The lead role was played, appropriately enough, by a city homicide detective, a storied veteran of the crimes against persons section who donned a silver wig and a white dress shirt bedecked with gold stars and trim. Two other detectives marked his entrance onstage with bright beams from departmental-issue flashlights.

"Ladies and gentlemen," declared the master of ceremonies, a veteran lieutenant. "It's . . . it's . . ." The crowd of more than two hundred detectives, prosecutors and federal agents could no longer contain itself. The catering hall began to howl at the sight of a mock police commissioner, bathed in the glow, appearing as he often does on the local news channels. " . . . IT'S TV TOM . . . LIVE AND IN PERSON."

The costumed detective marched to the lectern and faced down the crowd. Though no introductions were really necessary, the master of ceremonies hastily explained that Baltimore Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier had been kind enough to drop in at this, the retirement party for the homicide unit's Detective Sgt. Gary Childs. The mock commissioner took in this introduction with a diffidence that bordered on contempt.

"Gary who?" he asked finally.

The crowd roared.

All in good fun, you might say, and to an extent, you'd be right. It was a retirement party, after all, and one of the things you do at retirement parties is make fun of the bosses. Parody has always been an after-hours prerogative of labor.

But the ribbing of Baltimore's police commissioner did not end with that one performance at this month's retirement party for Sergeant Childs. It came up time and again -- in the speeches, in some of the gag gifts, in the display of comic awards and plaques -- until anti-Frazier sentiment could fairly be considered a theme of the evening.

More to the point, such criticism is being heard from more than just a few disgruntled detectives or the occasional mid-level commander victimized by the purges of the new regime. In radio cars and station houses throughout the city, ill words are now spoken routinely and with great conviction about a man who only six months ago was being universally hailed as a savior for a troubled police department.

Some of that criticism could hardly be avoided; change always makes for turbulence and Mr. Frazier arrived from California with a clear mandate for change. But much of the ire against the new commissioner is not the result of major policy shifts or new policing visions, but from smaller, more idiosyncratic issues that nonetheless affect rank-and-file morale.

"He's got his criminal investigations division up in arms because of the idea of a rotation policy," says one veteran lieutenant. "And he's got the people in patrol down on him because it seems that no matter what the facts of any controversial incident, he won't back his people. It's as simple as that."

It is indeed. Specifically, the department's 190-officer detective bureau is at odds with Mr. Frazier over his stated goal of rotating investigators to other assignments on a routine basis. Mr. Frazier has said such a policy will open up new opportunities to younger officers and minorities, while assuring that veteran officers learn a variety of tasks.

Detectives say such a policy will reduce the experience level in critical investigative units and contribute to the continuing exodus of experienced officers from the department, impairing the agency's ability to solve and deter major crimes.

In the patrol division, the 1,800-officer backbone of the agency, Mr. Frazier is now widely mistrusted among officers for failing to offer any overt show of support for any of the officers involved in a string of controversial use-of-force incidents.

Defenders of the police commissioner, however, argue that he is trying to remain impartial pending the outcome of investigations into the use of excessive force, and further, that Mr. Frazier inherited a police agency that too often resorted to brutality.

"We're one ugly incident away from a riot," says one high-ranking commander. "I think [Mr. Frazier] understands that if we don't rein in some of these people, we're looking at real trouble down the road."

It's true enough that any attempt to combat brutality was bound to lose Mr. Frazier some support among patrol officers accustomed to years of lax supervision. And it's true as well that the criticism by downtown detectives is, in part, a function of self-interest: Most veteran investigators are not exactly delighted the prospect of going back into a radio car and chasing calls.

But many within the department feel that in dealing with both issues, Mr. Frazier's pursuit of his goals needlessly damaged his relations with the troops. And when opportunities to reassure the troops were presented to him, those critics say, Mr. Frazier passed.

Worse still, many district officers and supervisors now argue that the new commissioner -- a white appointee in a predominantly black city -- has proven himself politically dependent and particularly susceptible to pressure from black community interests. Critics readily cite Mr. Frazier's awkward reversal of a decision this month to transfer the black commander of the Northwestern District in the wake of sudden community opposition.

