According to a survey of 1800 Baltimore residents by the Schaefer Center of Public Policy at the University of Baltimore taken earlier this year, there is a disconnect between declining crime stats, and how safe city residents feel about crime in the city.

The Mayor’s office has decided that people’s perception of Baltimore as an unsafe city is incorrect, citing declining numbers of violent crime, down 7 percent.  In the Sun story, Mayor Dixon also offers the obligatory and ill-informed slam against the media, blaming them for the city’s image problem.

This story is an example of a breakdown in the Mayor’s office, and a refusal to handle the city’s biggest problem in an honest way.  Instead of fighting to change the perception with any number of measures (increased visible police presence, comprehensive cime prevention campaigns, frequent press conferences to keep the public informed on progress in their neighborhoods, etc.), Mayor Dixon is clinging to any statistic that shows numerical progress.  What the Dixon administration chooses to ignore is that people in Baltimore have been hearing how safe their city is for years from politicians, in the meantime they are getting mugged on their way home from work, having their cars broken into in a regular basis, and living with the spectre of crime every day.  People don’t want more statistics.

In this case, perception is reality.  Baltimore City leaders would be wise to traffic in it more often.