[HOTAIR] Last week, the city of Baltimore, Maryland once again passed the grim milestone of seeing more than 300 murders in 2021 and there’s still more than a month to go. This is the seventh straight year that Charm City has broken that barrier. Crime rates of most types are also up around other parts of the state. In response, Governor Larry Hogan once again proposed legislation to combat the ongoing problem. His "refund the police" initiative would invest $150 million into state and local police departments to hire more officers and upgrade equipment. In typical fashion, the state’s Democratic leadership panned the proposal, but a new internal poll indicates that the public in Maryland is on Hogan’s side by a wide margin. And that included both the Black and Hispanic communities in Baltimore. (Free Beacon)The poll, which was provided by an outside group aligned with Hogan, shows that 64 percent of likely black voters in the state "strongly support" the governor’s proposal to "provide greatly increased funding to state and local police agencies," while 24 percent "somewhat support" the policy. Hogan’s initiative enjoys similar support across racial lines—89 and 74 percent of white and Hispanic voters support it, respectively.
Those numbers contradict state Democrats’ criticism of the plan.
In addition to the proposed funding increase, Hogan introduced two other bills. One would significantly increase penalties for those who use or possess illegal firearms. The other would compel the state’s criminal sentencing commission to "track and publish detailed information on the sentences that are handed down by judges for
Democratic state house speaker Adrienne Jones immediately accused the Governor of trying to "politicize public safety." The Democratic state senate president called the refund the police program "divisive
...politicians call things
divisivewhen when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never
divisive,they're
principled...
rhetoric that would not make communities safer."
Looking at these most recent poll results, however, it appears that the Democrats in Maryland are yet again severely misreading the room. The margins on this aren’t even close. Support for the plan crosses all racial lines and those who "strongly support" vastly outnumber those who "somewhat support."
And why wouldn’t people be willing to give this a try? The victims of the latest spate of murders included two maiden of tender yearss aged five and thirteen, as well as a 69-year-old woman who was stabbed to death inside of a church. The gangs of Baltimore are so far out of control that it’s difficult to describe.
The Wire was a documentary