WHY THE CITY MURDER RATE IS SO HIGH

The Sun's editorial on the Baltimore Police Department's Eastern District
redeployment has taught me one of two things: either I have to do a better
job of communicating what we are doing or The Sun's editorial writers have
to do a better job of reading what is contained in the paper's own news
pages ("Norris raises stakes with east-side strike," Aug. 23).

Let me set the record straight. We are moving more than 100 officers into
the Eastern District to spearhead a highly synchronized effort against the
city's worst murder problem.

This effort is designed in accordance with the way we now fight crime
deploying police resources and tactics to target problems as they arise.

In the Eastern District, we are directing our efforts at the heart of an
entrenched narcotics industry that for many years has driven the
second-worst big city murder rate In the nation and continues to do so
today.

There have been more than 300 murders In Baltimore each year for the last
decade. The last time there were fewer than 200 murders here was 1978. Why
does this town have a chronic murder rate that is almost nine times the
national average?

The answer is that the drug trade here was allowed to become what the
federal government calls the worst In the nation. Three separate but related
factors, acting with insidious precision, have created this lethal problem.

First, political leaders who said drugs are a medical problem, not a
criminal problem, made the criminal justice system believe it could look the
other way.

Second, the police department itself was managed to be more concerned with
the way it was perceived than with the reality of crime on the streets.

Third, the general public, including the media, was not sufficiently
outraged at the high murder and addiction rates because the majority of
victims were poor, black people many of them just children.

The lack of political will, police focus and public outrage are why five
officers were charged with executing the city's 54,000 open warrants, while
88 officers staffed Police Athletic League offices.

These factors are also why one of the finest homicide units in the country
was dismantled under the guise of fairness. They are why vast areas of this
city have become drug wastelands, bereft of every sign of community and
economic life.

They are also why editorial writers in this city feel smug enough to label
any serious effort to fight crime "an act of desperation" that could wind up
being the department's Vietnam.

The Sun recalled that our own analysis, conducted earlier this year, showed
the Baltimore Police Department to be utterly lacking in
intelligence-gathering activities and technology. But the same editorial
showed no sign of understanding that the current Eastern District operation
is intended to remedy that deficiency.

Let me explain how this is being done.

By arresting Individuals engaged in low-level narcotics transactions, we are
able to find out about higher-level drug traffickers. We are also able to
solve open burglary, robbery and even murder cases.

By using wiretaps, we build evidence and information on drug dealing and
criminal organizations.

By clearing warrants against violent offenders operating in the Eastern
District, we take repeat offenders (professional criminals) off the streets.
Rebuilding the entire infrastructure of the Baltimore Police Department will
take time. But one thing is certain: The Sun's Vietnam analogy is accurate
in one major respect. This department is filled with young men and women who
risk their lives every day for people they barely know so that this can be a
safer city for citizens and for our children.

As we begin to succeed, we will need the help of the entire criminal justice
system and the rest of society. Safe streets are a prerequisite for, but not
the totality of, a healthy, thriving city.

Edward T. Norris, Baltimore

The writer is commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department.