(NATIONALJOURNAL) — The bedrock of Martin O’Malley’s far-fetched presidential bid was supposed to be that he was the man who got Baltimore working again. In contrast to Hillary Clinton’s global legacy as secretary of State, O’Malley’s most solvent argument rested along a harbor of the Chesapeake.
The mayor between 1999 and 2007, O’Malley has long touted the drop in violent crime in his city as a reason he was a credible threat to Clinton. But the death of Freddie Gray last month has become a symbol of police brutality and has catapulted the city into turmoil. Now the spotlight is on how the city arrived in this place, and suddenly that probe has produced an unsettling picture of the aggressive police policies O’Malley once promoted.
It has been a trying week for O’Malley, who canceled a speaking tour of Europe last week to go home to Baltimore. While there, the former mayor was mocked by residents and hardly welcomed back to the streets he has often claimed he cleaned up.
