115,000 Arrests but Martin O’Malley Won 88% of the Vote! --What the...?

'If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard criticism of Martin O’Malley’s use of zero-tolerance policing and it’s alleged impact on crime and unrest in Baltimore. I’ll get right to the point. Don’t believe the criticism. Why do I say this? That’s kind of a long story. But basically, for three reasons.
First, because all the criticism I’ve seen (and believe me, I’ve seen a lot) is based upon serious factual distortions and/or unproven theories. Critics contend that mass arrests during his term as Mayor were prime movers of tense and sometimes violent nights more than twelve years after they peaked. That may sound theoretically plausible if you imagine that he ordered mass incarcerations and/or had unusually large numbers of Baltimore citizens arrested. That’s why you are so disturbed when his critics tell you (falsely) that Martin O’Malley had over 100,000 people arrested out of a total 600,000 population! They sometimes further say he put 1 in 6 citizens in jail! But neither of these claims is true. I will explain why shortly.

But before I take you into why those harmful claims disintegrate under close inspection, here’s the second reason I’m advising you to doubt Martin’s critics. Quite simply, it’s because they so often point to a darkly pessimistic work of fiction. While it’s obviously true that Baltimore still has it’s share of serious problems, it’s not the bleak and ruined city portrayed in “The Wire”. In that grim drama every person is ultimately compromised or corrupt. The people of Baltimore are not just like the characters in “The Wire” or the villains in “Gotham”. Nor is the fictional “Tommy Carcetti” just like the real Martin O’Malley.

Third, and most significantly, I’m advising you to disbelieve those critics because the people of Baltimore re-elected Martin O’Malley by a landslide in 2003. They not only re-elected him, they did so with what has to be a record 173,030 votes. He won 88% of the vote and every district in the city. Why is that vote total a big deal? Because it was an enormous vote of approval of his policies after he had increased the arrest rate to its peak. By comparison, once Martin O’Malley was elected Governor of Maryland, his successor as Mayor, Sheila Dixon, won the race for Mayor of Baltimore with only 36,726 votes. Then, in 2011, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake won with only 40,125 votes (see pg. 12). The differences between the number of votes he received and the numbers of votes they received is truly stunning, especially when you consider that none of those elections happened in Presidential election years. The point is that the overwhelming majority of the people of Baltimore apparently loved what Martin O’Malley did with policing in his first term as Mayor!' >>>

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