Police Commissioner

After 31 years in local law enforcement, I'd often tell myself that I had seen and experienced every act of cruelty man can inflict. In light of the despicable act of violence this month in Newtown, Conn., I was clearly wrong. We are learning more, day by agonizing day, of the details of the crime, the history of Adam Lanza, the heroism of the school staff, and the stolen wonder of 20 beautiful little children. An incredible and horrible tragedy - but one that perhaps could have been averted had we reacted to the outrages of the past.

A man who allegedly entered a rowhouse in the city's Central Park Heights neighborhood uninvited, hid a handgun behind a living room sofa and then assaulted the homeowner as she was trying to get him to leave was arrested Wednesday night in Baltimore while lying on the home's front porch — marking the 1,000th gun-related arrest in the city this year. The strange arrest was made by two officers on a newly created foot patrol beat in the neighborhood about 6:43 p.m., and was touted as a significant milestone about two hours later by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts during a news conference at the scene.

The mother took several minutes to open the door, and when she did on Wednesday, she told police that her son never came home the night before. "He's not here," she repeatedly told the officers. But he was there, hiding in the basement. The team of Baltimore police sergeants, detectives and officers - all working on a special operation to suppress crime after a spate of shootings in recent weeks - searched the two-story house on the 3500 block of W. Cold Spring Lane and apprehended the suspect.

Anthony W. Batts was officially sworn in Thursday as Baltimore's 37th police commissioner, pledging to build trust with the community while continuing to reduce violent crime. Batts, who spent three decades with departments in California, has been guiding the city police force since his arrival in late September following the retirement of agency veteran Frederick H. Bealefeld III. The city's homicide numbers are on track to rise compared to last year, when Baltimore saw fewer than 200 killings for the first time since the 1970s, but overall gun violence continues to trend downward.

A group of children play ball in the courtyard after dark as Anthony W. Batts walks through a high-crime West Baltimore public housing project wrapped around the Edgar Allan Poe House. It's quiet here, with an officer permanently stationed on-site, but the new police commissioner's department is dealing with problems across the city - two people will be killed in shootings by the end of the night. As Batts travels through Baltimore to learn on the job about his new town, he'll also get a close look at the uneven relationship between police and the community.

After less than a minute of discussion, the Baltimore City Council on Monday overwhelmingly confirmed Anthony W. Batts, the former police chief in Long Beach and Oakland, Calif., as Baltimore's newest police commissioner. No one on the 14-member council voted against Batt's confirmation and only Councilman James Kraft abstained. He did not explain his position publicly. Councilman William H. Cole IV, who held a committee meeting last week in which community members spoke both for and against the new commissioner, made the motion to approve Batts' nomination.

The U.S. government should take over the Oakland Police Department — the California agency led for two years by Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts — because of a chronic failure to comply with a decade-old reform settlement, attorneys overseeing the case said in court papers. A motion, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in California, cites remarks from Batts among what it calls a "sorry trail of broken promises made to the court," and includes a transcript of a Sept.

Anthony W. Batts, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's pick for police commissioner, is getting an early start.  According to the Police Department's Twitter page, Batts formally started work today. He was scheduled to begin Thursday, and there was no advance word that Batts would be starting before then.  On Monday, The Sun reported that Acting Police Commissioner Anthony Barksdale had gone on medical leave "indefinitely," leaving the agency without two of its top four commanders following the retirement of Col. Jesse Oden, the chief of criminal investigations.

Baltimore's next police commissioner is walking through a west-side neighborhood with some of the community's most engaged residents, but that's not enough for Anthony W. Batts. He wants to talk to a teacher sipping coffee on her porch. He jogs across the street to greet an older woman standing on her front lawn. "Thank you for being involved," Batts tells the group giving him a tour of Bridgeview/Greenlawn. The charm offensive is meant to convince Baltimoreans that a law enforcement career spent on the West Coast has prepared him to police one of the most dangerous cities in the East.