"Could I have done it more articulately? Could I have done it in a softer manner? Could I have been more open at times?" Safir said. "Sure, anybody could. But I'm very proud of the fact that I reduced crime more than any other police commissioner, and, as a result, the city is better."
Daniel Oates, the police chief in Aurora, Colo., worked for Safir as the head of the intelligence division of the New York City police. He said he frequently calls on Safir to "bounce ideas off of him."
Oates recalled being a few years into his tenure as police chief in Ann Arbor, Mich., and being confronted with a backlog in DNA processing of rape kits at the state crime laboratory. He called Safir for advice.
"We solved a 20-something-year-old rape case," Oates said. "When my detectives went and told the rape victim, it was one of the most emotional things they could experience. ... It's an incredible windfall to have someone with his breadth of knowledge to be counselor to the police chief. I wish I had him out here."
Safir first came ashore in Annapolis in the late 1980s, when, during a boating trip with his family, he had maintenance trouble and spent the night.
"I walked up and down Main Street and said, 'I'm home,'" he said.
Safir and his wife of more than 40 years have long kept homes in New York City and in Annapolis' historic district, an area largely buffered from crime. "My house was built before the Revolution - that's wonderful," Safir said, flashing a rare smile. "To be able to preserve things like that, it's amazing. It's a long way from the Bronx."
Annapolis has recorded six homicides this year, putting the city on pace to surpass last year's record of eight and garnering the attention of state officials. Gov. Martin O'Malley and House Speaker Michael E. Busch unveiled this year a $500,000 initiative called Capital City Safe Streets, a multi-jurisdictional partnership.
Much of the city's crime is concentrated in its 10 federally owned public housing communities. Safir said it would make sense to concentrate police resources there.
"If you attack the drug trafficking and do it effectively, you reduce crime. That's my philosophy," Safir said. "You make the probability of arrest and incarceration high enough so that they'll go somewhere else."
He cautions that change will take time.
"It's going to take the chief a while to get his people in place, to get the technology in place, to get the crime reduction programs in place," he said. "And then, you know, a year from now would be a good time to evaluate it."
nicole.fuller@baltsun.com
