Concerned over his ejection from a police COMSTAT meeting on Thursday, veteran Baltimore City Councilman Jack Young called into question the accuracy of the city's declining homicide rate on Friday.
Still fuming over being forced to leave the weekly meeting held at police headquarters, Young said he was considering holding City Council hearings on a variety of criminal justice issues, including the newly instituted policy of not naming officers involved in shootings and the city's falling homicide rate.
"I think the homicide rate is not factual; I think more people have been murdered than has been reported because some murders have not been classified as homicides," Young, D-12, said Friday.
"I'm going to call a hearing to answer questions so that we can have a discussion on if the crime rate is really down," Young said.
Young's allegations came a day after he was asked to leave to leave the police department's weekly COMSTAT meeting by police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld. Young said Bealefeld told him he would be allowed to attend a future meeting if he gave advance notice.
But Young took issue with the commissioner's request, arguing elected officials should have unfettered access to COMSTAT meetings.
"I'm just concerned that council members would be excluded," he said.
Cheryl Goldstein, director of the mayor's office on criminal justice, affirmed that Young could attend if he called in advance.
She also defended the reported 18 percent drop in the homicides in 2008 as accurate.
"I have full confidence that the information reported by the police commissioner and his staff on the city's homicide rate is completely accurate," Goldstein said in a phone interview.
Goldstein also said she had provided Young's office with information he requested recently on the homicide clearance rate, which the councilman criticized as being too low.
But Young said he would continue to ask questions about the homicide rate and other crime statistics.
"If there are 300 questionable deaths that have not been classified, then you know the murder rate has to be higher."
