Mayor Brandon M. Scott, Baltimore Police Department Submit Revised Redistricting Map to City Council
BALTIMORE, MD. (Wednesday, August 10, 2022) — Today, Mayor Brandon M. Scott and Baltimore Police Department Commissioner Michael Harrison announced the submission of the revised redistricting map to the City Council.
Earlier this year, Mayor Scott and Commissioner Harrison announced the plan to modernize the Department by redrawing the geographic boundaries of its nine police districts. This will mark the most significant change to District lines in more than 50 years.
This new map represents hundreds of hours of time spent by the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), as well as more than 1,000 feedback forms from community members. Feedback was gathered from residents in order to best understand how neighborhoods work together and incorporate what residents wanted to see as a result of the process. For example, it was frequently heard that certain Districts were too large and BPD response time to calls was too long. The draft map addresses those concerns and seeks to equalize workload (calls for service) across the new proposed patrol Districts.
During the second phase of the public input process, BPD received feedback from more than 650 residents who spoke up at community meetings, submitted the online survey or sent an email to share their ideas and thoughts. Combined with the more than 420 submissions received in the first phase of input, BPD received more than 1,000 responses from the community during this process.
This new final map takes into account public concerns along with operational needs. Several neighborhoods expressed concern about moving from their current District into another. The revised map balances those concerns with the understanding that certain Districts (Eastern, Central and Western) needed to grow in order to achieve a more balanced and equitable distribution of policing services for all Baltimore residents.
“I am excited to announce that with these new maps, we are finally able to correct a wrong many decades in the making and adjust our police districts to meet current population, workload, and crime trends. After several briefings concerning community input, I am proud that we were able to take our residents’ voices into consideration before settling on the finalized boundaries,” said Mayor Brandon M. Scott. “This process allows us to modernize policing and transform BPD into a world class law enforcement agency with – not for – our residents. I thank the Baltimore Police Department and its Data Driven Strategies Team for all of its work on this project.”
The new map is designed to rebalance personnel among the Districts in the long run and improve the average response times across all communities in Baltimore. The plan is also intended to balance workload among Districts and reunite neighborhoods that were once divided. This creates an improved focus on community policing and engagement.
Redistricting will enable the BPD to:
- Reunite 18 neighborhoods that were previously divided by Police District lines
- Respond to crime more efficiently in each geographic area
- Create better alignment for the Crime Reduction Strategy
- Efficiently manage law enforcement resources
- Provide officer workload balance for each District
- Optimize resource allocation for smarter policing
“Balancing resources and workload across our Districts will allow us to deliver policing services more equitably and more efficiently across all of our communities,” said Commissioner Michael Harrison. “I was able to spend time in the Districts to discuss the proposed map with the community and directly hear their feedback on bringing a greater sense of inclusion in the process. I thank the Mayor and the Redistricting Team for their hard work and support on this project for which BPD has become the national model for how law enforcement agencies across the country should engage in this process.”
Additional analysis from the survey results, as well as the new boundary lines, will be available in the near future. This large undertaking was done in a very tight timeline as mandated by the law.
The draft map will now undergo a review process by the City Council that must be completed within 180 days, per state law; after which the proposed map will become effective if no further amendments are approved by the Mayor and City Council.
We thank the community for their patience, time and voices.
Go to baltimorepolice.org/redistricting to see the new map and for more information.
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