The police patrol area is called the Central District, implying center of the city, or downtown. But its borders stretch far beyond, north of North Avenue into Reservoir Hill, west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard past the trendy enclave of Bolton Hill and up the Pennsylvania Avenue drug corridor.
City cops list 19 neighborhoods within this urban footprint, but that doesn't begin to explain the diversity of the area's night life, club scene, red-light strip, restaurants, shopping areas, waterfront attractions, upscale hotels, hospitals, universities, corporate headquarters, the convention center and City Hall. Looming above all others, the city's signature showpiece: the Inner Harbor.
Nowhere can a minor crime be more exaggerated than here. Baltimore may be the second most murderous city in the country, but many killings in drug outposts get scant mention. A purse snatched from a tourist at the harbor can quickly become a headline and a headache, further proof to the masses that crime is out of control, even if the stats say it isn't.
Last week, Maj. John Bailey, a 35-year veteran, was summarily dismissed from his post as Central District commander after his officers failed to properly handle the robbery of a nanny in Bolton Hill and, separately, random attacks were reported downtown.
Bailey's job was and is perhaps the most unsought-after job in the department, where cops routinely bump into people with titles that afford them private cell phone access to the police commissioner and the mayor, where complaints come directly from City Hall, where the daily crime log determines whether a convention comes here, or a venerable business decides to stay or to leave, or a visiting baseball fan goes home with a smile or as a crime statistic.
"You have to be there during the daytime because you have to take care of the businesses and all their concerns," said one retired police commander. "You have to be there in the evening because of the residential communities and their problems. Then you have the tourists, so you're there Saturdays and Sundays. Then you have the night life that you're stuck with and responsible for, and trying to keep that from getting totally out of control."
Every one of the city's nine police districts comes with its own challenges: Southeastern has the Canton and Harbor East waterfronts and dangerous drug turf farther north; Eastern and Western have homicides; Southwestern has the mayor's home; Southern has former President's Bush's daughter.
