KEVIN CLARK, the commissioner of Charm City's Police Department, continues his lessons in "Baltimoreans 101."
What he's learned lately is that Baltimore folks are a churlish lot when we think we've been dissed.
Wayne Kraft, Darlene Stauch and Melissa Techentin consider themselves three of the dissees. They met recently at a Highlandtown restaurant, only days after a Sun article appeared about poor morale in the Police Department, a state of affairs some attribute to Clark's leadership.
On this particular evening, Kraft, Stauch and Techentin showed that it's not just police Clark has managed to rankle. The trio kvetched at length about what they regard as the commissioner's latest bonehead move.
"We can't see why [Clark] would want to change something that's working," Kraft lamented.
Clark "just barged in and made changes without consulting with neighborhood residents," Techentin added. "Why is it that this type of agenda is shoved down our throats? It takes away our comfort level of trying to reach out to the police."
Kraft, Stauch and Techentin are officers of the Southeast District Police Community Relations Council. Or at least they were until recently. On June 30, all council officers handed in their resignations to the commander of the Southeastern District. The action was part compliance and part protest of what they regard as an edict Clark handed down in mid-May to the chiefs of the patrol and community relations divisions.
"This memo," Clark wrote, "serves as the starting point of a new Departmental community relations initiative. From this point forward, each district will sponsor one meeting per month with the members of its community. On the itinerary for these meetings will be two guest speakers, one from within the department and a guest speaker from a city agency. Members of the community will sign up in advance if they wish to speak at the meeting."
Later, Chief Edward C. Jackson of the Community Affairs Division sent a briefing book to each district commander about how the new community affairs councils, the vehicles for Clark's inchoate community relations initiative, will work. In addition to having folks sign up to speak - a rule the CRC folks said was the opposite of their policy - the new CACs "are part of the police department," Jackson wrote in the May 13 memo to district commanders.
That, Kraft said, is intolerable.
