Baltimore City handed over more than 450 pages worth of Safe Streets-related contracts, complying with a public records request made months ago after FOX45 News threatened legal action.
FOX45 News started investigating Baltimore’s Safe Streets program more than a year ago, looking into how the city operates a program Mayor Brandon Scott dubbed the city’s “flagship gun violence prevention program.”
Currently, there are 10 different Safe Streets locations and by the end of January 2023, the locations will be managed by two different community-based organizations, or CBOs: Catholic Charities and LifeBridge Health. The change in management came after the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, MONSE, issued a report in April 2022 confirming much of what FOX45 News had been reporting about program effectiveness questions and a lack of oversight and accountability of the program.
Included in the contracts provided, which came days after the Law Department informed FOX45 News the documents were corrupted, there are details about how the city of Baltimore spends more than $3.6 million to operate the Safe Streets program.
Initially, the documents indicate there are different salaries offered for the various positions at each location: a site director at one location makes $60,000 annually while a site director at another location makes $65,000 annually; violence interrupters make between $40,000 and $45,000 annually depending on the location.
At the Belair-Edison location, managed by Living Classrooms through the end of October 2022, there were youth violence interrupters on the payroll, earning $12,500 annually, but that position doesn’t exist at every location.
The information provided raises questions that FOX45 News will continue to investigate. Throughout the entire Safe Streets investigation, FOX45 News has requested an interview with Shantay Jackson, director of MONSE, several times. However, Jackson has not yet made herself available.