>> I'm Dr.

Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., and this is "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> If you want to find where democracy is moving the right way and the issues are moving for the people, you look to cities, you look to local governments, you look to mayors.

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we continue to look for ways to empower our customers.

We seek broad impact in our communities, and we're proud of the role we play for our customers and the US economy.

As a company, we are focused on supporting our customers and communities through housing access, small-business growth, financial health, and other community needs.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute -- our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural gas and oil industry.

Learn more -- api.org/apienergyexcellence.

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Reynolds American -- investing in innovation, people, and manufacturing to grow tomorrow right here in America.

♪♪ >> We're very honored to have the mayor of the great city of Baltimore, Maryland.

Mayor Brandon Scott, welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you, Dr.

Chavis.

The honor is all mine to be sitting across from you, sir.

>> Well, thank you so much.

We have so much to discuss.

First, you were on the City Council before becoming mayor.

So, how long have in Baltimore politics?

>> Wow.

Since 2007.

I came to City Hall, Dr.

Chavis, when I was 23 years old as an unpaid intern.

And now I'm the CEO of the city.

So, we're now -- I'll be 42 in a few months, so going into 19 years of being in City Hall.

So I've been around through a lot of things.

>> And you're still a young man.

>> Yes.

Still young.

Or as the kids say, youngish man.

They say I'm youngish.

They call me "Unc" now, so I'm no longer the young guy.

It's funny to see that flip.

When I and Nick Mosby came on to the City Council, I was 27, he was 32.

Everybody else on the City Council was 45 and above.

And most were 50 and above.

Now we've seen that flip after we "opened the flood gates."

So, it's interesting to see that guard change, but also someone as "young" as me being the "old guy" in the room.

>> Some would say that American democracy, the future of it, is dependent upon each generation rising to the occasion.

And in cities across the country, they seem to be electing younger people, more people of color, more women, and certainly more people that have sort of an activist background.

What's your assessment, Mayor Scott, of the degree to which American democracy is on the right pathway?

Are we on the right pathway forward?

Or is there some hesitation?

>> I think that the truth is, is that more than one thing can be true, Doc, at the same time.

When you think about national politics, right, it's very clear that we're not on the right path.

American democracy is under assault from the highest office of the land and those around him each and every day.

And when you see them trying to peel back things that you and others worked -- for voting rights, civil rights, women's rights, worker protection, minority business participation, all of these things, right, that have helped this country get to a point where they were as close to living up to the American dream and the goals that this country holds itself up to be forever -- right -- and see that to go back, you can see that being deteriorating at the national level.

However -- and I say this all the time, it gets me in trouble with a lot of national folks, even in the same political party as mine -- if you want to find where democracy is moving the right way and the issues are moving for the people, you look to cities.

You look to local governments.

You look to mayors.

And it's not just about Brandon Scott.

You look at Randall Woodfin in Birmingham.

You look at Andre Dickens in Atlanta.

You look at Brandon Johnson in Chicago.

You look at Mayor Bass in Los Angeles, Mayor Lee in Oakland, California.

Mayor are leading.

And they're leading on the issues that matter to people at home.

When you talk about public safety, when you talk about delivering for children, when you talk about stepping up for families, when you talk about job creation, that's where democracy is being pushed in the right direction.

Mayors are the folks that the residents can get to.

We're the ones that they're gonna see at the grocery store.

They're gonna see us in the line to pick up our children from school.

We don't get to hide away in DC, right?

My congressional delegation is probably the only one in the country that has -- They go home every day.

Most don't, and so they don't -- It's not -- Even people that I love, they're just not gonna be directly connected 24/7, 365 to their residence because they're not there.

And that's where you see that is happening in cities around the country.

Mayor Bibb in Cleveland is another example of folks doing what's right to save this democracy.

And that's where the fight is right now.

>> You have such a comprehensive analysis and assessment of what's happening not only in Baltimore, but other cities.

