Scott failed Baltimore with soft approach to squeegee workers | READER COMMENTARY

Baltimore's mayor took far too long to get tough on squeegee workers after 2022 shooting.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s response to the 2022 shooting death of Timothy Reynolds by a squeegee worker was so deplorable that I believe it disqualifies him from a second term (“Squeegee worker documentary to premiere at Maryland Film Festival,” May 3).

That it took six excruciatingly drawn out “Baltimore Squeegee Collaborative” months after that brutal crime to finally prohibit squeegee workers from most (not all) of Baltimore’s busiest intersections was nothing less than an appalling slap in the face to the  victim’s family and to Baltimore’s many exasperated motorists.

Mayor Scott should have known better than to insinuate prejudice into the blistering citywide debate over squeegee workers’ rights in the aftermath of this already fraught and miserable tragedy. His defense of squeegee workers as an underprivileged group was understandable. But his characterization of anti-squeegee-worker sentiment as a push to criminalize poverty and “being Black in Baltimore” was unfair and not true.

It was a push to criminalize crime.

Squeegee corners had become notorious for abusive taunts, thefts and even assault. Yet Scott stubbornly failed to acknowledge that these common squeegee-corner confrontations deterred visitors and angered citizens and he implied that those who thought so were racist.

That implication was unprofessional and arguably unfounded. Following the killing of Reynolds, much of Baltimore, Black and white, seemed to be clamoring for the mayor to finally, after 40 years of squeegeeing in this town, do what other cities had the good sense to do decades ago — enforce bans on the practice outright. And do it immediately.

By ignoring the wishes of so many of his taxpaying constituents, Scott fostered an atmosphere of anger and resentment in a city already rife with hostilities. He had picked his side in the battle over squeegee work and was not budging. I see it as an egregious abdication of his mayoral responsibility to serve all of Baltimore’s citizens.

That Scott could have thought it was a good thing for Baltimore to allow teenagers to bully contributions out of motorists trapped at busy intersections was incomprehensible. That he insisted the practice continue after a squeegee worker shot and killed someone was shocking.

— Louis Balsamo, Baltimore

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