BALTIMORE, MD. (Friday, February 4, 2022) — Mayor Brandon M. Scott released the following statement and open letter in reference to his meeting with Governor Larry Hogan yesterday. 

"In Baltimore City, we have been using our law enforcement partners to focus on getting the violent offenders off our streets and crack down on gun trafficking, all while simultaneously investing in our Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan — Baltimore's first holistic violence prevention strategy. This is a multi-year plan that will allow us to focus on addressing the violence today while making strategic investments to address the upstream, root-cause factors, that allow violence to reproduce — like providing economic stability, quality education, and health care for our residents. It is vital that we leverage every single resource available to tackle violence from all sides. This is why I made an unprecedented $50 million investment in public safety using American Rescue Plan Act dollars. An investment that will allow us to implement a Group Violence Reduction Strategy and the expand evidence-based community violence intervention programming, measures that we know work. I am grateful to have partners at the Federal level who understand the complexities of the issue at hand and are willing to do what it takes to make our country safer for our communities."

Mayor Brandon M. Scott