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Baltimore Fires Another Police Commissioner, After Record High Murder Rate Baltimore Fires Another Police Commissioner, After Record High Murder Rate
(about 3 hours later)
The mayor of Baltimore abruptly announced on Friday that she had fired city’s police commissioner after a year of unprecedented violence in the city. Besieged by the nation’s highest big-city murder rate, Baltimore named its third police commissioner in five years on Friday, with the mayor saying she was “impatient” for change. The surprise move came as the city struggles to control the violence that took the lives of almost 900 residents during the two-and-a-half-year tenure of the last chief, who was fired on Friday.
Mayor Catherine Pugh said that Darryl De Sousa, a 30-year veteran of the department who was most recently a deputy police commissioner, would replace Kevin Davis, who became commissioner in 2015. Mr. De Sousa will be Baltimore’s ninth police commissioner since 1994. The new commissioner, Darryl De Sousa, 53, inherits a long list of problems that have proved intractable for predecessors, including a near-total lack of trust of the police in many neighborhoods and stunning levels of privation along the city’s most violent streets, even as employment rates have improved and areas like the Inner Harbor have become gleaming tourist destinations.
Baltimore experienced a record murder rate last year and had by far the highest rate of the 30 most populous cities in the United States. “We need the numbers to go down faster than they are,” Mayor Catherine Pugh, who has been in office for a year, said at a news conference announcing the change.
There have been more than 300 homicides there in each of the past three years, including 343 recorded in 2017. By comparison, New York, which has a population more than 10 times that of Baltimore, recorded 286 murders last year. For its long-troubled police force, the city has tried an outsider from California via Harvard, who was seen as an agent of change, then a Marylander who was chief of police in a neighboring county. Now, it has changed tack again, appointing in Mr. De Sousa an insider who has served in the department for 30 years.
“The fact is, we are not achieving the pace of progress that our residents have every right to expect,” Ms. Pugh said in a statement. Mr. De Sousa will be Baltimore’s ninth police commissioner since 1994.
In a news conference, Ms. Pugh explained why she had suddenly chosen Mr. De Sousa to replace Mr. Davis, with whom he had worked hand-in-hand. Mr. De Sousa said he had already begun an initiative to flood the city’s streets with waves of officers from 9 a.m. to midnight. “The priority as of this moment right now is really simple — it’s a really simple priority and that’s violence reduction,” he said. “Second priority is violence reduction, and third priority is violence reduction at an accelerated pace. That’s the bottom line.”
“I’m impatient,” she said. “We need violence reduction. We need the numbers to go down faster than they are.” But residents questioned whether more officers, or another new chief, would be enough. The department has faced allegations of corruption and is operating under federal oversight because of unconstitutional searches and police misconduct aimed at African-Americans. Six members of an elite task force pleaded guilty last year in a scandal that involved stealing guns, money and drugs. And other officers have been accused of shutting off body cameras so they could plant drugs.
She then turned the podium over to Mr. De Sousa, who said he had already begun an initiative to flood the city’s streets with waves of police officers from 9 a.m. to midnight. In 2015, the city erupted after the death of Freddie Gray from injuries sustained in police custody. In many ways, both the police and predators have come to be viewed as dangers.
He indicated that he would hew to anti-violence measures introduced by Mayor Pugh in August, referring several times to a surplus of officers who would be better deployed on the city’s streets than in administrative positions or elsewhere. “People are not used to having a relationship with the police department where we see them as a helping resource,” said Erricka Bridgeford, an influential community activist and one of the organizers of Baltimore Ceasefire, an anti-violence group. “The challenge is really finding a way to build trust with individuals.” Officers often do not get the time to build trust and relationships, she said.
“The priority as of this moment right now is really simple — it’s a really simple priority and that’s violence reduction,” he said. “Second priority is violence reduction, and third priority is violence reduction at an accelerated pace. That’s the bottom line.” With about 615,000 residents — almost two-thirds of them black — Baltimore is one of the poorest major cities in the United States. Nearly one in four families live in poverty, far more than the national average. The city has recorded more than 300 homicides in each of the past three years.
He added that the department had identified the “trigger-pullers” in the city and that it would be pursuing them, though he quickly added that that pursuit would be carried out “in a constitutional manner.” By comparison, New York, whose population is more than 10 times greater, recorded 286 murders last year. Los Angeles — another major city that has seen murder totals over the past two decades fall to numbers below Baltimore’s — announced Friday that its police chief, Charlie Beck, would retire after eight years heading the department.
“I’m a chess player,” he said. “I don’t like to be outwitted.” “This idea of ‘throw another thousand cops out there’ I don’t think fixes our crime problem,” said Nick Mosby, who represents West Baltimore in the State Legislature.
Mr. Davis was appointed after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year old man who was killed after sustaining a spinal cord injury while riding unsecured in a police vehicle. Mr. Davis presided over several years of violence and protest, but demonstrated that he was dedicated to reform, working closely with the United States Department of Justice as required by the city’s consent decree with the federal government. Mr. Mosby said that Commissioner De Sousa’s Baltimore roots may give him a leg up in efforts to heal police-community relations. But he fears that will only go so far. Deeper change won’t come until more residents have a real chance at education and economic opportunity, he said.
