Police Chief

Incoming Philadelphia police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said in an interview yesterday that he thought Mayor Sheila Dixon could have better handled the process of hiring a police chief in Baltimore this year. Ramsey - who had been a leading candidate for the job in Baltimore after Dixon asked Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm to resign in July - said the city originally approached him about the position and that a draft contract had been drawn up. "The whole incident had been handled rather poorly considering the fact that Baltimore reached out to me," Ramsey told The Sun yesterday.

With the city on pace to reach 300 homicides this year, only one in four residents say Police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm is an effective leader, according to a new poll conducted for The Sun. Nearly 40 percent say Hamm, who has been on the job for 2 1/2 years, is an ineffective police chief. "How can I describe Hamm? He is untrustworthy," said Jeanette Ishway, a 64-year-old resident of Old Town who was interviewed for the poll. "He and [Mayor] Sheila [Dixon] got their heads together, and the murder rate is rising.

LOS ANGELES -- Here in the nation's "capital" for street gangs, Jose Aleman is an ex-gangbanger with 26 bullet fragments in his brain. Lucky to be alive, Aleman is eating a Mexican pasta soup in the Homegirl Cafe, run by former female gang members, when he's interrupted by an aspiring gangster half his age. They hug. Aleman, who has spent a third of his 36 years in Folsom and other prisons, is like a mentor. "I've got a job, man. I'm going to be working full time now," said Richard Hernandez, 18, who for the past few months has been unemployed.

Anne Arundel County police officers were supposed to be freed up for more difficult police work when sheriff's deputies were assigned to handle all arrest warrants, but the new procedure has turned into a time-consuming bureaucratic burden, officers say.No matter where an arrest is made, officers must drive to the sheriff's office in Annapolis to retrieve a warrant. That can add an hour to arresting someone in the northern and southern tips of the county, police say.Until September, county police served District Court warrants and deputies handled Circuit Court warrants.

Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens made one of the most important appointments of her four months in office yesterday when she named a 26-year police veteran the county's new chief.P. Thomas Shanahan, 45, who has been acting police chief since Owens took office, has worked for the county since he was a teen-ager and has demonstrated strong leadership skills, Owens said.Shanahan, who started working at the department as a cadet at age 19, earned a master's degree in applied behavioral sciences from the Johns Hopkins University in 1996 and has been deputy chief, patrol captain and sergeant in the homicide unit.

SEOUL, South Korea -- Call it the kimchi capers.A thief breaks into the homes of several prominent citizens, including two Cabinet members and two police chiefs, stealing all kinds of loot.But when a suspect is finally apprehended, he allegedly tells prosecutors that his victims have vastly understated their losses.A police chief failed to report a wad of cash the thief had found under a container for the pickled cabbage in the refrigerator, said Kim Kang Ryong, the 32-year-old burglary suspect.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier, an outspoken outsider hired to reduce crime and restore confidence in the city's police force, is to be named head of a top Justice Department program today.Clinton administration sources said a formal announcement is scheduled for this morning.Frazier will become the director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which is responsible for allocating money to reach President Clinton's goal of placing 100,000 more officers on the nation's streets.

The state Court of Special Appeals ruled Friday that Howard County police commanders can regulate the off-duty employment of officers with concern to security-related jobs.The ruling stems from a 1996 incident in which two off-duty police officers were selling T-shirts at Merriweather Post Pavilion. As part of that job, the off-duty officers seized T-shirts from people selling them illegally.Under the police department's rules, officers must get permission from the police chief to work security-related jobs.

Westminster Police Chief Sam R. Leppo, who died Wednesday in a three-vehicle crash in Frederick County, was remembered yesterday as a firm and compassionate leader, committed to the safety of his officers and the citizens he served.The state flag flown at half-staff and black bunting outside the entrance to police headquarters served as a silent tribute to the memory of the 53-year-old chief who lived in Union Bridge. He joined the Westminster force 32 years ago and was appointed chief in 1976.

Mayor Martin O'Malley has picked Baltimore Police Col. Ronald L. Daniel, a 26-year veteran who became the city's highest ranking African-American police officer, to be the city's next police commissioner.The mayor, inaugurated two weeks ago, will hold a noon news conference at City Hall to make the announcement, according to sources familiar with the selection.Daniel, 50, who beat out candidates from within the department as well as several police chiefs from elsewhere on the East Coast, will lead a 3,200-member Baltimore force that has been demoralized by intradepartmental squabbles and low morale over its inability to reduce the number of city murders below 300 a year.

