In January, Thomas C. Frazier took over the 2,900-member Baltimore Police Department, an agency dogged by brutality complaints, petty corruption, and internal strife fueled by racial friction.
The city was reeling from its second-straight record-setting year for homicides.
Some 353 people were slain in Baltimore in 1993 -- up from 335 the year before -- as drug dealers brazenly took over neighborhoods and police morale plummeted under Commissioner Edward V. Woods.
Frustrated by the carnage, politicians and community leaders turned up the heat on Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and Mr. Woods.
In August 1993, Mr. Woods announced his retirement. While the mayor said that he had not asked the commissioner to step aside, he also made no effort to keep his embattled commissioner.
Mr. Woods' critics had questioned his management skills and his ability to assure the public that the city's streets were safe.
Mr. Frazier is the antithesis of his predecessor. Confident but not brash, he is equally adept at fielding questions from harried reporters or searching for middle ground with angry community activists.
He honed his management skills while serving as a deputy chief in the San Jose, Calif., Police Department under Joe McNamara, widely renowned as one of the nation's most innovative chiefs.
Shortly after his arrival here, Mr. Frazier ordered police raids in drug-infested neighborhoods that were followed by a large-scale cleanup effort by hundreds of sanitation workers.
Whole neighborhoods were liberated from the clutches of drug dealers, and the commissioner's star shone brightly.
But his proposed rotation policy has generated much unrest and bitterness within the department. Under the plan, officers -- including entrenched veterans -- would be rotated to different jobs.
At a going-away party for Gary Childs, a well-respected homicide detective, the commissioner was ridiculed by disgruntled officers who dubbed him "TV Tom," because he appears on the television news so frequently.
He has also been criticized by the Fraternal Order of Police for failing to defend officers involved in cases of alleged police brutality.
In July, Mr. Frazier angered the FOP when he announced that he was supporting a federal civil rights probe into death of Jesse Chapman, a West Baltimore man found dead in the back of a police van.
A grand jury declined to indict the arresting officers after an autopsy report revealed that Mr. Chapman died from a cocaine-induced asthma attack -- not a beating by police, as alleged by neighborhood residents.
The commissioner created more controversy when, faced with complaints from black leaders, he changed his mind on transferring Maj. Barry Powell out of his command at the Northwestern Police District.
Mr. Frazier retracted his orders after meeting with a contingent of residents and leaders from Park Heights and other nearby neighborhoods.
The decision drew complaints from some officers who charged Mr. Frazier with bowing to community pressure.
In a recent interview with Sun reporters Michael James and Peter Hermann, he spoke of his effort to go after criminals while reshaping the department.
'I Take Discipline Seriously'
Q: Is there any indication that the homicide epidemic is subsiding?
A: I'm very encouraged by the crime stats. We had 353 murders last year. We're about 40 under that at this point. I'm encouraged by that number. That's about an 18 percent decrease.
Q: Do you think you are partly responsible for the drop in murders?
A: I think to a certain extent the way we restructured drug enforcement is responsible for that. The homicides on the street are very much drug-related. They are street robberies where addicts rob the dealer for either drugs or money.
If we can end the year in the vicinity of 290 or 300 [homicides], although that's an incredible high number, it's a significant improvement. I think as we better deal with open air drug markets, we can have a positive effect on the murder rate.
Q: The rotation issue hasn't gone over well in the Criminal Investigation Division, especially homicide. Where does the rotation policy stand now? Has it been implemented?
A: It hasn't been implemented. It is part of the labor contract that is up for a vote next week. I think that contract language deals equitably with allowing senior officers to remain for a period of time and still provide opportunity for younger officers to gain experience.
I need well-rounded, well-groomed, well-qualified leadership in this Police Department. And as I reviewed the resumes of promotional candidates, it absolutely leaps out at me the lack of breadth of job skills that the promotional candidates have.
I talked to an officer who said to me, 'I have 20 years on, I'm 41 years old, I'm a college graduate and I'm leaving the department.' I said, 'Why?' He said, 'I don't know anybody downtown. I'll never get a job in headquarters. I'll never get promoted because I don't have any skills other than patrol. . . . I don't want to get shot, but I don't have any opportunity because this is all I know how to do.'
You know, when I look at my attrition, where we hired 278 officers last year and lost 240, the attrition rate is about three times what is normal. And what I need to do as a manager is create a working environment that provides opportunity.
. . . A lot of people want a chance to learn new things. They want to take a break from the patrol car. They want to develop the skills they need to be promotionally competitive. And basically what we have done is we have advantaged the few and disadvantaged the vast majority. The problem with it in the Police Department is the pecking order. Detectives feel they are at the top of the pecking order. They see return to patrol as a demotion or as a disciplinary process. They seem to forget that's the job they took.
Q: Are you surprised at the negative reaction to the rotation policy?
A: It doesn't surprise me at all. . . . I think what happens is that after a period of time in law enforcement, it isn't what you do, it's who you are. And once you identify so strongly with one particular part of the department, it is difficult to let go. When I hear the discussions about why we shouldn't rotate, it seems that I hear a lot more personal agendas than community agendas. It's tradition, but I think it's something that we need to break down.
