June 16th, 2023 by WCBC Radio

 Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey issued the following statement in response to Governor Moore’s public safety announcement earlier today.

“We were disappointed in hearing the lack of urgency in Governor Moore’s public safety plan this morning. With the summer months before us, there were no substantial changes and no bold plans for immediately addressing violent crime in our communities.

As the Governor outlined, non-fatal shootings are up and homicides are up, but he needs to look no further than the two legislative chambers one floor below his press conference to find the root cause on why violent crime has increased over the last eight years.

Maryland’s Democrat-led General Assembly has refused to take significant action to address violent crime. So, while these crime statistics may have been inherited by the new governor, Maryland’s inability to improve on them falls directly on the failure of the Democrat Leadership at the State and local levels to enact polices that provide consequences for those committing violent crimes. There’s no doubt that criminals in the Baltimore and DC Metro regions know they will not be held accountable for their actions. They won’t be arrested, won’t be prosecuted, and they won’t serve time.

Today’s announcement appeared to be nothing but a thinly veiled reaction to the poll results released earlier this week that showed Marylanders are more aligned with Republican public safety policies such as targeting repeat, violent offenders and making the theft of a handgun a felony.

Senate Republicans have proposed commonsense legislation to addressing these concerns for many years. Maryland Democrats have failed to move forward on these public safety policies while continuing to treat criminals as victims and ignoring the cries of citizens demanding polices to reduce crime and violence in their neighborhoods.

Only in Maryland have the law enforcement officers become the targeted criminals while repeat violent offenders walk the streets. This year alone the Democrat-led General Assembly amped up the prosecutorial powers for the Attorney General to investigate the actions of police officers where the death of a criminal occurred during an arrest; while taking away the most effective manner to get illegal guns off the streets by no longer allowing police to search vehicles that smell of marijuana.

Not one initiative announced today will reduce drug trafficking crimes, armed robberies, car-jackings or homicides tonight. None will remove repeat, violent offenders from our streets, reduce the number of illegal guns in the hands of criminals, or curtail the juvenile crime crisis. Marylanders shouldn’t have to put their safety on pause waiting months if not years for progressive policies and programs to take shape. The Governor and Democrat leadership, once again, missed the opportunity to take any serious action to immediately make our communities safer.”