In fact, Mr. Frazier's willingness to use the media to reassure the public -- an ability very much prized by a mayor who suffered through the non-communicative tenure of Commissioner Edward V. Woods -- has in itself become a source of ridicule within the agency. Hence, the monicker "TV Tom."

"Frazier may still look good on the 6 o'clock news," adds a veteran sergeant, referring to the new commissioner's media savvy. "But inside the department, it's fair to say that the honeymoon is over."

'A self-inflicted wound'

In any police agency, there are two hierarchies. The first is predicated on rank, on the chain-of-command logic that allows those in a paramilitary organization to give, receive and execute orders. But in any modern police department, an alternate pecking order exists, premised on specialization.

There are many in the Baltimore department who have served the city effectively by choosing not to pursue rank and promotional exams, but to master a unique and valued skills. Tactical response, death investigation, electronic surveillance, canine handling, computer programming -- all require considerable training and experience.

A good narcotics detective needs two or three years and a couple of long investigations to master the complexities of a Title III wiretap affidavit. A homicide cop needs 40 or 50 cases -- a good four or five years' experience -- before he's even close to the top of his game.

Mr. Frazier, by contrast, has told reporters that in his own rise through the ranks of the San Jose, Calif., department, he never held a position for more than three years before mastering the work and feeling burned out.

For a police administrator, such restlessness and ambition are to be valued. Mobility and flexibility are attributes that made Mr. Frazier a trouble-shooter and rising star in California department; they should serve him equally well in trying to turn the Baltimore agency around.

But the hierarchy of specialization requires an altogether different temperament.

No city employee ever worked harder and got better results than Gary Childs, who for the last 15 years has produced an unrivaled string of complex investigations and major prosecutions. It was Sergeant Childs who was at the center of the cases that sent drug lords such as Peanut King, Clarence Meredith and Gangster Webster to prison. And it was Sergeant Childs whom the department relied on when an East Baltimore child named Tauris Johnson was murdered last year and a federal case had to built against the New York drug group responsible.

"He's the best detective I've ever seen," says Capt. Mike Andrew, who served with Sergeant Childs in the narcotics unit. "And what's scary is he just gets better and better."

"We created a monster," agrees Lt. Robert Stanton, who worked with him in homicide. "We kept giving him one challenge after another until he became the best criminal investigator around. Then we tell him he might have to give that up."

When Commissioner Frazier first announced his desire for a rotation policy shortly after arriving in February, Sergeant Childs immediately began lobbying against it, hoping that at the very least, an exception might be made. In a meeting with the commander of the investigations division, he was told that the controversial policy had not been formalized and that nothing was likely to happen for a year or more.

But that wasn't assurance enough for the sergeant, who retired after 24 years with the city to join the Carroll County State's Attorney's Office as an investigator: "I asked if there could be any exceptions to rotation, and was told that there were none," he explains. "And I didn't want to end up leaving this department as anything other than a detective. I spent a lot of years learning how to do this job right, and then they tell me I won't be able to keep doing it. It's crazy."

Sergeant Childs is not the only detective to leave the city department for other opportunities in the wake of the rotation controversy, but his status and reputation are such that he has become a rallying cry within the investigations division and throughout the Baltimore law enforcement community.

"It's just incredible," says a Baltimore Circuit Court judge familiar with the department's investigative arm. "To lose someone like Childs over this makes absolutely no sense to anyone who understands how that homicide unit functions. It's a self-inflicted wound."

Agrees a veteran federal prosecutor: "From our perspective, it makes no sense."

Critics argue that Commissioner Frazier's premise is false, that there is no groundswell of young, hungry officers unable to break into investigative units cluttered with aging veterans. After vacancies were posted recently for the homicide unit, a grand total of 32 officers -- from a total force of 2,900 -- actually applied. Fewer than a dozen of those were qualified, and most of those were in fact assigned to the unit last week, according to unit supervisors.

"If you're good and you want it, you'll get here," says one homicide sergeant.

And while many detectives are willing to acknowledge that not everyone in the investigative division is a Gary Childs -- "You could rotate some of these guys to the moon and you'd never see the difference," admits one supervisor -- they argue that an across-the-board policy fails because it can't discriminate between talented and marginal officers.

