Once one of the most dangerous cities in the country, Baltimore’s murder rate saw a historic decline in 2024 and is on pace to be even lower this year. While the liberal media has rushed to heap praise for the turnaround on unabashedly progressive Mayor Brandon Scott, the real credit goes to Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates – a Democrat who has bucked his party and embraced a tough-on-crime approach to law enforcement.
Bates took over the office in 2023 after defeating incumbent Marilyn Mosby following her indictment by federal grand juries on perjury and fraud charges. Mosby was a prominent part of the nationwide network of radical left-wing prosecutors funded by liberal billionaire megadonor George Soros, alongside such notorious names as Alvin Bragg (Manhattan), Larry Krasner (Philadelphia), and George Gascon (Los Angeles).
Mosby, who took office in 2015, oversaw a staggering surge in crime during her tenure. In 2020, she stopped prosecuting charges related to drug possession, prostitution, traffic violations, and other “low-level” offenses, supposedly to stop the spread of COVID-19 in prisons. In 2021, however, she made those changes permanent.
In 2022, as she was campaigning for re-election, Mosby was accused of falsely claiming COVID-19-related financial hardship to withdraw money from her city retirement account. She was also charged with mortgage fraud for making false statements on loan applications for Florida vacation properties. A jury convicted her on both charges in separate trials.
Mosby’s downfall paved the way for Bates to bring a different approach to the office. Bates campaigned on what were once viewed as common-sense policies by Republicans and Democrats alike – harshly punishing repeat offenders, getting illegal guns off the street, and mandatory minimum sentencing. Bates also notably ended Mosby’s policy of not prosecuting “low-level” offenses.
“If you’re a felon and you have an illegal gun, we’re going to invoke mandatory minimums,” Bates promised in 2023 while running for office. “We’re going to be very, very tough on illegal handguns… people will go to jail.” The logic is simple, as Bates explained: “If you lock up violent repeat offenders, you hold them accountable,” he told Fox News.
The results speak for themselves. Since 2023, Baltimore has seen a steep drop in violent crime, as homicides fell from 334 in 2022 to 202 in 2024. “Auto thefts are also down 34 percent, robberies are down 22 percent, and arson is down 10 percent in Baltimore so far in 2025 compared to the same timeframe last year,” the Washington Free Beacon reported in July. As of September, the murder rate was down an additional 30 percent from the same time in 2024.
Mayor Brandon Scott and left-leaning groups want to take credit for the drop, arguing that focusing on poverty and “mediation” are the key.
“Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), who was first elected in 2020, has brought the city’s homicide rate down by treating violent crime as a public health crisis,” reporters at Popular Information argued. “That means treating violent crime as a symptom of multiple factors, including racism, poverty, and past violence.” The key is to combine policing with a “whole ecosystem of community–oriented interventions,” the left-wing Vera Institute for Justice told Popular Information.
Mayor Scott said his “Group Violence Reduction Strategy,” which includes “life coaching services and other resources” along with arrests, is the reason for the drop in crime, as reported by CBS News.
But it is obvious to anyone who lives in Baltimore that the real reason residents can feel safer in their homes and communities is that there are fewer violent individuals on the streets thanks to Ivan Bates. Because Bates had the courage – or just the basic human decency – to reject the soft-on-crime direction of his own party, the Charm City is starting to see a turnaround.
Notably, it is minorities and other groups that liberals claim to care the most about who have benefited the most from this change. “A number of the victims within the community were also minorities and African Americans, and they have a right to be safe and free in their house,” Bates told Fox News in October.
Bates also emphasized that “everybody has a right to be safe” no matter their race or political party. “At the end of the day, there were too many murders, too much violence, and we needed to make a change,” Bates said. “When you send those individuals to jail, the community is safer at that moment in time, and they can get themselves together, but they will be held accountable.”
The Baltimore “miracle” is a lesson for cities throughout the country that are grappling with their own surges in violent crime. Public safety shouldn’t be a partisan issue. It just takes leaders who are willing to do the difficult work of prosecuting criminals and ensuring dangerous people can’t harm peaceful, law-abiding citizens.
Matt Lamb is an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
