Your solution to an uptick of 48% more murders is to fire all the cops. Break the Police pride down, punish the cops. That's totally how you get people to risk their lives and patrol the West Districts of Baltimore.
Absolutely brilliant. I wonder why no one has implemented this outstanding idea before. /sarcasm
Let me give you a hint: If you Fire a Cop, they'll just work in another district. There are _plenty_ of safe districts looking for experienced officers, and there's almost no reason why an officer has to keep working in West Baltimore aside from pride.
They can very easily jump to another richer district, one with fewer murders and higher-educated populace. And frankly, the smarter cops tend to do that. I think officers prefer to work in safe places and hand out speeding tickets all day... rather than taking on armed drug dealers in the worst parts of Baltimore.
So offer some alternatives instead of just knocking everyone else down.
As stated before, my solution is to create robust independent police review boards. It'd be something like New York City's model with an independent "Civilian Complaint Review Board", complete with subpoena power against officers.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/html/home/home.shtml
Anyway, Chicago's review board has indications of weakness, and the article above is simply a note of what is going on in that agency. Maybe the review board needs to hire more non-cops and more lawyers from the ACLU.
The correct action depends a lot on the politics of the Chicago review board are. If the review board is appointed by the direct election, then the leaders need to be voted out and reformed.
If the review board is appointed by the local mayor / city counsel, then we should organize political protests and bring up the Chicago Independent Police Review Authority as an actual issue during Chicago elections.
If you don't live in the city of Chicago, then of course the article posted here doesn't apply to you. They don't apply to me either, but if it were happening in my city, that's how I'd start.
I didn't advocate firing anybody. I think you're confusing me with other participants in this thread. That's pretty ironic, coming from someone who said elsewhere in the discussion, "if you want to stuff words in my mouth, I will refuse to partake in the discussion." [1]
EDIT: I also don't think the up-thread proposal was to fire everyone. Just the bad actors. And, really, do you want someone who's malicious and has a power trip walking around with a gun and the authority to use it?
If they don't believe those things, fire them and get cops who will do their jobs.