Police admit drug war increases violence
Associated Press:
Six people were shot to death on Baltimore streets in a two-day period that began Friday morning, bringing the number of homicides in the first two weeks of 2005 to 19, police said.
The last killing occurred shortly after police called a news conference to discuss the wave of slayings that is close to matching the 23 deaths recorded in all of January 2003.
In 2000, police recorded 14 homicides in the first 17 days of the new year.
Acting Police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm said pressure from police to cut down on drug trafficking has dealers trying to collect debts and resorting to violence in the process.
"We are keeping with the same game plan [of] . . . putting pressure on drug dealers," Hamm said Saturday at a news conference.
As Dave Borden notes:
Isn't violence the foremost reason above all for pressure to act against drug dealing? Baltimore's police are responding to the woes associated with inner-city drug dealing with a plan that increases those woes, and instead of rethinking what they are doing are instead promising more of the same.
Yes, but that's the drug war: repeating the same behavior again and again, getting the same results but expecting something new.