gary tuggle

A month into Michael Harrison’s tenure as commissioner of one of the country’s most challenged police departments, he’s reshaping it — looking nationally for top candidates and turning a critical eye to command staff.

Mothers of Murdered Sons and Daughters is calling on Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh to end arrests for marijuana possession and to prioritize homicide investigations.

It is hard to get a big picture look at the sentencing practices of judges. This is unacceptable in an era when the public is calling for more transparency in the criminal justice system.

On his first day on the job, Acting Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said he’s eager to get to work, meeting the community and the two thousand officers under his command.

On his first day on the job Monday, Baltimore’s new acting police commissioner, Michael Harrison, is expected to hear a host of concerns, including from a West Baltimore community about persistent drug dealing.

The Baltimore Police Department has “no existing crime plan” and patrol shifts are so understaffed and officers so overwhelmed by the volume of 911 calls that they are instructed on a nightly basis to respond only to the most violent and pressing calls for service, according to the police union.

Facing renewed questions about his department’s ability to hire new officers, interim Baltimore Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle said Thursday that his agency is “understaffed across the board.”

Baltimore's top prosecutor has filed a rarely used legal petition intended to vacate 3,778 convictions for possession of marijuana, arguing an extraordinary legal strategy is necessary to "right an extraordinary wrong."

Interim Baltimore Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle said Thursday that arrests for marijuana possession are never the focus of police patrols in the city, but are sometimes — and will continue to be — the outcome in instances where officers are confronted with illegal amounts of the drug.

Marilyn Mosby’s decision to no longer prosecute anyone arrested for marijuana possession can go a long way in addressing the racial disparities that have disproportionately landed African Americans in jail with criminal records, despite the fact that they use the drug at the same rate as whites.

How people are reacting to Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s surprise announcement Tuesday that her office will no longer prosecute marijuana possession cases.

The federal judge overseeing the Baltimore police consent decree on Thursday called for the state to contribute money towards a new city police training facility, and also disputed recent comments by the governor that reforms and crime reduction can’t occur simultaneously.

This was one of the deadliest Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekends in recent memory in Baltimore City. The start to the year is also one of the most violent since 2012.

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh's pick to be the city's next police commissioner faces a number of immediate challenges when he arrives later this month.

The independent monitoring team overseeing Baltimore’s consent decree is calling for an internal affairs investigation into the Gun Trace Task Force scandal, including investigating officers implicated in the case who have not been charged with a crime.

A former Baltimore Police major who received an unpaid suspension after she was investigated by internal affairs for alleged theft, is now asking for a Baltimore Circuit Court judge to intervene in the case.

Baltimore District Judge Michael Studdard granted bail Tuesday to the 48-year-old man charged in a deadly shooting last month in a Fells Point bar.

Baltimore police say they arrested 11 people behind the violent “Black Magic” drug crew and seized guns, cash and more than 400 gel caps of fentanyl.

The major in charge of the Baltimore Police training academy is retiring, just as the department begins training officers on consent decree reforms.

Calling the level of violence in Baltimore “completely unacceptable,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is describing a crackdown — one that has 200 officers in a “strike force” to fight crime and expanding a program in which city criminal cases are charged federally.

In January of last year, Baltimoreans first heard the news that Mayor Catherine Pugh would be firing the city’s police commissioner Kevin Davis. Nearly a year later, the city still lacks a permanent police chief. Below, a look at how we got here. 

Now that Joel Fitzgerald has withdrawn, here are some people who either applied or were considered during the first search for possible candidates, according to previous reporting from The Baltimore Sun.

The interim commissioner has been on the job since last May. Why not convince him to stay on?

Baltimore police have obtained an arrest warrant for Phillip Stanley West, 48, in connection with a Dec. 21 shooting at the Blarney Stone Pub in Fells Point

The incident happened just after midnight at the Blarney Stone Pub on the 700 block of S. Broadway, while Thursday’s crowds lingered in the bars and restaurants of the Baltimore neighborhood known in part for its colorful nightlife.

The firearms collected so far include 509 handguns, 273 rifles, 245 shotguns — and a rocket launcher. Tuggle said the department has reached out to military and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace the rocket launcher’s origin. The city paid $500 for it.