Criminal justice reform advocates were surprised at the news of his sudden dismissal and thanked him for his service. Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund and a longtime Baltimore resident, described his “unyielding commitment” to the consent decree process. “The concentration of poverty is the story of Baltimore,” Mr. Mosby said.
“Commissioner Davis recognized that building trust between the community and the Baltimore Police Department requires a commitment to the promotion of constitutional policing practices, and meaningful and respectful engagement with the community,” she said in a statement, adding that the organization looked forward to working with the new commissioner. In 2012, Anthony Batts, a former chief of the Oakland police with a post at Harvard, became Baltimore’s police commissioner. He was a pro-reform leader who incurred the wrath of the police union, tried to win the ability to fire bad officers more easily, and angered many in the rank and file when he said he had taken over a department mired in a “cycle of scandal, corruption and malfeasance.”
Darlene Cain, the president of the police reform advocacy group Mothers on the Move, lamented the continuing violence in the city but testified to Mr. Davis’s involvement on the ground. She said that he had been meeting with her group monthly and that she hoped that Mr. De Sousa would do the same. After Mr. Gray’s death and the ensuing unrest, followed by the decision to prosecute six officers in the case, the police presence in many parts of the city diminished, while arrests declined and murders soared. The charges all led to acquittals or were later withdrawn.
But Ms. Cain, whose son was killed in a confrontation with police officers nearly a decade ago, said she was not surprised by Mr. Davis’s abrupt removal. Mr. Batts was replaced by Kevin Davis, who had been the police chief in nearby Anne Arundel County. Mr. Davis worked closely with the Justice Department to carry out the changes contained in the federal consent decree. But while community leaders applauded Mr. Davis’s commitment, murders continued apace.
“Nothing is truly shocking anymore,” she said. “You just move forward and continue to strive to do better with whoever comes in that seat next.” The problem is compounded by the fact that many witnesses remain afraid or unwilling to come forward, viewing officers as interlopers who live elsewhere and care little about what happens in their community.
Mr. Davis’s predecessor, Anthony Batts, was also fired after an increase in violence, by then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Mr. Davis served as acting commissioner for three months before he was confirmed by the City Council as permanent commissioner. Mr. De Sousa, too, will need to seek confirmation from the Council. If, that is, there are even any officers around: The real power on the streets is wielded by pastors and neighborhood churches, and drug dealers and gang leaders, as residents say the police are often nowhere to be seen. Baltimore has almost double the number of officers per capita as the average for cities of its size, but the union has complained that there are not enough assigned to patrol duty.
Lester Davis, a spokesman for Bernard Young, the president of the City Council, said that he expected “a reinvigoration at the troop level” under Mr. De Sousa, adding that he thought the new commissioner would reverse the malaise hanging over the department. Police union officials have warned that depleted patrol ranks have rendered the department unable to perform proactive policing and have put it at risk of not being about to protect residents.
“A lot of officers have been paralyzed because they haven’t had direction, they haven’t had clear instruction,” he said. In an interview, the union president, Lt. Gene Ryan, embraced Commissioner De Sousa’s plan for more officers on the streets.
He emphasized that the challenges that Mr. De Sousa faced were twofold, as he helped to overhaul a department tarnished by a Justice Department report accusing it of systemic racial biases and abuses while continuing with the community policing strategy that his predecessor had adopted. “If you’re not familiar with what’s going on there, how can you solve the problems?” Lieutenant Ryan said. “We need boots on the ground. We’ve got to regain their trust. We need to get back to a relationship where we are all family again.”
The force has been involved in a number of embarrassing episodes in recent months, including in July, when an officer was suspended after a body-camera recording appeared to catch him placing drugs at the scene of an arrest. Commissioner De Sousa, who was until Friday the deputy commissioner of the department’s Patrol Bureau, seemed to embrace that challenge.
There have been indications that the rank-and-file were unhappy with leadership. In a letter to the Baltimore Sun reporter Kevin Rector last January, Gene Ryan, the president of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police, said that within the department, officers felt as if they were “severely understaffed and under attack from all sides, including from within the command ranks of the BPD.” “The No. 1 thing you’re going to see is more police officers on the street,” he said.
Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which helps advise departments on reforming their use-of-force policies, had worked with Mr. Davis. He said that the sudden firing was characteristic of a new reality in which mayors held police chiefs accountable for the murder rate. Katie Zafft, a University of Maryland criminologist, said it was critical that additional officers assigned to the streets not merely drive around but walk the beat, poking their heads into shops and going out of their way to engage residents.
“This is a sign of the times,” Mr. Wexler said. “Twenty-five years ago, the conventional thinking was, no matter what the police do, it doesn’t make a difference. Today, expectations on the part of mayors have never been higher.” “Just putting more officers on the street isn’t going to solve the problem unless they really make that connection with the community and double down on figuring out what’s going on in those neighborhoods,” Ms. Zafft said.
But he said that Mr. Davis had moved to make changes in the department, even when it was unclear whether the Trump administration would enforce the consent decree, which originated under President Obama’s Justice Department. She added the department must also put as much emphasis on its efforts to cull criminal kingpins who have fueled retaliatory violence.
“It can be daunting to have to deal with both implementing reforms and dealing with violent crime at the same time,” Mr. Wexler said.