Police Union

A brief but stern memorandum sent to Baltimore police commanders this week warns that department staffing is "inadequate at best," and promises disciplinary action against supervisors who leave patrol cars empty."

Howard County and police union officials have ended a contract impasse with an agreement that brings officers a step closer to receiving one of the biggest pay increases in recent memory.Both sides had anticipated the impasse would last about two months because of arbitration, but said they wanted to end it earlier to be able to hire 13 officers from other jurisdictions. The department is in tough competition with other regional police agencies -- some of which have raised their officers' pay -- and would not advertise the positions until a salary structure was finalized.

MAYOR Martin O'Malley has started dismantling former Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier's reforms. The first to go -- to the jubilation of the police union and rank-and-file -- is the controversial personnel rotation policy.Transferring officers regularly in and out of specialized units was among Mr. Frazier's attempts to weaken the police union and give minorities and women opportunities for advancement. But that policy ended up wrecking the homicide unit. Rather than go back to less prestigious patrol assignments, many seasoned homicide detectives resigned -- and found high demand for their expertise in suburban police departments.

Baltimore's Board of Estimates approved use of $400,000 from the city's contingency fund yesterday to reinstate 16 of the 62 retired police officers laid off last month by the Police Department as a cost-saving measure.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said the city moved to rehire the officers -- who work as contractual employees with one-year agreements -- to help with the department's administrative duties and to keep as many officers as possible on the streets.Police officials and the police union hailed the decision as an important step in maintaining a strong police presence in the city.

Baltimore Councilman Martin O'Malley, the Democratic nominee for mayor, took his no-nonsense approach to crime to an appreciative audience last night -- at a union hall packed with boisterous Baltimore police officers.The candidate, swept to victory this month on the promise of lowering crime, told the officers they could be tough on criminals without turning Baltimore into a police state. He warned: "Effective policing does not equal brutal policing."O'Malley told a standing-room-only crowd at Fraternal Order of Police headquarters in Hampden that years of City Hall inaction had stymied their efforts to free street corners of drug dealers and see violent crime decrease as it has in other large U.S. cities.

Double-digit-percentage raises are nearly unheard of for area police officers, but a seller's market for their services has prompted Howard County's police union to reject an average first-year increase of 15 percent.Both sides said yesterday that negotiations are at an impasse and asked for an arbitrator.The breakdown comes as the department is looking to recruit 13 officers from other jurisdictions. But without an approved higher pay scale, Police Department officials have postponed advertising for the positions and put off their plans to put nine officers in area high schools.

IT'S TOUGH to lose an election. It's been 28 years (can that be true?) since I ran for student council president and lost. Ullman High was shut down before the next school year began, so I wouldn't have gotten to serve anyway. But the defeat still irritates.My opponent was a good-looking athlete who was always nattily attired in the latest fashions that he acquired from the men's store where he worked part time. Me? I was just a bespectacled geek who could be summed up with the words "nice guy."

Members of two Annapolis municipal unions overwhelmingly approved new one-year contracts last night that give 2 percent pay raises to police officers and blue-collar workers.Both unions will see the increase in their paychecks starting July 1 even though the city council has yet to approve both contracts.Under their contract, police officers will contribute 1 percent less to their pensions, similar to a provision in the pact that firefighters approved earlier this week. The city will assume the 1 percent.

Howard County police said yesterday that four police union leaders who participated in a post-election stunt violated department policies.The four off-duty officers walked into the County Council offices Nov. 4 and handed a defeated Republican candidate for county executive an angry letter, cardboard box and packing tape to help him leave."

Howard County's police union has endorsed Democrat Timothy J. McCrone in his run for the county's top prosecutor, a move that sparked criticism from incumbent State's Attorney Marna McLendon.McLendon, a Republican, said that she had not been interviewed by the 230-member union's political action committee. That committee recommends endorsements that are voted on by the general membership."I have to question the validity of such a process that is totally closed and fails to even contact or hear from the current state's attorney or provide a forum for issues," McLendon said yesterday.