How is your interaction with these other mayors?

>> We're family.

We talk to each other every day.

And I think that that's what you see.

You can see that, and folks that know us know how frequent we communicate, but also, more importantly, how we work together, how we say, "Look, this is how I solved this issue or started to work on this issue.

This is how we brought violence down."

These are the things you can come and learn from each other and then take it and tailor it to your city.

When we're going through crisis situations that happen in our city, if you've been through a similar situation, offering advice, you know, free of charge to your brother and your sister mayor -- We all have to communicate consistently, work on policy things together, push for things together because together we are a mighty fist.

We will not allow folks to separate us and say, "Oh, well, your city is different from that city."

We are different cities.

We have different constituencies.

But we face some of the same issues in every single city, which is why we're always going to be working together.

And that's whether it's part of -- I'm the first vice president of the African American Mayors Association -- whether it's Democratic Mayors Association, US Conference of Mayors, National League of Cities, all mayors are going to work together, regardless of all the other political stuff, because cities are where the work is.

>> That's encouraging.

So, tell our audience about some of the progress that Baltimore has made in terms of housing, in terms of reduction of crime, youth involvement.

You know, there's a litany.

So, tell us about Baltimore's progress under your leadership.

>> Dr.

Chavis, Baltimore is the greatest city in America.

You cannot tell the story of this country without Baltimore, right?

There would be no national anthem if it weren't for Baltimore.

There would be no United States of America if it wasn't for Baltimore in that War of 1812.

We wouldn't have the education system that folks are trying to tear down in this country were it not for a little Black boy from West Baltimore by the name of Thurgood Marshall.

This city has always been at the forefront of change, but it's also always been, as you said, at the forefront of a lot of hatred, vitriol, and misconception.

Gun violence is what pushed me into public service and why, at the ripe age of 6, I said I wanted to be the mayor of Baltimore, the first time I saw -- >> At 6 years old?

>> At 6 years old.

The first time that I saw someone get shot with my own physical eyes.

And you know through "The Wire," "Homicide: Life on the Street," "The Corner" -- all of these TV shows and all of these conversations at the national level, it's about Baltimore's gun violence and it's how an issue that no one can ever get to move.

What we have done over these last five years, as you and I are talking, Baltimore has the fewest amount of homicides it has ever had in any year to this point.

We are going to have the lowest amount of homicides that our city has ever recorded in a single year.

>> Congratulations.

What do you attribute that to?

How did you get crime down?

>> First and foremost, it's we, right?

We.

I decided that we were gonna have a comprehensive approach, that we were no longer going to subscribe to the notion that only law enforcement is responsible to reducing gun violence.

We, by a law, a law that I passed in Baltimore, have to have a -- the mayor has to present a comprehensive gun-violence prevention plan at least every two years in Baltimore City.

So, when you think about that, we put all of these things together.

We built the infrastructure that focuses on all of that.

First and foremost, we created the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and stood up our flagship gun-violence strategy, the Group Violence Reduction Strategy.

As you know very well in your time in Baltimore, right, there was a time where if you were Black and breathing, they put you in handcuffs just because you were outside, right?

>> Racial profiling.

>> Racial profiling, breathing while Black, Black policing, Broken Windows Theory, whatever you want to call it.

And everybody that lived in neighborhoods like I lived in, in Park Heights, where we host Preakness, right, was a suspect, no matter whether you were involved in any of that life or not.

And I always use numbers.

So, into the year of 2004, the city had 278 homicides.

That year, they arrested 91,000 people in a city of 600,000.

>> 91,000 in one year?

>> In one year.

In last year, in 2024, we were down to 201 homicides.

We had 15,000 arrests because it's never been about how many.

It's about who and for what.

And through our Group Violence Reduction Strategy, what we did is we identified those who are the actual most likely, less than 2% of the population in the city, to be the victim and perpetrator of gun violence.

And we offer folks the opportunity.

