WHICH MAY RETIRE THE FOX BUTTERFIELD AWARD:

Martin O'Malley often casts Baltimore as the comeback city that overcame the ravages of drugs and violence when he was mayor.

Now, weeks before the former Maryland governor expects to enter the 2016 presidential race and challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Baltimore's turnaround has been marred by the unrest after the police-custody death of Freddie Gray. The turmoil has placed new scrutiny on O'Malley's "zero tolerance" law enforcement policies as mayor from 1999 to 2006.

The record shows that murders and violent crime overall declined in O'Malley's years as mayor. But it was when a grand jury concluded that too many arrests were being made in black neighborhoods without merit, and when the city settled a lawsuit from people who said they were wrongly arrested for minor offenses -- the sort of concerns driving some of the anger in Baltimore today. [...]

In the 1990s, more than 300 people were murdered each year in Baltimore. O'Malley advocated "stop and frisk" practices, cracked down on lower-level crimes such as public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, and brought in two police commanders from New York steeped in such policing. The number of homicides fell to 253 in 2002 and stayed below 300 during his two terms, while never dropping to his goal of 175.

But the approach did lead to many arrests.

In 2005, a Baltimore grand jury found excessive arrests in black neighborhoods and recommended retraining so officers would use better judgment. Judge Joseph McCurdy Jr. had tasked the panel with determining "what can be done to address the lack of confidence that exists between many members of the public and law enforcement."

The ACLU and the NAACP sued in 2006 on behalf of 14 plaintiffs who said they were wrongly arrested as part of a policy that emphasized arrests for minor offenses under O'Malley's watch. The city agreed to the $870,000 settlement in 2010.

O'Malley's successors moved away from zero-tolerance policing.

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