Anne Arundel County's police chief promised Wednesday night to crack down on teenage gang activity in response to community fears and anger stemming from the death of a 14-year-old Crofton boy who was beaten while he bicycled near his home last weekend. Hours after the funeral for Christopher David Jones, police Chief Col. James Teare Sr. told a crowd of more than 500 people to expect to see a mobile command unit, along with foot and bicycle patrols in their Crofton-area neighborhoods.

Bureaucracy, almost by definition, doesn't move fast, and it certainly didn't move fast enough to get Eduardo Perez's door fixed after police officers kicked it in looking for a woman screaming rape. That took more than six weeks, after lots of phone calls, a terse rejection letter and the intervention of the Baltimore County police chief. Soon, officials promise, Perez will get a check to repair the hole in his checking account created by the bill to repair the hole the police made in his home.

In an unusually animated meeting, an Anne Arundel County councilman exhorted the county executive to appear before the council to answer questions about an anonymous call to police that possible sexual activity was taking place in the county executive's government vehicle while it was parked at a shopping mall. The request came after council members grilled the police chief, Col. James Teare Sr., about how the department responded to the call, which led an officer to County Executive John R. Leopold's black Chevrolet at an Annapolis shopping mall in January.

Man crossing road is killed by SUV A pedestrian was hit by a vehicle last night in the North Point section of Baltimore County and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. His name was being withheld pending notification of kin. Shortly before 8:30 p.m., the man, 66, was struck by a southbound Mercury Mariner sport utility vehicle as he was while crossing North Point Boulevard at St. Monica Drive near his home. Police said the man was not in a crosswalk. The driver of the vehicle, a teenage female, stopped a short distance away and was interviewed by police.

A police officer who responded to an anonymous 911 call about apparent sexual activity in what turned out to be Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold's car last month at a mall parking lot did "absolutely nothing wrong," and rumors of "some type of cover-up" are an "out-and-out-lie," the county police chief said yesterday. "Nobody asked anybody to cover anything up," Col. James Teare Sr. said. "From pauper to politician, from immigrant to industrialist, we are going to treat all people equally.

The Baltimore police will no longer release the names of officers who kill or injure people while in the line of duty. They say it's to protect them from harassment or worse. But the police chief hasn't made the case that officers involved in shootings require anonymity. There's no more fundamental relationship between government and its citizens than the relationship between a community and its police force. Anyone involved in a shooting or other possible crime in Baltimore is identified by police, and city officers shouldn't be excluded from this practice.

Police chief: In aftermath of overdose, a 'cover-up' pro basketball A suburban New York police chief likened the conflicting accounts of an accidental overdose at Isiah Thomas' home to a "cover-up" and rebuked the former New York Knicks coach yesterday for saying it was his teenage daughter who required treatment. "It wasn't his daughter," Harrison Police Chief David Hall told the Associated Press. "And why they're throwing her under the bus is beyond my ability to understand." Authorities were called early Friday to Thomas' Westchester County home, where police said a 47-year-old man was taken to the hospital and treated for an overdose of sleeping pills.

A recent Baltimore Sun editorial about crime in Annapolis, crediting a response by government, couldn't be more wrong. Years of apathy by the local government spawned double-digit increases in the most serious categories of crime, despite the fact that Annapolis is largely affluent, with a healthy tax base. The reality? Serious criminal assaults and murders escalated while the mayor funded flower programs, arts initiatives and even cartoon characters for trash cans. As the drug culture feeding the violence flourished and murders increased drastically, Ellen O. Moyer pooh-poohed the idea that crime needed her attention by questioning what could be done and stating that Annapolis was typical in comparison with other cities.

Pristoop is Annapolis police chief Michael A. Pristoop has been named chief of the Annapolis Police Department, three months after he was brought in on an interim capacity. Mayor Ellen O. Moyer made the announcement Monday night after discussing the move with the city council in a closed session. Last month, she called off a nationwide search for a new chief, though two weeks ago, her spokesman insisted that Pristoop's "interim" tag would remain. Pristoop, 42, previously led the Maryland General Services police and worked for more than 20 years in the Baltimore Police Department.

The mayor of Annapolis says the national search for a new police chief is being postponed indefinitely, to allow the interim chief to implement his vision for the agency. Michael Pristoop, a former lieutenant in the Baltimore Police Department, took over the department in May after Chief Joseph S. Johnson announced his retirement. Mayor Ellen O. Moyer, whose second and final term ends next year, said at the time that she was wary of selecting a permanent chief because her successor might want to make his or her own choice.