Former Baltimore police Commissioner Kevin Clark was fired on Nov. 10, 2004, when then-Mayor Martin O'Malley said that domestic violence allegations against Clark, while unsubstantiated, "distracted" the imported New Yorker from effectively doing his job.
I knew more than a year before that Clark wasn't long for the job. It was when he attended a fellowship meeting at the Union Baptist Church coffeehouse. A man questioned Clark about Baltimore's "investment" in black youth.
"The only investment y'all made in 'em is that jail down there," the man all but snarled. "Y'all plan to fill that, right?"
"I don't fill it," Clark answered. "Behavior fills it."
Clark struck me then as a man given to uttering random statements of truth. That might well have worked for him as police commissioner in some cities, but not here in Baltimore. The man asking the question is one of those types who believes the entire criminal justice system is some sort of vast, anti-black-male conspiracy, and there are quite a few people around these parts - in public office and out - who probably agree with him.
But O'Malley didn't fire Clark because of random utterances of truth. According to O'Malley, it was that distraction business. According to Clark, it was because the former commissioner had begun investigations into criminal behavior of at least one city official who was a friend of O'Malley's. And Clark had another point:
The ex-top cop says he was fired illegally.
Clark filed a lawsuit contending as much and demanding that he be reinstated. On Nov. 18, 2004, Circuit Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan ruled on Clark's request that he be reinstated as commissioner. Kaplan denied it, and said the rest of the lawsuit had maybe a 2 in 10 chance of succeeding.
Lawyers for the city argued that Clark voluntarily signed a contract that gave the mayor a right to fire him without cause, and in April 2005, Baltimore Circuit Judge Albert J. Matricciani Jr. ruled on whether Clark had been fired illegally. The provision in Clark's contract giving the mayor the power to fire him without cause was, Matricciani said, "valid and enforceable."
The Court of Special Appeals disagreed with Matricciani in June 2006, citing that pesky little thing called state law. Apparently, the contract giving Baltimore's mayor the right to fire a police commissioner without cause violates it. On Thursday the Court of Appeals upheld the Court of Special Appeals ruling. Yesterday Clark was back in town to talk to the media about the recent ruling.
