By Dayvon Love
Ivan Bates’ criticism of MONSE (Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement) and community-based violence prevention more broadly is consistent with a political agenda that views law enforcement as the central force for keeping the community safe. This view is buttressed and propagated by his allies at Sinclair Broadcasting via Fox 45 and the executive chairman of the company, David Smith, who also owns the Baltimore Sun.
This view is based on the idea that law enforcement and safety are the same thing. Law enforcement is about the instruments that the state uses to enforce its laws. Safety is about people being able to move around with an expectation of security and to do so without being harmed. Why is it important to make this distinction?
Law enforcement is an instrument of the state that is deployed based on the interests and worldview of those who have power over the state. It is not an objective force that dispenses justice impartially but a political weapon that is used to enforce the vision of the world that the policymakers that oversee it mandate. Black youth are 2.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than their White counterparts in Maryland and 80 percent of the youth charged as adults are Black. In 2018, about 96 percent of the people arrested in Baltimore for cannabis-related charges were Black, even though White people use it at the same rate. This is an example of the ways that law enforcement implements the law in a fashion that supports the existing White supremacist social order. Not only does this not keep people safe, but this criminal justice system has produced staggering amounts of devastation to a community that already has an array of societal forces against us.
State’s Attorney Bates consistently talks about representing the concerns of victims while implying that the mayor and advocates seem to care more about the perpetrators. This is a refrain that I hear, not just from Mr. Bates, but from Bryan Nehman and C4, and TJ Smith on WBAL Radio. There are two major flaws with this perspective. The first is that none of the policy positions articulated by criminal justice reform advocates, MONSE or the mayor eliminate the ability to charge and prosecute folks who have committed harm to community members. What Bates wants is additional mechanisms for prosecution, which historically has pulled people into prison that would be better served by alternatives to incarceration.
The second flaw in Bates’ analysis is the way that he and others frame victims. The majority of people who are victims and perpetrators of homicides are Black men. Many of the perpetrators are victims and vice versa. That means that a simplistic, Hollywood-inspired frame of “good guys and bad guys” is an insufficient lens to look at addressing violent crime. If we actually care about victims, then the work is to provide meaningful and sustainable interventions into the forces that result in the denigration of the humanity of those most impacted by this White supremacist society. In other words, we should be dealing directly with the challenges that face Black men if we are serious about addressing violence in Baltimore.
Credit: X / Baltimore Police Department
Na’im Akbar in his book “Papers on African Psychology” explains perfectly the nature of the challenges that face Black men in places like Baltimore. He says: “Victims of the self destructive disorders are the most direct victims of oppression. These disorders represent the self-defeating attempts to survive in a society that systematically frustrates normal efforts for human growth. The pimps, pushers, prostitutes, addicts, alcoholics and psychotics and an entire array of conditions that are personally destructive to the individual and equally detrimental to the African American community, typify this group.”
He continued, “These are individuals who have usually found the doors to legitimate self-determination blocked and out of urgency for survival have chosen personally and socially destructive means to alleviate immediate wants such as pimping, pushing drugs or prostitution. Black-on-Black homicide and crime is an acting-out of the self destructive disorder…. The deadliness of human degradation in the American system of human oppression is reflected in the kind of self destructive minds that are produced.”
Addressing the dynamics raised by Akbar is exactly what community based violence prevention organizations like Safe Streets, and We Our Us are doing on a daily basis, a job that police officers are not necessarily qualified to do. Mediating conflicts, preventing retaliation, relocating people, providing employment opportunities, providing services are the range of things that are actually addressing the root causes of violence.
The politics of this is rather simple. The industry of law enforcement is in jeopardy. If law enforcement is no longer central to what makes people (think they are) safe, then that means less jobs for a largely White workforce that has existed for generations. That’s less money from dues that police officers pay to the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). That’s less money for the FOP to advance its right-wing agenda. That’s less comfort for White corporate business owners that only feel safe when there is over policing. That impacts David Smith’s bottom line with his business interests in Harbor East. The success of community based violence prevention organizations would put more resources into the hands of Black led grassroots organizations, and would reduce the role of police in this city as a force to be called as an absolute last resort.
David Smith and the institutions that he controls are committed to stopping this from happening, and Ivan Bates’ latest correspondence with the mayor about MONSE is just another move in the direction of supporting his agenda.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.