So, a former city police commissioner is miffed at the sitting city police commissioner for hyping a drug bust.
Five years ago, Kevin P. Clark stood in front of the TV cameras and hailed the seizure of 338 pounds of cocaine, describing it as one of the largest in recent years.
A week ago, Frederick H. Bealefeld III stood in front of the TV cameras and hailed the seizure of 90 pounds of cocaine, describing it as the biggest in the Baltimore Police Department's history.
Clark called the newspaper to complain.
Sorry, Mr. Clark - while your pile of cocaine was indeed bigger than Bealefeld's pile of cocaine, the top award you can hope for is best supporting cop.
Your detectives had help - the tip that led to your seizure came from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about a drug shipment hidden aboard a freighter from South America.
Bealefeld raised the bar. His cops had no help, and that's a record if you're keeping track of arrests in this particularly nuanced award group.
"This was exclusively BPD," the commissioner's spokesman told me. "There was no involvement with the feds as far the seizure."
So, if we're handing out Academy Awards for cocaine seizures, Bealefeld's Oscar might read "Best director for a drug bust," while Clark's might read "Best supporting director for a drug bust."
Of course, something went unsaid at the news conference but was spelled out in court documents: City cops had the suspected dealer in their sights two years ago, had to abandon their investigation when they got transferred to chase crime elsewhere and only got back to him last month.
Maybe they could've used some help after all and gotten him off the streets sooner.
But Baltimore police aren't alone in finding creative ways to create "record busts" by inventing categories. Here are some other guilty parties, using their own record-setting words:
* The "largest highway seizure of crack" award goes to the Maryland State Police for 14.2 pounds of cocaine found during a car stop on the John F. Kennedy Highway in 1996.
* The "largest single cocaine seizure along a state roadway" award also goes to the state police, who found 176 pounds of it in a cooler in a Buick LeSabre in Cecil County in 2006
* The "largest drug seizure in Maryland history" award goes to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI for confiscating 2,000 pounds of cocaine from a Baltimore warehouse in 1997.