Q: What about at Gary Childs' party, when someone dressed up as you, mocked you? The nickname, TV Tom?
A: I had heard 'Teflon Tommy,' 'TV Tommy' long before Gary Childs' retirement party. I think they underestimate the thickness of my skin. It didn't have a particular impact on me one way or another.
Q: Lt. Leander S. Nevin, the former president of the Fraternal Order of Police (who stepped down last week), has complained that you haven't backed your officers in some recent cases of alleged brutality. Why don't you take a more public stand?
A: Sometimes it's hard to back an officer in a brutality case. One of the problems I have is that because of the advice of the officers' attorneys -- who instruct them not to make any statement at all -- I probably know less about what happened on the street in an incident then the officer's buddies in the locker room. And it is very difficult for me when I don't have any information whatsoever to take a strong stand in support of TC police officer when he won't even tell me what he or she did.
It's imperative that the community understand the incredible risk that police officers face every single night. When I am confident of the facts, I will make it clear that what the officers did was within policy and within law.
The other side of that coin is that when we have police officer actions that result in a death and I have little or no information about what happened, I don't think it's responsible for me to take an unequivocal position in support of the officer. The first time that I do that and am proven wrong, my personal credibility and this Police Department's credibility suffers. In the long run, it's counterproductive and a disservice to the officers who do the right thing.
Q: Another question is brutality complaints. There's a report (by the city law department) that shows the number of complaints against the department has risen this year. Why the increase? Does it have anything to do with the department being so young?
A: It may. I think that you see nationwide that officers in the first five years of their police experience get more complaints than officers after the first five years. But I think that I've made it clear since I came here that I take police discipline very seriously. A handful of officers that use more force than necessary besmirch the reputation of the 99 1/2 percent of those who don't. I think it's important that we be open to those who want to make allegations of misconduct known: the whole process of removing IID [internal investigations] from this building, of putting it in an office building setting where there's no fear of running into the officer that you wish to complain about.
There's the whole issue of minimizing the possibility of retaliation. All those things have . . . made it easier to complain.
Q: You've been out in the community a lot. In some cases, there have been complaints that you've caved in to the community demands. For instance, your decision to hold off on transferring commander Barry Powell from the Northwestern District.
A: I think the most compelling thing that I heard in the Northwest District was from the presidents of neighborhood associations who said, 'For the first time in years we have a district commander who listens to us and has taken effective steps to curb the violence in our neighborhoods.' One woman said, 'You can't take him away from us.' It wasn't like an order or anything. It was almost like a plea. She said for years we slept under our beds because we were afraid. Now we can sit out on our porches. We just don't understand how you could move the person who we think has done such a good job for us. That kind of testimony to me is compelling. It was honest, it was gut-level.
One of the things I said when I got here was that I would listen. . . . There are times that I think there are compelling messages that need to be heard. If that's the case, I'm not afraid to change a decision.
Q: What about your relationship with Mayor Kurt Schmoke? Do you consult with him on command decisions?
A: My agreement with Mayor Schmoke was and is that I don't do politics and he doesn't do police administration. And he has been absolutely honorable to that agreement. After the meeting with the community over the Powell issue, I called the mayor and told him that in my professional judgment, I should leave Major Powell in the Northwest District. He said that is your decision to make.
Q: You say you have the support of a majority of the department. What do these officers think of you and your administration? Are the voices of opposition coming from those with axes to grind?
A: I think there are some axes to grind. A lot of times you hear from those who think it's their ox being gored. But I know what I see when I go out at night. I know what I see when I go to in-service training. I think there are a number of things that the vast majority of the officers want. They want to have good leadership, they want to have good equipment, they want good training, they want good officers to work beside them.
I think there's a new sense of pride. It's got to be hard on police officers when people say behind their back and to their face, 'You're the only ones who can deal with open-air drug markets like Greenmount Avenue. Why aren't you doing it?' The only possibilities are, 'You don't know how to. You're afraid to. You don't care. Or someone's corrupt.'
That's exactly what was being said when I got here. It's not good for a person who has a good deal of pride in what they do, and in their department, and in what they believe in, to have people talk that way about them. One of the most important things about the Greenmount raids was that it sent a real clear message. We took the worst, most dangerous, most violent area of town, and went in and in fairly short order, cleaned it up, took it back and held it.
I want the CID unit to be the best big-city CID unit in the country. The goal is to put this police department back on the law enforcement map.
Q: Back during the controversy of the Chapman case, some felt that the city was one incident away from a riot. Some residents of the Western District spoke of a mistrust for the department. How widespread is that mistrust?
A: I think mistrust is a serious issue. That's an essential component of community-oriented policing. You see Greenmount Avenue and drug enforcement and sanitation and housing. But the part of community policing that you don't see is me telling my hiring official that we must hire in the spirit of service, not the spirit of adventure. You're given a certain amount of respect, but you have to earn trust.
I don't think that tensions are as high now as they were in the days immediately following the Chapman incident. I think we've made a lot of progress. It's our obligation to reach out and make those connections and operate in good faith.
The one thing I tell the district commanders is, you never make a promise you don't keep. If we can't do it, we say we can't do it. That's how we do our business. Our word is our bond. I think people want to trust their police department. It's our job to make sure that trust is won.