* WARNING: THIS IS AN UNOFFICIAL, INTRODUCTORY COPY OF THE BILL.
THE OFFICIAL COPY CONSIDERED BY THE CITY COUNCIL IS THE FIRST READER COPY.
INTRODUCTORY*
CITY OF BALTIMORE
COUNCIL BILL R
(Resolution)
Introduced by: Councilmember Reisinger
A RESOLUTION ENTITLED
A COUNCIL RESOLUTION concerning
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Informational Hearing - Nuisance Abatement Tools
FOR the purpose of calling on representatives from the agencies involved with criminal nuisance abatement to appear before the City Council to discuss best practices in criminal nuisance abatement, inform the Council about how various nuisance abatement strategies and tools work, and establish mechanisms to better coordinate the use of nuisance abatement tools Citywide.
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Recitals
Many otherwise peaceful neighborhoods contain one or two places that consistently attract a criminal element of one sort or another. If the activities at these sites are allowed to continue unchecked, these pockets of unlawfulness can eventually spread their blight throughout entire blocks as regular citizens are pushed out. However, if instead these problem areas are quickly dealt with, neighborhoods can be preserved and restored with comparatively minimal effort.
Recognizing this, both the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore have independently created a number of legal tools to address these chronically criminal, “nuisance”, locations. Some of these tools include State laws criminalizing the keeping of a “common nuisance” and City laws relating to “public nuisances” or “neighborhood nuisances”. When and where these tools are effectively employed the results can be...
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