative and bold leadership to address Baltimore’s toughest problem and the progress he has made to make Baltimore safer, Time Magazine named Martin O’Malley one of the top five big city mayors in America.
  
• Martin O’Malley is a former District Court prosecutor where he served as an Assistant State’s Attorney for Baltimore City.

Maryland Can Do Better

• Upon taking office, Bob Ehrlich set no tangible goals for reducing crime in the state. He has still failed to do so.
  
• Bob Ehrlich’s administration has failed to properly register violent repeat offenders in the state DNA database.
  
• Bob Ehrlich understaffed our correctional officers and parole and probation agents, allowing more convicted criminals to go without appropriate supervision.
  
• Under Bob Ehrlich, Maryland has cut violent crime grants, eliminated the hotspots programs and cut funding to drug treatment and workforce development.

Bob Ehrlich and Public Safety – No Goals. Failed Leadership.
A Stronger Maryland Can Do Better.

Martin O'Malley and Anthony Brown –
Leadership That Works