The deployment initiative comes amid a campaign for the governor's office pitting Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, against Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. in which crime is a political issue.
Last month, Hamm held a news conference to defend his department against an Ehrlich ad that accused city officers of making thousands of unlawful arrests.
Brown said the initiative is not connected to the governor's race.
"Politics does not determine police deployment or crime-fighting strategies," the deputy commissioner said.
"Our officers have worked too hard to make the community safer to be used as pawns for either political party," he said.
O'Malley said yesterday that the measure was an attempt to address a spike in violent crime "as quickly as possible."
"Police Commissioner Hamm has my full support to do whatever we must to put down violent crime wherever it spikes in our city," the mayor said.
He accused the state-run parole and probation department of failing to adequately monitor offenders once they leave prison.
The mayor noted that a homicide victim this past weekend was on "triple probation," for three separate offenses.
"This is our reality," he said. "We have a revolving-door system of justice, and it revolves even more quickly in poor neighborhoods. We can't expect local police departments to improve public safety on their own when we have a state that is putting more and more people out on parole and probation totally unsupervised."
Shareese N. DeLeaver, an Ehrlich campaign spokeswoman, said O'Malley's statements were a "desperate attempt to deflect attention from his lack of leadership with regard to crime-fighting in Baltimore City."
gus.sentementes@baltsun.com
Sun reporter Doug Donovan contributed to this article.
