Baltimore: Welcome to the Casbah!

Among its tourist attractions, Baltimore boasts of succulent crab cakes, miles and miles of red-brick row houses, and the fourth busiest harbor in the nation. It quickly glides over its most famous tourist lure, the seamy, sinful strip known as "the Block," a symbol and byproduct of a police department that ranks with the worst in any major U.S. city.

A searching indictment of the 3,000-man force was returned last month by the International Association of Chiefs of Police after an eight-month, $52,000 study for the state of Maryland. It prompted the police...

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