Get the Audit

For somebody who loves to talk about how crime is down in Baltimore City, Mayor Martin O'Malley sure is having to do a lot of defending of his record on violent crime. It does not help that WBAL-TV is reporting that Commissioner Hamm confirms that some crimes are not reported as crimes, and that the homicide rates reported by the Coroner's office and the police are out of sync.

The O'Malley administration, upon taking office in the City, did a complete review of crime statistics of the last year of the Schmoke administration, and found that the number of violent crimes were in fact higher than were originally reported. It is only natural that, upon the review, certain crimes that were not tabulated during the original data collection would in fact be included upon review. That happens, and if that does happen, but the people of Maryland need to know if the O'Malley administration intentionally cooked the books to protect the Mayor's political flank.

Councilman Ken Harris, though, is correct; an independent audit would tell once and for all if the Baltimore Police were accurately recording crime data. And it would settle, once and for all, the issue of whether or not Mayor O'Malley has seen a decline in violent crime under his administration. For the sake of the city, and for the sake of the people of the metropolitan area, let's please have an independent audit.