A 30-year-old man shot in the face and upper body late Wednesday night on Baker Street in the Western District died overnight, becoming the 300th homicide victim this year in Baltimore City.

When taking a closer look at the facts, Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Geller was correct to give twenty-year-old Raytawn Benjamin a light sentence.

The Baltimore Police Department faced an unprecedented number of challenges in 2018 that included leadership turnover, cases of officer misconduct, continued high levels of violence and the final convictions in one of the biggest police corruption scandals in city history.

Criminals often get too lenient sentences and wind up committing crimes again.

Interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle recently painted a shocking picture of lax sentencing by a Baltimore judge. Trouble is, he left out all context and some very important facts.

BPD: A small number of people in Baltimore are responsible for a large share of the violent crime. In many cases, my officers know exactly who those people are, and arrest them. After they are convicted, we rely on judges to keep them off the streets. But too often, it just isn't happening.

Baltimore is again offering money in exchange for guns, between $25 and $500 during three events this month.

How long is long enough for Joel Fitzgerald, the Baltimore mayor's nominee to head the police department, to make changes that reduce violence and carry out a court-ordered consent decree to reform law enforcement? Fitzgerald hasn’t been specific, beyond saying he’s committed to the job.

Baltimore Police said they continue to investigate a shooting that left a 13-year-old girl and an adult relative injured in a shooting Sunday evening.

Police were still searching Monday for a man who stabbed an Aberdeen woman to death  early Saturday morning in Baltimore.

Mayor Catherine Pugh's choice to be police commissioner says he plans to stay in his current job in Texas until the Baltimore City Council holds a final vote on his nomination. That means Joel Fitzgerald would not begin work in Baltimore until late January. He is the chief in Fort Worth.

Amy Hayes, a 5-year-old shot in Baltimore — and who by a stunning and tragic coincidence is the younger sister of Taylor Hayes, a 7-year-old who was fatally shot in July — was in stable condition, undergoing surgery Tuesday, family members said.

The Baltimore City Council will hold two days of hearings in January on the nomination of Fort Worth police chief Joel Fitzgerald to be police commissioner, setting up a final up or down vote by the end of that month, the council president's office said Monday.

A former Baltimore and Philadelphia police officer entered a guilty plea in the midst of his trial on charges that he conspired to sell drugs with corrupt members of the Gun Trace Task Force.

By Halloween, Baltimore officials told reporters, a federal judge and the public, we should be able to name a new city police commissioner. But as Mayor Catherine Pugh indicated last week might happen, Halloween has come and she had no name to offer up. She says she is still vetting candidates.

A federal jury found eight men guilty Wednesday of dealing heroin in West Baltimore as part of the Trained To Go street gang and its leaders guilty of murdering rivals and suspected police informants.

The selection process has been kept under wraps so far, but here’s what we do know about the search for the next Baltimore police commissioner.

A day after 11 people were shot, including three fatally, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh condemned the city’s drug trade and interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle announced about 230 officers assigned to administrative duties will leave their offices for patrol work.

Members of a state commission created to look into the Baltimore Police Gun Trace Task Force scandal convened their first meeting in Annapolis on Tuesday, with a state senator giving a sobering assessment of the state of the city to emphasize the importance of their work.

Police reform advocates pin hopes on Baltimore’s next police commissioner to resolve the “infighting” and “political turmoil” cited by recent high-level departures who described significant dysfunction within the department.

From the death of Freddie Gray to scandals over surveillance planes and body camera videos, the Baltimore Police Department has had a rocky three years.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore will issue identity cards to undocumented immigrants and other vulnerable people that the Baltimore Police Department has agreed to recognize as legitimate, a program activists hope make people more willing to cooperate with law enforcement.

It's looking likely that someone from outside Baltimore's police department will be the next commissioner. That poses risks and benefits.

T.J. Smith, the Baltimore Police Department’s chief spokesman and most consistent public face since 2015, whose local roots and empathetic outrage over city violence often endeared him to a public otherwise distrustful of the agency, has resigned, he confirmed to The Baltimore Sun on Wednesday.