A bid that would excuse disabled former public safety workers from county property taxes sounds simple but is proving complicated as the County Council prepares to vote on the bill Monday night. The current bill, backed by County Executive Ken Ulman and all five council members, would give the tax break only to former police and correctional officers, firefighters and volunteers who are 100 percent disabled and both work for and live in Howard County. Courtney Watson, the Ellicott City Democrat who introduced the bill, said the administration wants an amendment to include the spouses of such workers who die. The county's police union is pushing for a broader measure that would cover any public safety worker who lives in the county, regardless of the state or county agency they work for or where in the state they are stationed.

Both Mayor Sheila Dixon and Gov. Martin O'Malley made a stir last week for acknowledging the inevitable: Despite their efforts to avoid it, the depth of the budget crisis facing the city and the state will force cuts to the most sacred of public priorities: firefighters, police and teachers. Ms. Dixon is in the midst of negotiations with the police and fire unions to trim their budgets for the current fiscal year by $8 million, part of her effort to make $60 million in cuts citywide. And Mr. O'Malley told superintendents at a meeting this week to start scouring their budgets for savings, noting that "virtually every other aspect of state government has been cut."

Baltimore's fire unions have tentatively agreed to take five furlough days between now and next June and to accept a wage freeze after that as their share of cuts demanded by the city to help close a $60.2 million budget gap. Members of the unions representing 1,600 firefighters and officers will vote on the agreement Wednesday, knowing that if the agreement is rejected, the dispute would probably be resolved in binding arbitration that could end with...

Baltimore police commanders have postponed plans for an $11,000 overnight retreat, saying the event would be a distraction as the department grapples with crime and budget woes. Using money seized from suspected criminals, the department had planned an overnight training retreat at Leakin Park's Outward Bound center. According to documents filed with the Board of Estimates, nearly 50 commanders would have participated in a program that included "use of low ropes activities, a combination of problem-solving games, and elements of the high ropes course."

Baltimore's police union wants to jettison a decades-old contract provision that requires the city to give firefighters the same pay raises that police officers receive, hoping the move will clear the way for larger pay increases. The police union leadership filed a lawsuit against the city last week on grounds that the parity or "me too" provisions of the fire unions' contract puts the police in the position of "indirectly" negotiating for fire wages, according to the complaint filed in Baltimore Circuit Court.

The Baltimore police official in charge of leading internal disciplinary proceedings was fired Tuesday, and the city police union is calling for all cases she handled to be dropped. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that JoAnn C. Woodson-Branche was fired but would not provide details, citing a policy against discussing personnel issues. Mayor Sheila Dixon said Wednesday that the department's ability to police its own is a "longtime issue" and called it a "weak link." "I think that this is a good opportunity to revamp that whole department and deal with those weaknesses and strengthen that effort," Dixon said.

Calling an uptick in police shootings troubling, two state delegates and the head of the local NAACP called on the federal government yesterday to investigate a recent fatal shooting by a Baltimore police officer who has shot three people since June 2007. Dels. Jill Carter and Curtis S. Anderson and Marvin L. "Doc" Cheatham, president of the Baltimore chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, did not raise specific concerns about Friday's shooting in Northwest Baltimore, in which 30-year-old Shawn Cannady later died.

Baltimore police will no longer release the names of officers who kill or injure people, changing a long-standing practice that the department believes put officers at risk. The decision is prompting criticism from several Baltimore leaders, who said withholding officers' names will only endanger an already tenuous relationship between the police and the community. Baltimore police shot 21 people last year, 13 of them fatally - the same number killed by police in 2007, when 31 people were shot.

A grand jury is scheduled to begin hearing witnesses today in a case involving a city police officer who fatally shot a man in Northeast Baltimore in January, according to a defense lawyer who represents officers for the Fraternal Order of Police union. The Jan. 30 shooting prompted an outcry from the city's branch of the NAACP, which asked for an outside investigation into the circumstances of the shooting that killed 27-year-old Edward Lamont Hunt. His family has said he was unarmed when he was shot and police said they have not recovered a weapon.

A committee of city police commanders and union representatives has recommended expanding a pilot program in which officers work four 10-hour shifts every week, a system they credit with reducing crime in the Northeastern District, according to a report obtained by The Sun. The new schedule, in place there since November 2007, puts Northeastern officers on the streets four days and then off three. The arrangement is popular with the police rank and file, who typically work six days straight in eight-hour shifts.