Bealefeld rightly noted that the Baltimore of 14 years ago is not the Baltimore of today, and what was a central part of the policing strategy then doesn't have to be a part of it now. With the takeover, rec and parks expands its inventory to 57 centers across the city and, as the city's top cop said, officers can "deploy to make neighborhoods safer."
But as stated earlier, yesterday was not a day to talk about making tough choices. To announce this shift, Durden joined Bealefeld, not at a PAL Center, but at the Mount Royal Recreation Center in Bolton Hill, where there were no angry children or worried parents or cops about to be moved.
But over at the Rosemont PAL, kids loitered on a dead-end street waiting for the cops to arrive and open the doors. A maintenance worker told me a community meeting was planned, but he wouldn't let me inside, saying City Hall "told everybody to shut up."
The head of the Rosemont Improvement Association, Robert Hunt, simply said he was "dumbfounded." A young boy stood near a trash bin and, asked what he would do when the doors opened, answered: "Play basketball." Asked what he will do when the center closes, he answered: "Nothing."
A spokesman for the recreation department called me after learning I had been to Rosemont to remind me that there are two centers nearby, one just eight-tenths of a mile away, another 1.7 miles away. That's more than an excursion for kids with parents who don't have cars and who have to traverse gang territory to get to a gym.
Henderson stood under a police floodlight and a blinking blue light of a surveillance camera and talked about how the police bonded with the kids, about how the cops "intervened in disputes and stopped fights," about how they kept kids off the drug corners, about the Christmas parties they threw.
It is a tough choice, one I'm sure the folks running the city wish they didn't have to make. But they shouldn't spin this as a great day for Baltimore. It's more than a new coat of paint and counselors dressed in different clothes. It's a change in how this city invests in programs for its youth.
