Putting Baltimore City Back Together Again

The Challenge to Lead – Part I

Matthews W. Wright, M.Ed.

By all accounts, it should now be crystal clear to most businesses, politicians, clergy, citizens and most importantly the media that the causal foundation of the issues facing Baltimore are not the conditions of addiction, teen pregnancy, youth arrests and homicides, a weak and under funded educational system or a dysfunctional family structure.  No, these are merely the simple yet seemingly evasive symptoms of the core concerns facing this and other urban cities.  The real culprits supporting these conditions that use to lie below the surface and remained behind closed doors are the blind-eye turning away when it should observe, note and report. When professionals lack fortitude to stand up for what is right and not making public pronouncements to stakeholders with indignation rather than agreeing with the status quo. Yes, and those parents who are so interested in their material obsession and addictions that they chose and learned not to listen, lead, direct or execute.  Many of their elders are housed in senior settings and no longer part of the household to teach and admonish.  Finally public servants that make split decisions and too often, at times, choose wrong.  Yes, they are the true issues causing the deadly conditions we experience today!  The former matriarchs and patriarchs of families in neighborhoods, teachers in the classroom and principal at school, the policeman on the beat or the neighbor that watched your business as well as everyone else’s masterfully handled these conditions.  A neighbor could merely bring the nature of the activity to the attention of a family member and within some designated time, the matter would be resolved and the lesson was learned. These are some of the conditions that are essential to the city’s restoration!

Another important aspect that has added to current conditions is the ever-apparent onslaught of improper individual promotion in crucial areas.  Too many people who have reached their limited ability levels as described in the “Peter Principle” are promoted due to  “coat tail riding” and are basically useless in the positions they occupy.  The magnitude of past conditions is minor in comparison to the explosive nature we see and consider as today’s norm.  What we use to watch on TV like “The Wire” and “The Corner” are today’s reality! As citizens, we must step up, face up and accept what are our responsibilities!

I remember times when the integrity within communities and neighborhoods was in tact and abundant.   People sat outside their homes during the summer and men tipped their hats when they passed by women.  Community alcoholics would not drink or urinate in public. Then, they had the decency to go deep into the alleyway.  Those times are long gone and will not return. 

We have forced upon ourselves an indifferent and different time where fear, alienation and materialism have gripped us to the point that institutions, formal groups and individuals are experiencing high levels of discomfort and an uneasy – yet eerie sense that neither space nor people are as revered today as in the past.  The lessons of family rootedness or simply love for one another, experienced in former years has not been fully learned during the last forty years.  Former values have not been carried forward completely to assist today’s family structures.

Today’s conditions represent a developing “Perfect Storm”.  It could be pandemic!  We are at a place in time where structure and base-line controls in corporate management, media, government, institutions, communities, families and individuals are skewed, abandoned, lost and in some instances just misplaced.  Quality leadership, at all levels, is required to right conditions that have festered for too long. From the home and communities to heads of government and its agencies, each must take a stand to protect and secure this “watch”.  Leaders no longer communicate an intolerant temperament with legislative/administrative actions to change long over-due conditions impacting constituents.  In many instances, they too have abandoned the areas to only come in as required.  No longer do I see a display of passion or expressed indignation energizing, prodding or coercing people and institutions to modify, relent and create opportunities that are beyond the reach of the common person. That was the manner of past upright leadership.

“Band-Aid” approaches will no longer work or be accepted!   Governing leaders, agency administrators, media, clergy and citizens must greatly reduce biases and assumptions to better assess themselves, their missions and the required vision for future work.  Agencies need to determine how their current activities correlate with the over-all broad goals of growth and sustainability in the city.  Quantifiable and measurable outcomes need to be established, developed and executed from documented baseline assessments to match or surpass set goals and to determine acceptable levels of achievement.  Such baselines along with the construction of quality core indicators will determine appropriate transitions and evaluation points.  Doing thusly, agencies will be assured that proper actions were taken to achieve the stated goals, meet budget objectives and complimented the broader vision.  Then, and only then, are we assured that actions taken, with appropriate and measured steps, will measurably reduce the serious conditions we face today.  Many other areas like Atlanta, GA, Charlotte & Ayrsley, NC, and Washington, DC have accepted the challenges they faced and are working to bring vision and change to urban settings.