First they get a letter from me.

Actually, I had two young men come up to me last week, one on the street corner, one in the convention center, and say, "Mr.

Mayor, I got a letter from you.

I don't know what it means.

How can I get help?"

The letter essentially says to them, "I know who you are.

I know what you do.

This is the one chance that I'm giving you to change your life.

If you need help with housing, education, whatever, we'll give it to you.

But if you don't, then the boys are coming to remove you."

Right?

And we've done both.

Over 90% of the people that have taken us up on that chance have not been revictimized.

Over 90% of the people that took us up on that chance had not recidivated into any life of crime.

And to all the other folks, guess what.

They went to jail.

We built cases on them.

But it's not just that.

We have also invested historic amounts.

I took $50 million of my ARPA money and put it into community violence intervention, where we pay people who used to be those shooters to go out and prevent violence from happening.

At the same time, we are waging a war on illegal guns in our city in every way.

That is the focus of my police department.

I want them going out there and going after the gun traffickers, the trigger pullers, all of that.

>> Now, there's no gun manufacturers in Baltimore.

>> No, there is no -- zero.

>> So, where did all these guns come from?

>> They come -- Over 60% of them come from other states.

And this is how we started to attack that issue.

One, I just want your viewers to know -- not just me -- it is illegal under US law right now for any mayor of any city, in any city in this country, to know exactly where the guns come from.

Now, Dr.

Chavis, I'll show you >> Why?

Is that -- What... >> It's a congressional rule.

It's called the Tiahrt Amendment to gun laws in this country.

So, my police department, who works at my command, go out, recover these guns.

They give it to ATF.

ATF traces them.

They tell the police department where they come from, but the police department cannot tell their boss so that we are protecting -- not gun stores that are operating the right way, right?

They are protecting people who are purposely skirting rules and flooding our streets.

And we actually recently in Baltimore won a lawsuit against Hanover Armory, a gun store outside of Baltimore City, for $62 million because they were purposely not checking IDs and selling ghost guns to people -- kids, felons, people who should not have them.

>> Now, I consider myself to be partially informed.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> I've never heard that before.

And I don't think most Americans know that there are rules and regulations that protect the distribution of illegal guns.

And yet we have this problem, not just a Baltimore problem, but it's a national problem... >> It's a problem, yes, sir.

>> ...of gun violence.

Tell us now about -- A lot of cities are going through gentrification, where the indigenous populations of these major cities are being displaced.

What's happening in Baltimore with housing?

>> Yeah, we in Baltimore -- our biggest housing problem for a long time, as you know, has been vacant houses, right?

When you think about Baltimore, people have to be reminded that the first racial redlining law was signed in my office, the one that I sit in every day.

And when you think about de-industrialization, when GM and Bethlehem Steel and all those things left, and you think about the Highway to Nowhere, where they were supposed to connect Interstate 70 and I-95, they destroyed a middle-class Black neighborhood known as West Baltimore to do so, and now we have a highway that doesn't even connect, right?

You think about all of those things, and you think about the arrival -- you and I know how that happened -- of crack and all these things showing up in these neighborhoods, you have a recipe for disaster.

And for us, that shows up most prominently in vacant housing.

In the year 2000, on December the 8th of 2000, Baltimore had 16,000 vacant properties.

When I got sworn into office in 2020, on the same exact date, we had 16,000 vacant properties.

And what we have been able to do now is get that number down to 12,300-and-something for the first time in decades through our new $3-billion plan to end vacant housing in Baltimore.

And the plan isn't just about the city, and I think that's the key.

It's the city.

It's the private community in GBC.

It's the community through BUILD and other partners.

And what we are doing, Dr.

Chavis, is taking some of the strategies that we've used to build up places like the Inner Harbor and Harbor East -- all things that I voted for and support because that investment -- Having T. Rowe Price's new headquarters in Baltimore, having Under Armour's new headquarters in Baltimore -- We have $4 billion of waterfront investment going on, a new Inner Harbor that's gonna come thanks to Dave Bramble, a West Baltimore guy.

