Baltimore City needs to support the state’s attorney’s office
The Maryland U.S. attorney’s office is thinly structured and details much of its limited resources to help the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office and the Baltimore Police Department. This needs to slow considerably, and Bates, if given the monetary resources by the city, should be able to quickly attract skilled and seasoned professionals and retain existing staff, to prosecute the criminal docket and staff programs designed to intervene before violence occurs. This can all happen without extensive help from the U.S. attorney’s office. We do not expect that all help from that office will be withdrawn, and we still expect there will be federal prosecutions for 922(g) violations, but it is critical to the efficient functioning of the U.S. attorney’s office, and the independence of the city state’s attorney’s office, that Bates be given the resources he says he needs and be allowed to create his office in the image for which the taxpayers of this city elected him.