On July 25 the Baltimore City Council’s Judiciary and Legislative Investigations Committee voted 5-2 to amend the council’s ill-fated attempt to impose a mandatory minimum one-year sentence on anyone “illegally” carrying a gun within 100 yards of a school, public park, church or any other public facility in the city.
The revised bill would impose the one-year sentence only on those committing a second gun possession offense or carrying a gun in commission of a crime against a person or property. Ultimately, the amended measure would be neutralized by existing Maryland law.
The response to the original proposed legislation was fast, furious and decidedly negative in many of the city’s mostly Black, mostly poor communities. However, the council’s actions to gut the bill may have avoided a catastrophe similar to what we witnessed in April 2015 following the death (some say murder) of Freddie Gray.
Sean Yoes (Courtesy Photo)
This wasn’t just a knee jerk response to the very real crisis of violence and murder this city has endured over the last three years (although many would argue the epidemic of violence has been at a crisis level for decades). There is a tone deaf quality to the argument that implementing a mandatory minimum gun law in Baltimore City would somehow assuage our fears and deter violence.
In fact, several people who work at City Hall have asked privately, ”Who advised the mayor on this legislation?“ “Mandatory minimums don’t work,” said Councilman Brandon Scott (D-2nd) during last week’s tumultuous hearing prior to the council committee stripping down the hapless gun law.
However, the result of implementing the bill as it was originally crafted would have almost assuredly resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, more arrests by the end of 2017.
How many of those arrests would have fallen into the category of “illegal arrests” a term made popular during the days of the nefarious zero tolerance policing implemented by then Mayor Martin O’Malley? There are thousands of Black men, their families and communities that still have not recovered from the zero tolerance policy, which at its zenith, was responsible for the arrest of more than 100,000 people per year for several years, in a city of just over 600,000 people.
Many argue, with our city being ravaged by violence and 206 homicides (as of August 2), we are at a very tenuous tipping point in Baltimore. The implementation of a mandatory minimum gun law and its aftermath could have had a similar effect as the bad days of zero tolerance policing, possibly recreating circumstances that sparked the uprising of 2015. We underestimate that potential at our own peril.
I guess the original bill could technically be resurrected, but it seems highly unlikely because of the vigilance of several of the council’s youngest and newest members.
The “renegade eight,” the eight newest members of the council voted in during last year’s general election, entered the chamber with the hopes of many of the city’s most disenfranchised citizens riding on their shoulders. In these cynical political times punctuated over the last six months by the unprecedented and potentially apocalyptic antics of the 45th president, hope in our political leaders has been hard to come by.
Yet, the newest members of the council began their tenures by spearheading the unanimous condemnation of statements made by President Donald Trump, just days prior to his visit to Baltimore in December 2016. The first official action of the council denounced Trump’s “divisive and scapegoating rhetoric, rooted in hate and prejudice.” And the rebuke of Trump came as Mayor Catherine Pugh was preparing to ask the 45th president for much needed federal resources for the city. It was a symbolic gesture of course, but perhaps one that set a critical tone going forward.
However, the council’s actions in snuffing out the mandatory minimum gun law was real action taken against what many argue was a really bad bill. And in the process they may have diffused a very volatile situation in our city festering beneath the summer sun.
Sean Yoes is the AFRO’s Baltimore editor and host and executive producer of First Edition, which airs Monday through Friday, 5p.m.-7 p.m. on WEAA, 88.9.
