Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm told a meeting of the Baltimore City Criminal Justice Coordinating Council Wednesday that his new policy requiring homicide detectives to occasionally walk a beat in uniform is the right decision.
“We?re getting some push-back from our detectives, and rightly so,” Hamm said. “Whenever you do something new or different, you?re going to get push-back. But I worked homicide. I know our detectives, when they want to work a ballgame [while off-duty], they will put that uniform on and work. If they can do it then, they can do it now.”
Hamm has begun requiring homicide detectives, internal affairs officers and other administrators to occasionally walk foot patrols while in uniform ? a decision that adds about 85 patrol officers to the department?s ranks.
He said the move is in response to department statistics that show an 11 percent rise in homicides and a 40 percent increase in shootings compared with this time last year.
Hamm said police also have increased efforts against illegal guns and last week alone took 81 guns off the streets, making a total of about 1,400 guns seized this year.
Baltimore City Clerk of the Circuit Court Frank Conaway Sr. questioned Hamm?s decision.
“How are those people [homicide detectives] on the street going to continue to receive cases and investigate the new cases that are coming in?” Conaway said.
“We?re asking these homicide detectives to spend one day a week on the street,” Hamm responded, adding that detectives have cell phones. “If in fact they have a break on a case, they will leave and we will take them off the street to handle those cases.”
City homicide detectives have solved about 30 percent of the year?s 130 homicides.
Mayor Sheila Dixon?s chief of staff Otis Rolley also presented the council with a first round of data from the mayor?s new GunStat tracking mechanism, meant to collect data about gun crime.
Of those defendants arrested this year, 11 had already been arrested three or more times on gun charges, the data showed.
One man had been arrested six times on gun charges; another five times.
Rolley said the mayor planned to analyze the data in “an attempt to get this gun issue under control.”
