ANNAPOLIS, MD—On Wednesday morning, Governor Larry Hogan appeared live on WBAL’s “The C4 Show” to discuss the need to pass his legislation to address the violent crime crisis in Baltimore City.
Here are excerpts from the interview:
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to let up…I’m as frustrated as anyone else because I have been trying to do something for five years but I’m not getting a whole lot of support and not getting a lot of folks that are actually focused on the real problem.”
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“A headline in today’s Sun says it’s a matter of life and death if we don’t pass this $33 billion increase in spending on schools. Well, you know, we can talk about what we’re going to do with schools over the next 10 years. We have some of the best and the most highly funded schools in America. We obviously all want to see improvements in our schools, but if you want to talk about a life and death matter, it’s doing something about the people that are actually getting shot and killed on the streets of Baltimore. We have a tough crime package that we submitted to the legislature that nearly everyone in the city supports, everyone in the state supports, which we can talk about. Instead, for 42 days, the legislature has ignored that legislation. Just since they’ve been in session, 38 more people have been killed and 59 more people have been shot while they’ve done nothing about crime.”
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“I’m going to keep hammering this, not because I want to disagree or have a fight with them, but because I want to stop people from being killed in the city. We have more people murdered in Baltimore City, we have 600,000 people, than in New York City with 8,600,000 people. We’re the murder capital of America. I mean, it’s crazy.”
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“We have a bill to toughen penalties for those who intimidate witnesses, because one of the problems is people will see a shooting in broad daylight but they’re afraid, understandably so…they’re afraid of retribution. And people are being intimidated. So we have a bill that toughens penalties for those who intimidate witnesses, 91% support statewide…There’s not a soul in Baltimore City who is against this witness intimidation bill. And yet, not a single city leader has come out in favor of it, not a single city legislator has signed onto our bill, and the legislature has done nothing for 42 days.”
Audio from the interview can be found below.
