This thread contains a link to an article from FOX 45 Baltimore (WBFF), a station owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group.

At times, that which has been produced and broadcast by FOX Baltimore has ranged from misleading at best to disinformation at worst - including it (and all other Sinclair-owned stations) being required to run scripted packages by their owners while masquerading said packages as journalism or as station PSAs.

Posters and readers are encouraged to utilize alternative sources from reputable media outlets, or to be cautious when reading or viewing that which has been published from FOX Baltimore and other Sinclair-owned outlets.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Shit. Jack that shit up to 10 or 15. Make examples.

Possession isn't a violent crime.

I'm all for 10, 15, 20 years mandatory minimums (I know this article is only talking about maximums) for anyone who uses a gun in the act of committing another crime, but sending someone away for a decade because they live in one of the most violent neighborhoods in the developed world while simultaneously having an awful police/community relationship, a 16 minute average response time, a cash based economy, and a huge financial barrier to entry for a legal handgun permit... It just doesn't make sense.

We're letting trigger pullers off with a slap on the wrist, let's fix that before lumping every person with a gun into the groups that are tearing the city apart.

Incarceration destroys families and communities and increases violence. We will never incarcerate our way out of this problem

Violent criminals with guns destroy communities and increase violence.

Sure let’s keep trying what we’ve been doing for the last 50 years that hasn’t worked

FYI - Average response time is a bad metric. 911 calls are triaged. A call for someone reporting that their neighbor is being annoying is going to sit in the dispatchers box for a while until all higher priority calls are dealt with. If a shooting comes out it'll sit for hours, which is going to significantly reduce an average call time.

Baltimore has not been giving significant jail time to gun offenders at any point in recent history, so they can't really "keep" doing it. One of the city's last homicide victims had 4 gun arrests by the ripe old age of 25. If he had actually been held for one of the more recent ones he'd still be alive.

So you're saying that the 16 minute response time isn't valid in the more violent neighborhoods because cops will put their calls on hold for more violent crime?

> that hasn’t worked

Until the last few years crime rates in the United States had been dropping at a remarkable rate for decades, decades that just happened to coincide with the rise of so-called mass incarceration.

It's not really valid anywhere in the city when it comes to violent crimes or some crimes in progress. Violent crimes are dispatched typically immediately. An officer is usually already in route even while the 911 call taker is still on the phone with the caller. Its why the 911 call takers always ask for location and reason for calling first, and then ask a bunch of questions afterwards. As soon as they find out what the crime is and the location that info is pushed to the dispatcher, who alerts officers and sends them to the location. Additional info is pushed through as the 911 call taker obtains it. Property crimes and other quality of life type crimes are pushed to the back of the line.

Most of the extreme incarcerations that ruined neighborhoods were drug related in the last 40 years, not violent crime related.

We can be hard on violence and decriminalize drugs and stop the racist drug war.

Drugs right now only overlap so hugely with violent crime because both are heavily criminalized. And while hard drugs like heroin will never be good, we can approach them as a health problem rather than a crime problem and reduce violence along the way.

Decriminalization solves very little. It still leaves manufacture and distribution in the hands of violent criminals who are cool with murder for profit and will cut everything with fentanyl. Legalization and regulation are the only way.

Possession is violent against whom?

[removed]

Of the 3 times I've called 911:

• A guy ripped a mailbox off of the house, smashed the front window and was actively entering while the homeowner hit him with a golf club. 911 was called, it took 3 hours to get a response. Some neighbors heard and had gotten the guy out of the house hours ago and he ran away.

• A guy drove up on the sidewalk and tried to run my SO and I down (after I flipped him off because he almost hit us when he blew threw a stop sign), when a tree stopped him he got out and tried to fight us, then followed us home and was beating on our door for 30 minutes. The cop took 2 hours to get there after the initial call, I gave him the tag number and the cop gave me his name and address and told me to "I'm giving this to you so you can file a restraining order, or go handle it yourself".

• My neighbor, a felon, was buying a handgun on his stoop (from a guy who broke into my shed and stole some bikes/tools a few weeks prior, also never caught). Outside in plain daylight, handing cash, working the slide, loading magazines, etc. Cops never showed.

All but the first one was were between ~9-10am.

I would imagine triaging 911 calls is standard across the nation, why do you think the highest funded department per capita is so much worse than other cities?

It's mind-blowing how few elected officials will even attempt to address violent crime. They are perfectly fine to watch hundreds of people violently die in the streets as long as it doesn't impact their political futures. Honestly, when 5 CHILDREN were shot, their councilperson immediately sprung into action to...fine Popeyes. It's inhumane and unfathomable how little political will there is to fix this.

The Right is against minimum sentences for illegal gun possession because they think rednecks who "make an honest mistake" will go to jail or they're just 2A absolutists. The Left is against such laws because they think they're inherently "racist" or will not by "equitably applied".

Round and round we go...

I'd be fine if we'd just increase sentences for people with previous felony convictions who are caught with illegal guns.

Anyone with a prior violent felony who's busted with a gun should get 10+ years since they're clearly still a huge danger to society.

Yup, sounds good to me.

Sorry you've had a bad experience, but it's not the usual. Without a date, time, and location I can't tell you what was going on. Maybe there were other pressing issues. Or it may have something to do with us being the 2nd highest per capita in murders and having a massive staffing shortage while patrol gets raided for consent decree units and politician's pet projects.