It’s getting dangerous out there — for politicians seen as coddling criminals

Last week’s recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin by voters in San Francisco, one of the nation’s most liberal cities, may be the best demonstration yet that a lot of Americans, including progressives, are frustrated by crime — or at least a perception that criminals are not being prosecuted aggressively.

It also suggests issues of law and order, including Baltimore’s continuing high homicide rate, will loom much larger in state and local contests across Maryland and beyond than it looked as if they would just months ago.

This can be seen not only in how it’s become the centerpiece issue for gubernatorial candidate Doug Gansler, the former Montgomery County State’s Attorney and Maryland Attorney General, but in numerous public forums, including the recent Baltimore City Council budget session, where Police Commissioner Michael Harrison was scolded for not attacking gun violence with greater urgency.

“Our sense of urgency is set to the maximum and it stays there. It never ever turns off,” the city’s top cop countered.

Whatever one may think of Baltimore’s 300-plus annual murder count, it’s difficult to see it as some new development. And yet that’s exactly how a lot of primary voters — and candidates sensing their frustrations — are reacting.

And that’s likely for a variety of reasons, including some especially brazen recent killings and all the attention gun violence has received nationally in the wake of the mass shootings in Texas and New York.

In the recent opinion survey conducted for The Baltimore Sun and the University of Baltimore by OpinionWorks of Annapolis, 44% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans said they’ve changed their daily behavior because of their concern over crime. Gun violence is no longer about “they” or “them”; it’s become about “us” and “ours.”

Democrats may have thought promoting gun control would be enough for their party loyalists. Mr. Boudin’s loss strongly suggests that the issue is bigger than that. Whether it’s really about crime or the perception of crime is another question.

Crime statistics in San Francisco were mixed (with violence broadly in decline during the pandemic), but videos of smashand-grab robberies flooded the airwaves as other signs of social ills, such as a rise in the homeless population, became evident to residents.

Consider, for example, that San Francisco may have experienced an uptick in homicides last year, but the total was still just 56, and that is in a city of about 875,000 people. Baltimore, a city of fewer than 600,000, recorded 337 homicides last year —or six times as many. If liberals in San Francisco are capable of becoming panicked by Mr. Boudin’s focus on how high incarceration rates have hurt minorities disproportionately (instead of spouting populist “tough on crime” rhetoric), why would anyone assume Maryland voters won’t succumb to similar thoughts?

Politicians can clearly sense the rising unhappiness. It’s likely one reason why in Baltimore County some members of the county council aren’t just complaining about problems in Baltimore County Public Schools; they are calling for the dismissal of the superintendent, who has held the post only three years (two of them inconvenienced by the pandemic).

None of this is to suggest that concerns over homicides aren’t justified. But the danger here is people will react in fear, not reason, and support counterproductive policies like the brutal “lock-them-all-up” mentality that helped poison Baltimore’s view of the city’s police department and, just as Mr. Boudin observed, led to disproportionate hardship for people of color.

Right now we are on a rational road to curbing violent crime that seeks greater accountability from police and addresses many of the underlying causes, including the failed war on drugs, concentrated poverty, lack of job opportunities and underperforming schools. Such reforms take time to work, just as it took years for Baltimore’s violent crime — and distrust of police — to reach the crisis stage.

What would severely hamper such efforts would be for voters to lose patience and instead follow the old naval adage: “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”