> Baltimore politics are an absolute disaster. I suppose this is quite possibly the case for every US city, I've never considered that before.

Baltimore is in a class with about half a dozen other US cities for being an exceptional disaster. The entire city should be federalized and cleaned up top to bottom.

Compare it to functional or semi-functional, prosperous cities like Seattle, San Diego, Austin, New York, Boston or even Boise Idaho.

Seattle had 19 murders in 2016. Baltimore had 318, or 51 per 100k (with a slightly smaller population than Seattle). That's almost a warzone. It compares to cartel ravaged countries in Latin America. There's no excuse for it and nobody will do anything about it. There's only one possible solution given the extreme incompetence: the federal authorities must step in, take over the city and stop the slaughter no matter the financial expense.