True collaborations must be sought and accomplished to properly serve all citizens, communities and expand the vital and needed infrastructure that makes the community whole and vibrant.  A different approach and mind-set must monitor all agency efforts and validate the data used to accurately serve all of the citizens of Baltimore.  A former Mayor adopted a campaign asking the community to Believe.  To put Baltimore back together again as ONEBALTIMORE, we must all BELIEVE!  Does media Believe?  What about government, agency heads and civic leadership?  Do we?  Time and actions will determine the verdict because with Determination and Will, it has been done!!!

Never Warm! Never Fuzzy! Never Trusted!!!

Never Warm! Never Fuzzy!

Never Trusted!!!

By Matthews W. Wright, M. ED. - Precisely Wright & Associates

At a recent news conference the Mayor stated that she wanted to restore the trust of the police department.  By all accounts of news reporting, historical facts, police records or personal observations has the Baltimore City Police Department ever been noted for being warm, fuzzy or trusted by minority citizens of Baltimore City!  Since the 19^th century, Baltimore has been known as the “Wickedest City in the Nation” and as late as 1857 Baltimore was recognized as “Mob Town” when 9,000 citizens were arrested in one year!

Personal early accounts of my elders informed me of the manner in which people of color had to move about the city. As a Grand Lodge Historian and Prince Hall Mason, my great uncle chronicled the fact that when Masons attended their lodge meetings during the middle 1840’s after dusk they would have to remain housed in the lodge room until the next morning because if you had no permission slip one could not travel safely or freely after dark without the permission of a white person!

As a 13-year-old 8^th grader, I was confronted by police officers while putting the night’s trash out in my Sandtown neighborhood. I was approached, apprehended and placed in a police wagon for suspicion of robbing a company on Fulton Avenue. Ordered by the officers, I was told to place my hands out with palms upward. They placed discarded peanut shells in them and commanded me not to drop them! At the same time dirt was scrapped from my pants (I played football for the Police Boy’s Club on Gold Street) to supposedly be matched with the break-in site. Never was I informed of my Miranda Rights, at no point were my parents informed of my being held by police. They simply held me, went into my parent’s home through the back door left open by me and began searching our home for supposed objects related to the robbery.  My mother came downstairs from her bedroom, put an end to their illegal search, removed them from our home and fetched me from the police wagon!

That was a simple accounting of my first experience with the Baltimore City Police Department.  Since then several hundreds of thousands of youth, if not more have experienced that and the majority have been much worse!  Know that during the 1970’s tens of thousands juveniles were being adjudicated as adults and were housed in Baltimore City Jail to await trial. Police history reflects a department that was (is) among the nations vilest.

If we were only to look in the recent past we would come upon a department that was stated as being “antiquated and corrupt".  It was found to be a department that practiced excessive force and operated with a non-existing relationship to engage the “large Negro community of the City of Baltimore”.  Whoa!! Hold your wheedling batons! Those are not my quotes!  In 1965 a consultant was brought in to assess the department and they were his words. Who was this consultant you ask? His name was Donald Pomerleau. Does that sound familiar? Of course it does, he became the long standing Police Commissioner of Baltimore City from approximately 1965 to 1980.  As a citizen observer I saw several aspects of his command. During his tenure minority recruits still remained limited. Prior to his tenure, there were job descriptions limiting appointed minority officers. They were not allowed to patrol white neighborhoods nor ride in vehicles. As officers, those who were minority were quarantined from other officers and promotions remained low and did not dramatically rise until late in the 80’s.

Under Pomerleau’s command the Baltimore City Police Department declared war on African American citizens.  With unimpeded power and an ego lacking restraint, Commissioner Pomerleau lashed out against them after the Veney Brothers robbed a liquor store killing one officer and wounding another.  Without warrant or pretext police officers illegally broke into hundreds of homes. Yes, actions of the Veney brothers placed on display the police department and its manner of brutal and racist treatment of African American citizens.  And let us not speak of the illegal spying methods (i.e. wire taps surveillance and illicit acquisition of credit reports) according the Maryland State Legislative Senate report. When a white newspaper reporter questioning his tactics of gathering illegal documentation the Police Commissioner leaned towards the reporter to say “Just the Blacks, Just the Blacks, Just the Blacks”!

Yet, even still today, we are faced with another unnecessary death of a 24-year old man in Baltimore City.  What will the autopsy reveal? Will the police report align with it? How will the City’s States Attorney find the officers? Will they be charged? What results will the inquiry of the Department of Justice reflect?  Will any of this bring about positive changes in just not the actions of a police department but reflect on an unrelenting change in attitude and actions of a city that insists on in living in the past!