Overview
- Ivan Bates informed Mayor Brandon Scott on Dec. 2 that the State's Attorney's Office will stop direct coordination with MONSE and GVRS, though prosecutors will continue handling Baltimore Police cases and will decline an $80,000 MONSE allocation.
- Bates accused MONSE of a 'cloak of secrecy,' citing Safe Streets, victim and witness assistance, and the SideStep youth-diversion pilot as transparency and discovery risks, and he referenced an inspector general report on contracting practices.
- Scott responded on Dec. 3 urging Bates to reconsider, defending MONSE’s community-based model, pointing to legal limits on sharing juvenile information, and noting that victim service clients were identified at joint meetings he says the prosecutor canceled in October.
- In a late Wednesday follow-up, Bates doubled down that MONSE-created information must be discoverable, and his office alerted the Public Defender to possible gaps involving services provided to victims or witnesses.
- Public safety researchers cautioned that ending coordination could undercut Baltimore’s homicide decline — 127 killings this year and roughly a 60% drop since 2021 — with the operational impact on GVRS information sharing still uncertain.