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Baltimore Police Announce New Initiative To Fight Rising Crime

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- More bloodshed in Baltimore City, and there is more than a month to go in this year. Now city police are launching a new initiative to fight back against the violence.

Derek Valcourt explains the plan gets more officers on the streets at peak crime hours.

For the rest of the year, officers with desk jobs will be forced to spend time on patrol, as the department tries to battle a massive spike in crime.

Murder after murder, the city's number slowly climbs--305 so far this year, compared to 191 at the same time last year.

According to our media partner, The Baltimore Sun, the city now sees nearly 49 murders for every 100,000 people. That means right now, by population, we're second only in murders to St. Louis.

"These aren't about numbers," said Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis.

Commissioner Davis is now ordering 250 Baltimore police officers who normally have jobs that keep them in an office to spend some time patrolling in communities that have seen the most violence.

Davis says the program will put an average of 80 extra uniformed officers on the streets on selected days.

"What we hope to accomplish is just finishing 2015 on a strong note," he said.

Davis says the affected officers will still keep their positions at places like the training academy, executive protection detail, the firearms range, internal affairs and other departments, but will now share their time patrolling, either in cars, on foot or at stationary posts when and where they're needed.

"We can't bring our sons back, but we will use our sons to say that enough is enough," said Daphne Alston, Mothers of Murdered Sons.

The group Mothers of Murdered Sons applauds the police efforts, but says the community needs to do more to stop the violence.

"We no longer can allow these young men and women that's disrupting our communities to keep killing our children," said Alston.

Police say they'll try out this new initiative, moving administrative officers to the streets through the end of the year and then evaluate their progress.

The commissioner himself is expected to take part in the community stabilization initiative and help spend some of his time patrolling the streets in the coming weeks.

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