BALTIMORE (AP) – Baltimore police and civic leaders launched a partnership Monday with five federal agencies that will embed their special agents with city homicide detectives, bidding to quell an upswing in homicides and other violent crime in that city.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was joined by State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, Acting Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, and U.S. representatives Barbara Mikulski, among others, to announce the start of the Baltimore Federal Homicide Task Force.
“We have doubled down on our commitment to focus on repeat violent offenders, and that’s what we continue to do in a more collaborative and intentional way,” Rawlings-Blake said. “We are increasing the resources, we are increasing the collaboration and increasing the partnership at all levels. This is our next step in our all-hands-on-deck approach to decreasing violence.”
The partnership is embedding two special agents from each of the five crime-fighting federal agencies on the streets with homicide detectives for the next 60 days. The agencies are the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The homicide rate in Baltimore began to skyrocket in May, when the city saw 42 homicides in a single month. There was a brief dip in June, with 29 killings, however the number shot up again in July, breaking a 43-year record. The uptick comes after rioting in the spring over the death of Freddie Gray, the black man critically injured in police custody.