More cops should live in Baltimore

Tax credit won’t cause a flood of police to move to the city, but it’s a start

part, but it took nearly nearly another year for city lawmakers to do theirs. Now the council has scheduled a final vote on the bill, after which it will go to Mayor Pugh, who has said she will sign it.

Baltimore should look at other opportunities to use tax credits to lure people who can make the city a better place. For years Baltimore school superintendents have suggested tax breaks for teachers, hoping to attract bright young graduates of Teach America and other educational training programs that target inner-city children. Now that the council has finally approved such credits for police and firefighters perhaps city schools CEO Sonja Santelises will call for revisiting the possibility of expanding the plan to include city school teachers and administrators too.

How well the incentives work will depend on many factors, of course — not least of which is how open police and firefighters are to the idea. No doubt, Baltimore’s high property taxes present disincentive to police officers and firefighters as much as they do any other potential residents, but it will probably take more than a $2,500 break to change a departmental culture in which more than 80 percent of police officers live outside the city. Financial factors clearly aren’t the only ones at work here. But combined with the community-relations-building the department will undertake as part of its consent decree with the Department of Justice, expanded efforts to recruit city residents to join the police force and other incentives and retention measures, this tax break could begin to turn the tide. Police in some other big cities — notably, Philadelphia and Chicago — .choose urban living over the suburbs. There’s no reason why we can’t accomplish the same thing. And if their presence helps stabilize the neighborhood and makes the city overall a more vibrant, attractive place to live and work, we can’t imagine a better outcome for Baltimore or its residents.