Carcetti & O'Malley - The Stats Game

In the final blog post, I have decided to draw comparisons between fictional Mayor/Governor Tommy Carcetti with real-life Mayor/Governor Martin O’Malley. While David Simon argues O’Malley was only 'one of several inspirations' for Carcetti’s character, O’Malley rejects entirely the idea of links between himself and Carcetti, arguing 'I'm the antidote to The Wire.' Such cockiness, bordering on arrogance, is a line befitting of the fictional character Carcetti – perhaps this underlines the very link between the two hinted at by Peter Beilenson.

As real-life Mayor, O’Malley was responsible for the introduction of ‘stats culture’ to Baltimore Police Department. He was, in fact, widely praised for the ‘Compstat’ model he introduced, and for the accompanying statistical decreases in crime invoked (a 3,000 decrease in violent crimes in O'Malley's first year in office, for example). However, this is precisely the sort of policy David Simon seeks to criticize through The Wire. The culture of statistics is ultimately self-reinforcing, and sees Carcetti move from Mayor to Governor, with the same trajectory for O’Malley. Ultimately, O’Malley and his statistics can be seen as the embodiment of all that is wrong with society, in David Simon’s view.

Budgetary constraints in Baltimore: Real and fictional police cuts

Mayor Tommy Carcetti came into office with a genuine commitment to reform the police and change the culture of targets and statistics that had poisoned the BPD under Clarence Royce. Yet, an enormous deficit carried by the Baltimore city schools meant that his hands were tied, and was forced to make swinging cuts to the BPD budget. Season Five essentially revolves around this theme, with Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freeman’s attempts to secure extra funding for investigative work in a drawing-blood-from-the-stone scenario, through their fictional serial killer of homeless men.

Baltimore Police Union protest against pay cuts in January 2011

            Cuts to public services have become commonplace since the global financial crisis in 2007, particularly in Europe, and are omnipresent in my country of origin, the United Kingdom. Yet, it appears that the real-life Baltimore Police Department is also the victim of some incredibly deep cuts. 2% pay cuts for all Baltimore police officers announced in January 2011 means that the average policemen will earn around $205 less per month. In fact, the Baltimore Police Department experienced a total cut of $7 million dollars in FY2012 a total cut of $7 million in FY2012 after a vote by the Baltimore City Council, and while 300 new police officers will be recruited in 2012, many more will be laid off or face compulsory early retirement. While the press appear to be focused on the exploding industrial relations crisis between the City authorities and Police Unions, scant attention appears to be paid to the real-world impact these cuts could have upon safety on the streets of Baltimore.

Political Corruption: Impunity in Maryland

Having watched the first few episodes of Season 5 of The Wire, and with the background research being undertaken by Detective Freeman into Clay Davis’ corruption case, I thought it would be interesting to look into past political corruption in Baltimore, and Maryland more widely. Former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, former Prince George’s County Councilwoman Leslie Johnson, and former Anne Arundel County Councilman Daryl Jones are all prominent examples of Maryland politicians found guilty of corruption by a court in recent years.

            As recently as February 2012, the issue of political corruption made the headlines with Del. Jolene Ivey seeking to draw up stricter laws on political corruption in Maryland. These stricter laws are clearly needed – for the moment, little formal procedures exist for what happens after a politician is found guilty of corruption. Article XV of Maryland’s constitution calls for the removal from office of elected officials convicted of a felony, but this does not appear to be happening in practice. While all of the above names were indeed found guilty, remarkably none of them were forced to leave office by law. Ms. Dixon resigned under political pressure, as did Mr. Jones, but neither were forced by law to leave office. The others remained in their positions. Former Mayor Dixon claimed that "The Wire does not depict Baltimore", yet that viewpoint becomes rather farcical when her corruption case later came to light in a very similar fashion to that of character Senator Clay Davis.

            Sheila Dixon was indicted by a Baltimore Grand Jury on twelve separate counts, including four counts of perjury, three counts of theft, three counts of fraudulent misappropriations and two counts of misconduct.