July 2004

Concentrating on neighborhoods where violence is the highest and focusing on specific individuals most likely to become a crime statistic are hallmarks of Baltimore’s Safe and Sound Campaign’s two-pronged strategy to ensure young people live in safe neighborhoods.

Safe and Sound helped foster two strategies, Operation Safe Neighborhoods (OSN) and Operation Safe Kids (OSK).  The similarities between the strategies go beyond the names.  Both strategies:

• Are reducing violence within their targeted areas;
• Borrow ideas from an effective crime-fighting strategy pioneered in Boston;
• Involve extraordinary collaboration among many agencies;
• Are data-driven and hone in on specific individuals who have run afoul of the law – the relatively few who are responsible for the preponderance of crime in an area;
• Provide opportunities to those individuals to turn their lives around.

There are important differences, though.  OSK serves kids ages 13-17 who have multiple arrests for crimes of violence and/or have a demonstrated history of involvement in the drug trade.  OSN is aimed at the most violent offenders, mostly adults, who are known to be the most likely to be perpetrators or victims of violence.  While both strategies embrace a customized version of “compassionate intolerance,” OSK is geared primarily toward turning kids’ lives around.  OSN provides a similar opportunity but will not hesitate to get the most violent offenders off the street via incarceration.  Perhaps the most illustrative difference between the two is the home agencies:  OSK is housed in the City’s Health Department; OSN is sponsored by the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s office.

Operation Safe Neighborhoods began in 1999.  It includes partnerships among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as community and faith-based organizations.  The premise of OSN, simply put, is to identify the small group of repeat offenders responsible for the majority of violent crimes and shut them down.  Through “sit-downs,” chronic offenders either on parole or probation are threatened in person with the stiffest sentences under the law for any law breaking.  But they are also given access to services such as substance abuse treatment, mental health counseling, faith-based counseling and job placement and more.

OSN focuses on the high-crime neighborhoods of Park Heights, Oliver and Cherry Hill, and it’s having positive results.  For the most part, each sit-down has been followed by a year of significantly reduced violence.  For example, in the year following a 2001 sit-down in Cherry Hill, homicides were down 40 percent and shootings were down 20 percent.  During a March 2004 sit-down in the Oliver community in the Eastern District, 40 of 71 attendees signed up for services, including employment and mental health services.                                

“The community support has been tremendous, particularly in Oliver which had long been plagued by drug gangs on Hope Street,” says Sheryl Atkins, Special Operations Division Chief who manages OSN.  “OSN was honored along with the Baltimore Police Department for the work that has been done within the Oliver neighborhood.  Citizens report how they now only have to worry about their kid's basketball hitting their cars, and they are so grateful that the kids can now play in the streets, which were once plagued by drug dealers.  The elderly can also sit out on their porches.”

After high profile successes in its early years, OSN ran into a bit of a lull, but it is now rejuvenated, with two sit-downs held so far in 2004.

According to Vickie Wash, Director of Special Operations in the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, the upsurge in activity can be attributed to federal and state funding focused on combating gun violence. In addition, Baltimore’s police department is now more philosophically aligned with the strategy under the direction of Chief Kevin Clark.

Funding from Project Safe Neighborhood at the federal level and Cease Fire at the state provides for dedicated prosecutors.  Three U.S. attorneys are now also on board.

With the funding OSN was also able to hire a community liaison staff member who identifies community service providers that operate within neighborhoods and calls on them to serve the offenders participating in the call-ins.  This largely institutionalizes within State’s Attorney’s Office a role initiated by Safe and Sound.

Safe and Sound was vital to the start up and growth of OSN.  In addition to originally organizing the OSN’s social service component, Safe and Sound has helped secure funding.  Safe and Sound will continue to assist with funding and to advise on community organizing.

After a spike in youth homicides and youth involved shootings, Operation Safe Kids was established in 2002 as an effort geared more specifically to youth.  OSK provides community-based case management and increased monitoring to juvenile offenders who are at high risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of violence.  Its primary goal is to reduce youth violence by ensuring these young people have the tools they need to become productive adults. 

Baltimore City Health Department staff work closely with Department of Juvenile Services case managers to ensure that youth offenders admitted to the program receive needed services such as drug treatment and job preparation.  One of the more novel opportunities provided via OSK is OSK@BCCC, a school at Baltimore City Community College where youth can receive remedial assistance, take courses to make up missing credits or prepare to receive their high school diploma or GED. 

At the same time that opportunities are provided, accountability is also promoted as city police and state probation agents form joint patrols to make sure the youth are obeying court-ordered curfews and other conditions of their release. 

According to Catherine Fine, director of youth violence prevention for the Baltimore City Health Department, “intense cooperation” is assured through weekly “KidStat” meetings.  Representatives from the health department, juvenile services, State’s Attorney, Public Defender, police, schools and others meet regularly to review overall program progress and to commit their resources to assisting youth with acute needs.  The meetings “promote program-wide accountability, eliminate bureaucracy and solve problems before they become barriers,” says Fine.

Operation Safe Kids is funded primarily through a federal Department of Labor grant that usually goes through employment/workforce development agencies.  Baltimore’s method – funding a Department of Health program – is novel and reflects Mayor Martin O’Malley’s view that juvenile homicide, the leading cause of death among African American males aged 16-24, should be approached with a public health model, according to Fine.

The grant will conclude at the end of 2004, and Safe and Sound has brokered additional funding through the Reason to Believe Enterprise, which it cosponsors.  The Crane and France Merrick foundations have each pledged $1.6 million toward Reason to Believe’s contribution.  Safe and Sound will continue to seek funding for OSK.

Like Operation Safe Neighborhoods, Operation Safe Kids is showing promising results.  There has been a 39 percent decrease in the rate of new arrests for youth in the program longer than six months, and an increase in curfew compliance among participating youth from 38 to 65 percent.

Overall, between 1997 and 2003, homicides decreased 13 percent in Baltimore, and juvenile arrests decreased 11 percent.  It’s too soon to definitively credit OSK and OSN with contributing to these declines.  Nevertheless, the new and positive working relationships that OSK and OSN have created among agencies – public and private; federal, state and local – and the promising results that the two efforts engender are giving hope on Hope Street and beyond.

For more information on this website about Baltimore’s Safe and Sound Campaign, click here.  For more articles on this website about youth violence prevention, click here.