The rioting in the streets of Baltimore have been a massive setback for former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's hopes of becoming the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016,
The New York Times reported.
As the protests over the unexplained injuries in police custody that led to the death of Freddie Gray spread to other cities, including New York and Boston, O'Malley is accused of having been too tough on crime during his two-term tenure as Baltimore mayor.
The
"zero-tolerance" police policy embraced by O'Malley when he was mayor from 1999 to 2007 is being blamed for fostering mistrust between the poor communities of the predominantly black city and its police force.
O'Malley, who has not officially announced his White House candidacy, has virtually been ignored while becoming a possible long-shot challenger to Hillary Clinton — and the last thing he needed was a crisis in his own backyard.
But he endeavored to use the outrage over the death of the 25-year-old African-American to his advantage while claiming that his experience with urban problems give him a special understanding of what it takes to run the country.
"There is nobody else among those who might run that has had the experience I have had of living this and working this every day for the last 15 years," O'Malley told the Times in a phone interview.
"I haven't traveled the world as widely as some others," he said, clearly referring to Clinton, the former secretary of state. "But I certainly have traveled the length and breadth of this gap between the ideal of who we are as a people and the places where we are falling far short."
O'Malley cut short a strip to London when the riots exploded in Baltimore and flew back to the troubled city in the hope of helping to calm the protesters.
Although he admitted he was uncertain how he could help in the next few days, he said, "there are tremendous opportunities to heal a lot of wounds. Our country is in desperate need of an agenda for America's cities."
O'Malley, who was governor from 2007-15, told the Times that he "sympathized" with the peaceful protesters in Baltimore and called for an investigation into Gray's death "as quickly as possible."
While pointing out that Clinton had steered clear of Baltimore, O'Malley also defended his record in the city, claiming that he had "achieved the trifecta" of lowering crime, incarceration and recidivism as the mayor of Baltimore and as governor of Maryland.
"Look, you are never done with this stuff," he said. "There is no public institution more intertwined with our cruel legacy of race in American than the institutions of law enforcement."
Earlier this week, he had said that his administration had also created a civilian review board that seriously examined complaints about discourtesy, excessive force, and police-involved shootings.
Although Clinton had called for the end of "the era of mass incarceration" during a speech at Columbia University in New York on Wednesday, O'Malley's supporters said she had backed the tough laws that had expanded prison populations in the first place, the Times reported.
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