Maryland legislative preview: What are top public safety priorities in 2024?

This year, the first Maryland Senate bill was about guns. Next year, the chair of the committee that brought that law is planning to start with something different to promote public safety: legislation protecting judges.

“Ensuring that our judges are safe also ensures that the legal process plays out in a fair and impartial manner,” said Sen. William Smith, Jr., D-Montgomery County, chair of the judicial proceedings committee, “It’s fundamental to the operation and the function of the judiciary.”

The legislation that removes judges' addresses from public search, and prevents publication on websites and social media platforms, comes after a similar bill failed to pass the House of Delegates earlier this year. About two months ago, a Washington County circuit court judge was shot and killed in his driveway after issuing a decision in the gunman’s child custody case.

“We have to protect (judges),” said state Sen. Paul Corderman, R-Washington/Frederick, whose father, a circuit court judge in Washington County, lived through an attack in 1989. “Now,” the state senator and judge’s son said, during a phone interview.

“It will be the first thing we put on the floor,” said Smith, in a phone interview on that bill and other topics that may come before the committee when the General Assembly returns in January.

Moore plans bill for law enforcement workforce shortage

The scene for public safety in the state is different this year than it has been in the eight previous. Baltimore, the state’s largest city, is on track to record under 300 homicides for the first time since 2014. The state’s new governor, Wes Moore, a Democrat, took office in January.

In a speech this month in Cambridge, Moore described an “all-of-the-above approach when it comes to public safety,” highlighting “actively supporting” local and state law enforcement, amplifying “coordination,” and prioritizing “job training from Western Maryland to the Eastern Shore.”

During the first year of the administration, the governor doled out the state’s “top cop” award to a Carroll County officer in June, and the Baltimore City Police Department added personnel to a state homeland security agency, the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center. The areas that the governor specified “job training” for in his speech still lag behind the rest of the state in certain economic indicators and have not been free of gun violence this year.

More: State’s ‘top cop’ receives recognition from law enforcement leaders, governor

More: Non-fatal shootings double in Maryland in 8-year stretch. Funding to help on the way.

Moore indicated during his Cambridge speech that he would introduce a bill that addresses “the workforce shortages in law enforcement so we can do a better job of keeping our communities safe.” Statewide, police departments from Baltimore City to Berlin on Maryland’s Eastern Shore have struggled with the recruitment of officers, including with adding women to their ranks.

As of June 8, the police department in the state’s largest city was budgeted for 2,605 sworn members and had 2,084, a vacancy of 521 sworn members. As of Dec. 19, that vacancy grew to 566, according to an email from a department spokesperson.

“We’re going to pass a bill that deals with retention and recruitment,” said Smith, the judicial proceedings committee chair. “I’m looking into a bill that would be an almost GI-style bill to incentivize officers to stay in the profession,” alluding to the law originally passed by the federal government toward the end of World War II that provided benefits and assistance for certain veterans.

More: 'Recruitment’s the most difficult thing': How police undertake it in new environment

Revisiting juvenile justice laws

Del. William Valentine, R-Frederick/Washington, served in law enforcement, including as a police officer, across three different Maryland jurisdictions during his 25-year career.

After stepping away as an officer, he then worked as an investigator in the Frederick County State’s Attorney’s office before being elected in November 2022 to the Maryland House of Delegates. He now serves as a House Judiciary Committee member and a member of both the subcommittee on public safety and the one on family & juvenile law.

“Juvenile justice has been discussed quite a bit in the off-session in our hearings,” said Valentine, who spent the majority of his law enforcement career with police in the Carroll County seat of Westminster, during a phone interview.

He indicated that the requirement of having an attorney present with a juvenile even if a parent has consented to an interview and procedures for notifying State’s Attorney’s offices of allegations regarding juveniles (those under 18) are items that may be revisited in the session.

A report issued this year by the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, titled “Putting Youth Crime in Maryland in Context,” showed overall complaints against juveniles being cut in half over the last decade, but rising slightly in the past couple years.

More: Juvenile justice, education issues take center stage at Wicomico legislative meeting

In Wicomico County on the lower Eastern Shore, there was a chorus call of public officials who called for revisiting the state’s juvenile justice laws during an October pre-legislative meeting.

That county’s state’s attorney pointed to the Child Interrogation Protection Act, a law passed in 2022, and the Juvenile Restoration Act, a law passed in 2021, as legislation in need of revision.

On the Senate side, Smith, too, cited juvenile justice as a topic of focus in the year ahead.

“We’re going to have a series of briefings at the beginning of session in the Judicial Proceedings Committee to address that issue,” he said. “All aspects from the Department of Juvenile Services all the way through to chronic absenteeism and truancy in school, and asking experts for their solutions, not just to come before the committee to admire the problem, but to offer solutions.”

The Maryland General Assembly is scheduled to convene in Annapolis on Jan. 10, 2024.

Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Judges' safety, juvenile justice are priorities for Maryland in 2024