It’s not working Our view:

Baltimore is at risk of sleepwalking its way through a year that will approach 400 homicides; we have to try a new strategy

Baltimore is ending July with more than 200 homicides. In the first seven months of this year, the city has already exceeded the total from all of 2011, and it is on pace for its highest per capita total ever. The violence is not a blip. It is the continuation of a torrid trend of assaults, shootings and murders that has continued with no respite for two years, yet the city is still stumbling its way toward anything like a coherent plan for stemming the bloodshed. It’s long past time for the city to unite behind a new anti-violence strategy and commit to carrying it through.

The chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee recently shut down a hearing on the Pugh administration’s response to the violence because it was not prepared to present what he considered an adequately comprehensive plan. Mayor Catherine Pugh responded by inviting him to visit during her weekly office hours for council members. Her own plan, she says, will be ready for comment next month — by which point, at this pace, dozens more people will have been killed in Baltimore.

A City Council hearing on Tuesday revealed deep divisions within the community and city government about the right strategy for addressing violence. Members were considering legislation that would create a mandatory one-year sentence for illegal possession of a gun, but opinions were sharply divided between those who believe we need to try everything possible to combat violence and those who fear a repeat of the collateral damage from Baltimore’s zero-tolerance days.

That debate is healthy so long as it does not paralyze us. We cannot let our focus on following through with the reforms mandated in Baltimore’s consent decree with the Department of Justice interfere with the need to respond aggressively to the crime that’s plaguing our streets right now.

To that end, we were heartened by Police Commissioner Kevin Davis’ announcement Wednesday that he is resurrecting the department’s special operations units with some key reforms. These units, which will be housed in each district and additionally in a handful of high crime areas, are designed to be freed from the responsibility of responding to calls for service so they can focus on crime hot-spots and go after violent, repeat offenders.

Such units were previously credited both with helping to drive down violent crime and with worsening community relations. In previous iterations, they wore plainclothes and drove unmarked cars, supposedly to provide an element of surprise to the criminals they target, though some saw them as little better than thugs with badges. Mr. Davis is right to require the new iterations of these units to wear uniforms, drive marked cars and report to the district commanders. That will foster a greater culture of mutual respect between them and the communities and ensure they are both effective and accountable.

But will the new units be allowed to do their jobs? District commanders will face real temptations to dip into these units whenever patrol is short-staffed (which, unfortunately, is often) or to respond to whatever is the hot issue of the day. These units need to be given the time and space to build cases against the relatively small number of people who are responsible for the lion’s share of Baltimore’s violence, not to be sent to break up whatever drug corner is generating the most complaints on a given day.

We also question Commissioner Davis’ decision to house the units in each of the city’s police districts. Violence is not distributed equally among them, and neither should be these units.

That said, what we’ve been doing isn’t working, and we’re glad to see Commissioner Davis try something new. Baltimore’s residents need to see that their leaders view the current violence as a crisis and that they are completely focused on devising a strategy to stop it. We can’t allow ourselves to sleepwalk our way through a year that approaches 400 homicides.