Yeah, IDK, my second attempt got me this: https://imgur.com/a/OORIlUk which looks like clickbaity weight loss bullshit.

I think this is more of a MASN is dogshit thing than a general baseball thing, but I could be wrong.

I just googled it to have a look, I got pictures of blueberries. Might be a targeted ad.

Agreed, expand it and see if you can maintain the results. Other cities should be chomping at the bit to emulate this, too, I'd think.

Not really, moreso that there may be some external factors that may have been overlooked

I hope that isn't the case, anyone who dislikes cheap and wildly effective violence reduction strategies would be insane.

A number like 20% on something like this is just pretty hard to digest.

I'd honestly be skeptical any singular program or policy could reduce gun violence in any major city by over 20%. If it's truly that effective it should be a nationwide model, especially considering the relatively low cost. 20% is a pretty staggering number for something like this.

Wow, they're claiming it reduced gun violence by over 20% and effectively prevented 1 of every 5 murders?

Local games are still blacked out, though, no?

So if you live in the area you won't be able to watch the Orioles or Nats on it unless you're using a VPN.

Yeah...

If we're gassing up the chopper for the sole purpose of telling kids to get out of closed pools... sure, that's pretty messed up and sounds horribly wasteful. I'd bet it's more of a side task that they swing by to accomplish after completing their main goal though.

I've done Brew at the Zoo in the past prior to COVID, I'd recommend that one also.

They basically line the perimeter of a field with food/beer trucks, vendors, and bring in live music, then have handlers come in with a bunch of different animals. You can also just walk into the regular zoo at any point if you want.

I assume it's still pretty much the same deal, but it's been a few years since I've been.

It's a procedural that veers between hammy legal drama, hammy romance, and hammy bromance.

Yeah it was nothing groundbreaking, but very solid and way better than I expected it to be based on the fairly generic look of it. I’d chalk that up as a W

It's the unpredictability that gets me.

I'd rather drive in NYC than on 83 because you atleast know what to expect.

They were being sent to be displayed in an art exhibit in LA later this year. Also not sure we own them in the first place.

The Columbus statue that people tore down and threw in the harbor a couple years ago, for example, was commissioned & owned by Italian American Organizations United

They're the same ones that were taken down a while ago when Pugh was still mayor. After they were taken down, they were put in this enclosure in some impound lot next to Pulaski highway until somebody could figure out what to do with them.

> The Confederate effigies were among four that were removed from various locations across the city the same month as the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The statues have since sat in a weedy corner of an impound lot off Pulaski Highway and were expected to be displayed in a Los Angeles art exhibit this fall.

They changed up their claims department (outsourced it maybe? not entirely sure) along with the entire customer service department on September 1st last year and many providers have been unable to get paid for services rendered, negotiate rates, or even use their billing system since then.

Their phone system even has an automated message set up for it... "If you're calling in reference to claims prior to September 1, press 0. For dates after September 1st, press 1".

> Minority and Women's Business Opportunity Office found Metra repeatedly failed to pay subcontractors on time. The office's chief, Christopher Lundy, said in one case, payment came more than a year after the work was finished, and only happened after the city got involved.

Oh cool, now do Hopkins

He has been a Baltimore politician since he graduated college... I don't think he's ever even had another job in his professional life. I still don't get why anybody thought he was the one to bring about change.

Yeah, one of their employees got popped by the feds for using it to run a heroin distribution ring ~2 years ago

https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/former-member-baltimore-s-safe-streets-program-sentenced-over-11-years-federal-prison

> Baltimore, Maryland – U.S. District Judge George L. Russell, III sentenced Ronald Alexander, age 50, of Baltimore, Maryland to 135 months in federal prison, followed by eight years of supervised release, for conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, heroin, and powder and crack cocaine. While he was participating in the narcotics conspiracy, Alexander was employed by “Safe Streets,” an organization whose purpose is to reduce violence and crime in Baltimore through intervention. While he was engaged in the distribution of fentanyl and other dangerous narcotics, Alexander used his affiliation with Safe Streets to evade law enforcement in Baltimore, including on one occasion to avoid arrest when police seized from him a large quantity of fentanyl.

The internal review they ran recently found the program lacks oversight, and many of the employees are untrained subjected to some pretty bad shit, too:

> An internal review of Baltimore’s Safe Streets anti-violence initiative found the program lacked oversight, and half of the workers described their training as inadequate. City officials announced the findings Wednesday, along with a $10 million investment to improve program operations and establish a “community violence intervention ecosystem.”

> Meanwhile, 63% of employees said they had been traumatized by their work mediating conflicts, 60% reported having been direct victims of gun violence themselves, and 67% said they frequently worried about losing their jobs over funding shortage

Sounds like a more comprehensive review is coming out shortly, though, and that might finally shed some light on efficacy.

Recidivism rates amongst program participants judged against general recidivism rates seems like a good place to start just off the top of my head, I suppose.

That's the point... If this non-cop solution has shitty results, then give that money to a better one that will do better.

Waste in one column doesn't justify waste in another. All public money should be accounted for.

I think the question is simply whether or not they're reducing violence by a large enough factor to justify the money we spend on it, and whether or not we could see greater effects by reallocating that funding elsewhere.

> Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland are working on a more comprehensive study of Safe Streets that should be released early next year.

Sounds like we might hopefully have a better idea soon, though.

How do they even go about contacting/measuring these people in the first place, coldest night of the year or not?

I would guess there’s practically no chance the overwhelming majortity of the homeless have reliable contact info, and having city agents canvass the entire city is a practical nonstarter

I guess it seems like every method I can think of for attempting to track homelessness would be horrible best.

Yeah. The positioning of the cameras seems great because like you said, it seemed like 9/10 accidents would be at that Northern Parkway/Coldspring corridor, and people are essentially now forced to go ~55 through there. Even the assholes who want to go 90 generally can't from what I've seen because traffic slows down from everybody else dodging the cameras and they can't pass it.

Yeah.. what's the takeaway here?

Performance metrics = good, but quotas = bad?

At some point if somebody is failing to meet "performance metrics" they're going to get dinged on a performance review because of it, and at that point is it effectively any different from a quota?