Yvonne Wenger Contact Reporter The Baltimore Sun
DETROIT — Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young’s phone rang over and over at breakfast Friday — his first full day as Baltimore’s chief executive — with calls from the city’s ministers, offering him prayers and words of encouragement and looking for reassurance he won’t change in the face of power and pressure.
“I am going to continue to respond,” Young, 64, told an East Baltimore minister, pledging that his leadership style as the city’s 51st mayor will be the same as it has been for the last decade as City Council president.
“I probably can’t answer all the phone calls that come through, but I will continue to respond and do what I can do. That’s not going to stop. I am God’s man; you’re right,” he told the pastor.
The kind words from Baltimore reached Young at an economic development conference in Detroit, where others attending the National Organization of Black County Officials event greeted Young with applause and handshakes when he was introduced at a morning session as Baltimore’s new mayor. Conference organizers speedily updated his nametag.
Helen Holton, a former Democratic councilwoman from West Baltimore and director of the National Organization of Black County Officials, said at the conference that Young will be a stabilizing force.
“We don’t always agree, but in the end we still get along because of what we hold in common: a better Baltimore,” Holton said. “What do we have to do to move Baltimore forward? We’re the kind of people, we don’t care what the world says about Baltimore, because we know a different Baltimore.
“And Jack Young at the helm as mayor is probably the best news we can get right about now.”
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Young reiterated that he will only be mayor until the 2020 election, in which he will run for his former job as council president.
While in the city’s top job, Young said he wants to chart a course for the Baltimore Police Department that leads to fewer killings, carjackings, robberies and less violent crime all around. Last year, 309 people were killed in the city.
The new mayor said he supports Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, who relocated from New Orleans this year. He is waiting for Harrison to finish building his leadership team and finalize his strategy for the job, but Young said he knows Harrison’s success will rest on the public’s willingness to break with Baltimore’s “stop snitching” culture. Young said he wants to see whether the city and police can do more to protect witnesses and allay their fears.
“Every citizen in Baltimore has to make sure when crime is happening in their neighborhoods that they report it,” Young said. “I do understand some of the frustrations. People really do want to come forward, but they’re saying, ‘What happens to me and my family if we come forward? Who is going to protect us?’”
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