That's great.

But we also have to take tax incentives into those neighborhoods that were purposely disinvested into.

And we're taking TIF, tax increment financing into West Baltimore, into East Baltimore, on those vacant properties, working with not just large developers -- small developers, community CDCs -- to get those properties back on the rolls and do initiatives to help those folks who are renting in the city through, like, my program Buy Back the Block, where we're taking renters in Baltimore who are paying $1,200, $1,300, $1,400 in rent a month, and now they're having mortgages for $700, $800, and $900, and giving them $20,000, $30,000, $40,000... >> So these renters become homeowners.

>> Homeowners, yes.

I helped a family move in last year through our Buy Back the Block program, myself and another gentleman who took a house that was burnt out and vacant.

And we worked through legal -- And folks have to understand, most of these vacants are actually owned by private folks who are just sitting on them waiting for something to happen.

We go to court.

We fight these folks.

We get it in the receivership, get it in the hands of somebody that really wants to do something.

In this case, I'm telling you, in West Baltimore, this gentleman has been doing -- renovating these houses and selling them to folks who are renting to become homeowners.

This one gentleman had been renting in the neighborhood.

He saw this house is vacant.

The guy, the developer renovated it.

We ended up helping him.

He had $40,000 towards his down payment, and that allows him to now be a homeowner in the neighborhood that he was already living in.

>> Now, listening to you, I know why you got re-elected.

You are doing something that should be done in cities across the country.

So, congratulations on your progress.

I'm very interested in your vision for the future.

Tell me how the city of Baltimore sees its planning for the future to make sure a part of the major advancement in the American economy.

>> Yeah, I think that we know that Baltimore is a city that's situated really like no other, right, with our proximity to DC, the ability to get to New York and all these other places very quickly, our ability to be on the water and be a port city, right?

There's not many places that can be a port city, eds and meds, and tech tourism all at the same time.

And we have that ability.

And we're trying to capitalize on all of that, but capitalize on it in a way that makes sure that we don't leave folks behind, right?

When you think about all of the tech start-ups that are coming out of places where people live in Baltimore already -- Morgan, Hopkins, UMBC, right?

We're talking about over $600 million in investments in start-ups each of the last two years.

That's an historical thing for us.

And we're trying to grow to be the first, as we say, Equitech city, to make sure that our young people, as they're coming out of high school or they're coming out of these colleges and they have these companies, that they stay in Baltimore -- and making investments into them.

That's why we put into lab space with the University of Maryland and places for people to grow.

And it's also evolving even the way that we do our CTE education, as CTE graduate, matching what the needs that -- first and foremost, what city government needs from our employees as our employees age and grow and maybe retire, to what our young people are learning so that they're able to then immediately come and work in the city of Baltimore, right?

We have to make all those investments into our business community, into our economy, but into our people.

My Office of Employment Development is always evolving how we do these things and partnering with those who are looking for employees to make sure that our people are at the table.

Because we will not be the best Baltimore if we continue to allow certain people to be left behind.

>> You said earlier that you had early aspirations, 6 years old, to be the mayor one day of Baltimore, Maryland.

Your dream has come true.

Tell us about the opportunity for young people in Baltimore -- for their dreams to come true.

How can young people benefit from your trajectory, from a guy in West Baltimore to now being the chief executive officer of the city?

>> Yeah, listen, that -- They know it.

I tell the young people every day, they are the reason why I'm in this job -- because I want them to live in a place that sees them.

Dr.

Chavis, when I was growing up, I was seen as a problem to solve, not a resource to invest in.

And we're flipping that on its head.

Yes, I'm proud that we put more money into public schools than any mayor in history.

In my first term, we opened 11 new school buildings alone.

>> Public schools.

>> Public schools, right?

