When he took the reins of the Baltimore Police Department on Nov. 10, 2004, he did so as the hometown hero - a native who grew up in Cherry Hill, led the City College basketball team and climbed police ranks for two decades to become the first black commander of the high-profile Central District.
Leonard D. Hamm's tenure immediately followed those of two commissioners imported from New York who encountered personal scandals during their time here. Local politicians and residents cheered the return of one of their own to the helm.
But in Hamm's 32 months as commissioner, Baltimore has been saddled with a rise in gang activity and violence - so much so that the city is on pace to surpass 300 homicides this year for the first time since the 1990s. And officers say morale has been at a low point, with some calling Hamm a ghost at police headquarters.
By the time word spread yesterday that Hamm had resigned during a meeting Tuesday night with Mayor Sheila Dixon, most said they had seen it coming.
"Personally, I wasn't surprised," said Robert F. Cherry Jr., a police union vice president and a homicide detective. "The mayor clearly saw that there was a lack of leadership coming from command.
"Timing is everything," he said, referring to the mayoral primary election that is about two months away. A recent poll conducted for The Sun showed that nearly 40 percent of likely Democratic primary voters found Hamm to be ineffective as a leader.
Bad publicity - and image problems - have shaped Hamm's tenure. Just this week, reports came out about key items needed for two separate rape trials of city officers disappearing from the department's evidence-control unit in the past year.
In the past year and a half, two specialized units of plainclothes officers were disbanded as internal investigations were launched into their tactics. Allegations included officers falsifying charging documents, planting drugs on suspects and stealing from people who had been arrested.
And the arrest in March of a 7-year-old boy prompted the mayor to apologize to his family. The mayor had also expressed frustration after Hamm signed off on a lucrative pension deal for a departing deputy commissioner.
Recently, Dixon expressed confidence in Hamm and vowed to keep him in charge at least until the election - perhaps for continuity's sake. After appointing three police commissioners in less than five years, Mayor Martin O'Malley selected Hamm to succeed Kevin P. Clark, who was fired in the wake of a domestic abuse investigation.
More so than many of the previous commissioners, Hamm, 58, reflected the realities of the streets of Baltimore.
For 12 years, he has lived in Madison Park, a tiny neighborhood of well-preserved historic homes that is not immune to open-air drug markets and occasional shootings.
Hamm's stepdaughter has long struggled with drug addiction and occasional criminal charges. Just last month, she was convicted of prostitution.
Questions about his financial history arose around the time of his confirmation by the City Council. He declared bankruptcy in 1997, which is enough in some cities to prohibit a person from becoming even a rank-and-file officer.
Baltimore does not have any specific personal financial disqualifications for officer candidates, and a City Council panel unanimously endorsed him in March 2005.
Hamm joined the department in 1974 as a patrol officer in the Central District. Later, he became commander of that district, before leaving in 1995 to serve as deputy director of public safety for the Downtown Partnership. Two years later, he became chief of the city schools police. In 2001, he took over Morgan State University's campus police department, before O'Malley lured him back to the city Police Department three years ago as a deputy commissioner.
Hamm's history in Baltimore - beginning as captain of City College's undefeated basketball team in 1966-1967 -translated into his police work. He frequently said, "We can't arrest our way out of the problem," and he developed intervention programs such as "Get Out of the Game." In recent months, Dixon and Hamm pulled back from the zero-tolerance policing that had angered many city residents and returned to more of a community policing approach.
"Lenny Hamm grew up on these streets. Lenny Hamm knows these streets," said Lt. Frederick V. Roussey, who has worked with Hamm for 25 years. "There's a guy who wouldn't back down from anybody.
"If anyone could have brought crime under control, it was him."
Roussey, who began a stint as the police union president just as Hamm became commissioner, said he believes O'Malley and now Dixon have tried to micromanage the department.
"He was never really given a chance to cut loose and do what he wanted to do," Roussey said. "I can't imagine it was his choice to pick some of the [police commanders] who are at the top."
Still, officers perhaps more accustomed to the hands-on approaches of Clark and his predecessor, Edward T. Norris, saw Hamm as too aloof.
"His style of leadership may have been his Achilles' heel," Cherry said. "He didn't make any bones about it - he let his two deputies run the show. That's neither good nor bad, but what the city needs now is a police commissioner who is actually out there."
A religious man who has attended St. Bernardine's Roman Catholic Church since the 1980s, Hamm would often slip into community churches unannounced.
He said in an interview this year that he would ask the pastors beforehand not to acknowledge his presence.
"I don't go for publicity," he said. "I go there to hear the word of God."
At 6 feet 2, with broad shoulders and an imposing frame, Hamm is known as a sharp dresser, occasionally donning a beret or a pinstriped suit. He briefly worked as a fabric designer after receiving a bachelor's degree in 1971 from the Philadelphia College of Textile & Science.
julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com
Gus G. Sentementes contributed to this article.