Baltimore police Commissioner Leonard Hamm was rewarded Wednesday with a $12,000 pay raise.
The City Board of Estimates approved a one-year contract extension and the salary increase for Hamm, who will earn $162,000 annually. The raise comes after weeks of protests from dozens of people asking Hamm to step down after a 7-year-old boy was arrested. Mayor Sheila Dixon praised the decision.
“Hamm is moving the department in the right direction,” she said.”I am confident that he will continue to do a good job.”
Hamm was working under the contract of former Commissioner Kevin Clark, who was fired in 2004 by then-Mayor Martin O?Malley. At the time, O?Malley characterized Clark as a “distraction” from the city?s crime-fighting efforts. Clark is suing the city, seeking reinstatement.
Dixon said Hamm?s raise was his first.
“Commissioner Hamm has actually been working under Clark?s contract,” she said.
Paul Blair, head of the city police officers? union, said he wanted similar raises for his membership. “I hope they give the same rate they gave the police commissioner to the rank and file.”
Blair said the union and the city are in preliminary talks over the current contract, which expires June 30.
At a crime seminar this month at Coppin State University, former FBI agent and criminal justice expert Tyrone Powers called on Hamm to step down, saying the department needed “stronger and better leadership.”
Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, said he is withholding judgment on the commissioner?s pay raise.
“The most important thing is we need him to keep the promises he made about the report of the arrest of the 7-year-old,” Cheatham said. “Last week he said we would have it, and it has yet to come.”
Police officials declined requests for comment.