Like, that's a huge thing.

>> Most cities are closing public schools and they're opening up private schools.

>> Yeah, and we -- You know, over five rec centers, $200 million in capital investments to my rec and parks department, their operating budget growing by 40% in my first term alone.

But we go a step further.

My Mayor's Office of African American Male Engagement -- we went out, and we worked with those young men that used to squeegee, taking them and showing them through our Rites of Passage program how they can grow into the best version of themselves.

That's something that we're gonna continue to do consistently.

We created an HBCU fellowship program, where students from Morgan and Coppin and Bowie State actually come to my office -- a few of them actually work in my office directly -- and work with us, learning things that they can do in government.

And we're trying to keep them inside of city government after that year fellowship.

I want the folks coming behind me to be better than me because that means the city's gonna be better.

>> There's something called the pipeline from school to prison.

>> Yes, sir.

>> The incarceration rate, I think, across Maryland is going down.

But how is it in Baltimore, the city?

>> Like I said, when you look at our arrests, right, we're not arresting hundreds of thousands, nearly hundreds of thousands of people every year, and we have less crime.

And I think that's the key, that incarceration rates have dropped and violence has dropped at the same time.

Because we have to make sure -- Listen, people have to be held accountable, right?

When they kill somebody, murder somebody, steal a car, all of those things, they have to be held accountable.

And many other times, that's gonna mean that, like, they're gonna have to be incarcerated.

But we also have to invest that same vigor into prevention and rehabilitation.

And this comprehensive approach that all of us have, right, that our governor has in Maryland to understand that we have to do all the things, is what we know works.

Simple arresting and leaving people and saying, once they've committed a crime, meaning that they're done forever, doesn't work.

We have to make sure that we're investing in people's ability to rehabilitate.

One of the most powerful things I've ever done in my elected office is actually visit a young man who robbed me in prison, right?

Talk to him face to face, man to man, and then help him get out of jail earlier than -- >> And this was somebody who robbed you?

>> Who stuck a gun in my face.

And now that to me was the most relieving thing.

I didn't have closure when court happened.

I didn't have closure when he was behind bars.

I had closure after sitting across from him, man to man, having our discussion, and then I personally went to court and testified for him to be released because I knew that he was different at 25 than he was at 15 and I was different at 36 as I was at 26, right?

I think that's the kind of thing that we have to understand.

>> What is that young man doing now?

>> To my knowledge -- I let him be, right?

He knows and his family knows, if he needs something, they can reach out to me.

But to my knowledge, he's just working, providing for his family.

>> So, you are also now a family man?

>> Yes, sir.

>> How does that impact how you divide up your time?

>> Being a husband and a father is, like, the joy of my life.

We have three kids, a 10-year-old, a soon-to-be 2-year-old in a few weeks, and an 8-month-old.

So, we're in the thick of it in the Scott household.

But it's the best thing, being there.

My wife and my kids actually provide me balance that I didn't even know I needed until I met my wife and my oldest son because they now allow me to understand the importance of my work, right, and what that work means, but also the importance of having things for me and being there for my family and being able to be around them.

When I see in their eyes that they have the power to be whatever their wildest dream is, that's what gives me the greatest hope, and that they will take nothing off of nobody and let everybody know what they stand for, what they believe in, and what they will be.

>> Mayor Brandon Scott, "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you for having me, sir.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, visit our website at TheChavisChronicles.com.

Also, follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we continue to look for ways to empower our customers.

We seek broad impact in our communities, and we're proud of the role we play for our customers and the U.S.

economy.

As a company, we are focused on supporting our customers and communities through housing access, small-business growth, financial health, and other community needs.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute -- our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural gas and oil industry.

Learn more -- api.org/apienergyexcellence.

The Reynolds American organization -- on a mission to grow a better tomorrow by building a smokeless world.

Reynolds American -- investing in innovation, people, and manufacturing to grow tomorrow right here in America.

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