BALTIMORE (AP) – Baltimore’s next police commissioner will have a daunting to-do list: quell a surge in murders, rebuild trust between officers and the public, win the confidence of a demoralized and alienated department, and keep the peace when the explosive Freddie Gray case comes to trial.
“It’s the toughest job in the United States at the moment,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and a former New York City police officer.
Commissioner Anthony Batts was fired by the mayor on Wednesday, less than three months after riots erupted over Gray’s death from a spinal injury the 25-year-old black man suffered while being bounced around the back of a moving police van. Six officers are awaiting trial in October on charges ranging up to murder.
“You have a confluence of factors: You have an ongoing criminal case that’s traumatic for everybody. You have the specter of riots. For the police union and officers, they’re alienated, and the concern is that the cops will be further alienated,” O’Donnell said. “You need a chief who can, first and foremost, drive everyone toward common ground.”
In dismissing Batts, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said his approach was too divisive and his presence too damaging.