With Baltimore racing toward a fifth straight year of 300+ murders, mayoral candidate and former Maryland Deputy Attorney General Thiru Vignarajah will unveil today his public safety plan, titled “End the Bloodshed,” which sets forth a detailed roadmap of how he will deliver on his pledge to reduce murders by half, bringing the annual homicide count to below 200 in three years.

This elusive mark was last achieved when Vignarajah, a former federal and city prosecutor with degrees from Yale University and Harvard Law School, served as Chief of Major Investigations in the State’s Attorney’s Office where he personally handled many successful murder and gang prosecutions.

The press conference is scheduled for 11 a.m. on 24^th Street, between Greenmount and Barclay, in East Baltimore. Vignarajah led the 2013 prosecution of the Black Guerilla Family (BGF) gang that had terrorized that neighborhood, which saw 52 homicides and shootings in the five prior years. No murders—not one—were committed in that same area for 18+ months from the time of the gang indictment filed by Vignarajah and his team. A Baltimore mural on the side of a new rec center (Greenmount Recreation Center) appears in the backdrop of the scheduled press conference.

Alongside Vignarajah will be victims of gun violence including Damon Walker, who has been confined to a wheelchair after being shot as a teenager; faith leaders including Pastor Rodney Morton of Central Baptist Church in West Baltimore; and mothers who have lost children to gun violence, including Velma Moreland, whose son was killed in Arlington in 1999, Mary Wroblewski, whose son was killed in Locust Point in 2017; and Daphne Alston, founder of Mothers of Murdered Sons & Daughters (MOMS). Several supporters will share why they endorse the End the Bloodshed plan.

Also present will be former Baltimore County Police Chief Jim Johnson and former head of the Baltimore NAACP Marvin “Doc” Cheatham. End the Bloodshed calls for the creation of two new positions at City Hall, a Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and the Baltimore Public Advocate. Vignarajah will explain the significance of these roles and is expected to name Johnson and Cheatham as the kind of individuals he will appoint, when elected, to fill those roles.

“No one in Baltimore feels safe right now, and everyone is fed up. We face soaring violence, and city politicians have done nothing. There is no real plan and no sense of urgency. It is time to end the bloodshed. It is time to elect a prosecutor, not another politician. Our crime plan makes clear what a difference that will make,” said Vignarajah.

Vignarajah’s campaign noted that various crime plans have been released over the years, all of which recite similar themes and typically lack the kind of detail the public needs to gauge whether a plan is viable. End the Bloodshed certainly adopts and incorporates important components of prior plans around which there is clear consensus: special focus on violent repeat offenders; investments in schools and jobs and youth initiatives; rebuilding the Department’s information systems; better strategies to address trauma, addiction, and mental health; reconceiving crime as a public health crisis; strengthening families; dismantling systemic and institutional racism; reforming the criminal justice system; and expanding proven programs like ROCA, YouthWorks, Safe Streets, and LEAD.

These are vital parts of any sound crime plan and represent a common foundation on which most agree. On top of this, Vignarajah’s plan contains proposals that are specific, actionable, and unprecedented. The following are illustrations of features unique to End the Bloodshed:

- For the first time, Baltimore will conduct simultaneous wiretap investigations targeting gangs and drug organizations in the city’s 12 deadliest neighborhoods, culminating in coordinated arrests of 150-250 violent criminals around April 2021, just before the annual summer surge of gun violence. (The arrest of a couple hundred defendants pales in comparison to the tens of thousands arrested every year in Baltimore.)

- For the first time, Baltimore will refer to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for automatic review all carjackings, bank and commercial robberies, and felon-in-possession cases for potential federal prosecution. (These are categories of crimes over which there is federal jurisdiction.)

- For the first time, Baltimore will get off the ground—with public disclosure—the aerial surveillance program to aid detectives with violent crime investigations, this time with specific limits to respect community privacy and confirm the program’s legal validity.

- For the first time, Baltimore will offer $100 rebates to residential and commercial property owners who purchase cloud-based security cameras and register them with BPD, with the ultimate goal of adding 10,000 ground cameras to the city’s private camera network.

- For the first time, Baltimore will use private grant funding to clear the backlog of untested burglary crime scene evidence, which will be used to pursue burglary prosecutions against individuals who have committed robberies, carjackings, shootings, and murders, but have escaped prosecution for these more serious violent crimes.

- For the first time, Baltimore will launch a cold case initiative within City Hall, which will coordinate with BPD, as well as other law enforcement agencies, to keep open or reopen murder investigations involving high-caliber weaponry, 10 or more casings, and headshots.

- For the first time, Baltimore will facilitate anonymized monitoring of juvenile cases, so the public can better track outcomes in violent crime cases involving juvenile offenders.

- For the first time, Baltimore will prepare a non-public list of repeat violent juvenile offenders and develop customized strategies to ensure they are brought to justice.

- For the first time, Baltimore will create a Deputy Mayor for Public Safety who will ensure interagency cooperation to support BPD fully in the fight against crime, a post that will be filled by a respected crime fighter.

- For the first time, Baltimore will form the Office of the Public Advocate, which will ensure that policing satisfies community expectations and constitutional standards, a post that will be filled by a respected community activist and civil rights leader.

- For the first time, Baltimore will dedicate $10 million to a diversion program that permits qualifying juvenile offenders and adults charged with low-level offenses to avoid prison by agreeing, as a condition of probation, to enroll in skills training, workforce development, and a job placement program. (The campaign unveiled this initiative—the “Court to Career” program—two weeks ago with the support of Ravens linebacker Matthew Judon.)

- For the first time, Baltimore will forgive outstanding debt owed to the government by returning citizens if they maintain stable employment and avoid criminal conduct for 2 years.

- For the first time, Baltimore will launch its “Faith in Justice” reentry initiative, securing $5,000,000 in federal grant money from the Second Chance Act, which is dispersed to 100 nonprofits and faith organizations selected by 500 returning citizens to support their reentry.

- For the first time, Baltimore will create a College Cadet program to recruit 100-150 graduating seniors each year from local universities, particularly HBCUs like Morgan State and Coppin State, in order to rapidly produce a net gain of 600 officers and forge a more diverse, local, and professional police force.

- For the first time, Baltimore will drive BPD recruitment by lifting arbitrary police eligibility restrictions, including the ban on permanent resident non-citizens and people who have used marijuana in the last three years.

- For the first time, Baltimore will redeploy 90+ school resource officers (SROs) from their posts inside public schools to perform much-needed foot patrols in the neighborhoods around their schools, instead of fueling the school-to-prison pipeline.

- For the first time, Baltimore will free up detectives to return to doing detective work by hiring private security in limited, site-specific contexts to ensure adequate coverage of business districts and public events.

- For the first time, Baltimore will deter police corruption by instituting automatic audits of overtime where an officer has claimed more than $10,000 in overtime compensation.

- For the first time, Baltimore will publish an annual report of public health indicators that drive violence to ensure that the work of all agencies is evaluated in the fight against crime.

- For the first time, Baltimore will once a month open ComStat to press and the public in order to promote police accountability and greater transparency.

Committed to a positive campaign of concrete ideas and solutions, along with End the Bloodshed, Vignarajah has already released plans on cutting property taxes, legalizing marijuana, requiring city leaders to release tax returns, keeping Preakness, cracking down on e-cigarettes, revitalizing the arts, supporting the LGBTQ+ community, ensuring water equity, launching aerial surveillance, diverting low-level offenders to workforce development, and fostering startups and small business growth.