Baltimore Saw Steep Fall in Police Numbers as Murder Rate Soared

Already beset by a public outcry over the high-profile death of a black man in police custody and a rising murder rate, Baltimore’s police department is facing another headache: it’s shrinking fast.

The number of uniformed officers in the mid-Atlantic city fell 6.1 percent last year and has shrunk by even more in the first half of this year, according to police data seen by Reuters and not previously reported.

The fall in 2015 was the biggest decline in police numbers among nine comparably-sized U.S. cities reviewed by Reuters. {snip}

The reasons for the fall are unclear, but it comes at a difficult time when the number of murders and other violent crimes have risen sharply in Baltimore and many other U.S. cities.

Shrinking budgets have pressured police recruitment in many U.S. cities, including Baltimore, where police officials say they also face steep competition from neighboring Washington to recruit and retain cops. Baltimore’s most recent budget slashed municipal government, reflecting a declining tax base, the city’s tepid economy and high unemployment.

While there are no U.S. national statistics on the number of people applying for police jobs, some officers, union officials and criminal justice experts say hiring in Baltimore and elsewhere has also been hurt by high-profile killings by police.

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“They’re having trouble recruiting because since Ferguson there has been a lot of negative press about policing,” said John DeCarlo, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven and former chief of the Branford, Connecticut, police department.

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{snip} The city saw a 63 percent surge in homicides last year, with 344 people slain, though the number of killings has declined modestly this year, by 5 percent through July 2.

The city ended 2015 with 2,634 sworn officers on its police force, down from 2,805 a year earlier, according to Police Department data. From January to June 9, the force shrank by a further 6.8 percent to 2,445 officers, according to city records.

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Both union and police officials say officers have defected to other departments in the area since the riots that followed Gray’s death.

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