Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, center, in Baltimore. (Photo: Matt Rourke/AP) Obtained 5/1/2015
The former Governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley was in Europe giving a series of paid speeches but he cut them short so he could be in Baltimore. he was the 61st Governor of Maryland from 2007-2015 and is a potential Democratic candidate for President for the 2016 election. “There’s a lot of pain in our city right now, a lot of people feeling very sad.” O’Malley said Tuesday, according to the Washington Post. But instead of being welcomed home with open arms, people tore him apart. He has revealed himself to be a root cause of the city’s problems, or that is what people want the country to believe.
Matt Bai spoke about his travel with O’Malley on Thursday in his column talking about the impact the rioting has had on O’Malley.
“But that was not the O’Malley who invited me Thursday on a two-hour drive through some of Baltimore’s poorer neighborhoods and grimmest landmarks. Mayors sometimes like to take reporters around their cities so they can show them all the cranes raising up gleaming new office towers and condominiums; O’Malley had in mind a tour through the tragic past, so I could understand what life had been like in this anguished city before he got there, and after.” Matt Bai – Yahoo News
He was heckled, according to the Post, as he walked on the streets. And Neill Franklin has only verified that O’Malley is not welcome. “I would encourage him not to come to Baltimore.” he said, on top of stating that if he comes back to town, there would be a riot.
According to the Daily Beast, a Maryland Democratic Official (anonymous) said that his return to Baltimore only shot him in the foot in his efforts to run for 2016 President because it served as a reminder how unpopular this man is. People in Iowa are going to see that Baltimore is one of the cities left behind in the recovery efforts. The people in the city have not seen any relief. That is a slap in the face to the city as they watch Washington D.C. and Philadelphia turning a new leaf.
If this trip was a photo-op, the trip did not paint any sort of picture that he had been helpful. “Martin O’Malley’s logic was pretty basic: ‘If we clear the streets, they’ll stop shooting at each other. We’ll lower the murder rate because there will be no one on the corners,’” Simon said in the interview with The Marshall Project. Things were so bad that the ACLU and NAACP sued Baltimore in 2006 because of their “zero-tolerance” policy. It took four years for the city to settle that lawsuit.
Upon speaking with CNN in Washington, O’Malley accepted responsibility for the implementation of tough police policies that many critics have placed blame for incidents such as the one that Freddie Grey was put through. While he may be fessing up to his mistakes, he is also claiming that his policies are successful because when he took the city on, “it had been the most violent and addicted city in America.”
One thing that many people do not realize is he used data and analytic to justify his actions. His policies and decision-making process included things from drugs and murder to the execution of daily services for the city.