For his part, Mr. Frazier has said that he would be willing to tolerate a slight decline in the homicide arrest rate to ensure an active rotation of detectives. But unit supervisors say the departure of Gary Childs goes beyond that.

"It's going to be about a whole lot more than a few percentage points on the clearance rate," says one sergeant. "It's going to come down to some essential cases -- like Tauris Johnson -- where the whole city is watching and you absolutely need to get

the right guy, get him quick and get him good.

And now, it's less likely to happen."

'The boss won't back you'

If anything, the stakes are even higher in the patrol division, the core of the department responsible for the day-to-day policing of the city. Yet in the police districts, too, Mr. Frazier's measured response to a recent spate of use-of-force controversies has left many officers cynical and mistrustful.

For some officers, of course, the argument goes so far as to suggest that the police commissioner should defend anything but the most brutal police action: "The people who are supposed to be with us should be with us," Lt. Leander Nevin, president of the city police union, has declared, "unless it is so flagrant that the good Lord couldn't be with us."

And yet with many commanders now acknowledging that excessive force is a growing problem for the department, it's also fair to say that some conflict with the rank and file over the issue of street brutality was inevitable. By that argument, Commissioner Frazier is damned no matter what he says or does in the wake of a controversy.

But many say Mr. Frazier has lost more trust and support than necessary to discourage brutality and reassure community leaders. They point to his notable silence not only on the police actions known within the department to be questionable, but on those cases that are -- within the department, at least -- widely believed to be justified.

The most dramatic example: When it was reported earlier this year that two members of the Violent Crimes Task Force would be indicted for second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of an armed drug suspect, Mr. Frazier offered no comment to the media.

His silence shocked many officers for the simple reason that most everyone with direct knowledge of the incident in East Baltimore were aware that it had been probed and justified by detectives and prosecutors.

"This was a shooting of an armed suspect, already on parole for manslaughter, who was working an eastside drug corner and was confirmed by witnesses to be battling the police," says one city prosecutor. "Whether the grand jury indicts them or not, you'd expect those officers to be defended in some way by the police commissioner."

Critics in the department say Mr. Frazier could have offered even modest support for the officers, then remarked that he was nonetheless willing to allow the legal process to reach a fair verdict. Instead, he said nothing and the opportunity to reassure his troops vanished a day later when a Circuit Court judge reacquainted the grand jury with the legal standard for second-degree murder. No indictments were ever issued.

Rank-and-file officers are also disappointed with Mr. Frazier's response to the July death of Jesse Chapman, who collapsed and died while being arrested by Western District officers. The case drew criticism from the community amid allegations that Mr. Chapman was severely beaten during the incident.

Yet sources close to the Chapman probe say there is no viable proof that the victim died from anything other than cocaine intoxication, complicated by a respiratory condition. There was no medical evidence of injuries from the arrest; in fact, only one of the officers involved in the arrest even bothered to write a use-of-force report.

For his part, Commissioner Frazier again offered no defense of his officers, instead choosing to reassure community critics by readily agreeing to an independent probe of the case. But many in his department argue that the two ideas are not mutually exclusive: "He could have expressed some general support for his people but agreed to an independent investigation in the same breath," says a Western District sergeant.

Ironically, two other recent use-of-force incidents -- the death of George Hite after his June arrest in the Southern District and the May shooting death of Jerrod Wagstaff in the Northeastern District -- are causes for genuine concern.

In the Hite case, investigators have lined up an array of witnesses who consistently say that the victim was handcuffed and non-combative when he was deliberately tripped by a Southern officer. In the Wagstaff shooting -- which has already produced a manslaughter indictment -- the victim was unarmed and the officer's account contradicted by eyewitnesses.

What better opportunity then for Mr. Frazier to offer a mild defense of officers in those cases where the investigations have failed to produce evidence of unjustified force, while at the same time using the genuine examples of excessive force to make a point about the need for change?

"If he did that, it might be seen differently," says one district supervisor. "But right now, it looks like the boss won't back you no matter what."

David Simon covers criminal justice issues for The Baltimore Sun. He is currently on leave of absence to write a book about a year in the life of an inner-city drug corner. The book is to be published by the Houghton Mifflin Co. next year.