Baltimore mayor picks Fort Worth chief as next top cop

“Joel Fitzgerald is the person, in my view, to now lead Baltimore’s police department into a new era of credibility, accountability and trust,” she wrote. (File Photo: Mayor Catherine Pugh/Facebook)

Baltimore’s mayor announced Friday she has chosen a Texas police chief as her nominee to lead the city’s troubled force, seeking to rein in a soaring pace of violent crime and boost public trust in a tattered department where instability has become the norm.

In an op-ed published late Friday afternoon on The Baltimore Sun’s website, Mayor Catherine Pugh said she believed Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald was “best suited to lead the way forward.” She wrote that he has led a large police department and is “well versed on training and community engagement.”

“Joel Fitzgerald is the person, in my view, to now lead Baltimore’s police department into a new era of credibility, accountability and trust,” she wrote. “I hope that you will give him the full and fair hearing he deserves as he works to earn your confidence as he has earned mine.”

The mayor’s spokesman confirmed that she expects Fitzgerald will start working as acting commissioner after Thanksgiving, taking over the responsibilities of interim Commissioner Gary Tuggle.

Fitzgerald, 47, will need to be confirmed by the Baltimore City Council in coming weeks to become permanent commissioner.

Recent years have been deeply tumultuous for Baltimore’s police department, the eighth largest municipal police department in the United States. Fitzgerald would be the city’s fourth police leader this year alone.

Baltimore is struggling to implement a federal consent decree mandating sweeping reforms after U.S. investigators detailed longstanding patterns of unconstitutional policing and excessive force. As commissioner, Fitzgerald would be a key player in making sure reforms encompassing some of the most fundamental aspects of police work — use of force, searches and arrests — finally take root.

Confidence in Baltimore’s sworn protectors has badly deteriorated over many years. However, it might have hit rock bottom earlier this year after admissions by corrupt detectives on an out-of-control unit called the Gun Trace Task Force revealed that members resold seized narcotics, conducted brazen robberies and falsified evidence.

In 2015, Baltimore made international headlines when a 25-year-old black man’s death in police custody triggered massive protests and the city’s worst rioting in decades. Six police officers were charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray but three were acquitted and the city’s top prosecutor eventually dropped the three remaining cases.

Violent crime rates in Baltimore have been notoriously high for years. But there’s been a worrying march of killings since Gray’s death. In 2017, the 342 homicides notched last year in Maryland’s biggest city yielded a punishing homicide rate of 56 per 100,000 people, a record per-capita rate in Baltimore and well above that of any other big American city.

In recent days, some local Fort Worth leaders have cast doubt on Fitzgerald as a true police reformer as speculation built that he would soon be departing for Baltimore.

“I’m not sad to see him go,” said Michael Bell, pastor at Greater St. Stephen First Church in Fort Worth. “He was ineffective in bridging the gap between the police and the community.”

Bell criticized Fitzgerald’s handling of the fallout from a police encounter in 2016, in which a video showed a white Fort Worth officer wrestle Jacqueline Craig, a black woman, to the ground before arresting the woman and her daughter. The video sparked outrage and garnered national attention. The incident came after Craig complained that a man had physically confronted her 7-year-old son for allegedly littering.

There were calls for the officer to be fired, but Fitzgerald instead decided to suspend the officer for 10 days. Fort Worth and Arlington pastors asserted the arrests were racist. The police chief, instead, said the officer was rude and stated: “There’s a difference between rude and racism.”

Another Fort Worth pastor, B.R. Daniels Jr., said he wishes the chief well in the new position, but said Fitzgerald should examine his views on building police-community relationships, particularly with Baltimore’s history of police misconduct.

“He just can’t keep slapping (officers) on the wrist,” he said.

Pugh, however, described Fitzgerald as a proven reformer who has motivated officers to “adapt to new approaches and new technologies.” She said he understands that use-of-force policies must be clearly understood by rank and file, among other things.

“In each of his leadership positions, commissioner-designate Fitzgerald has established a reputation as a reformer and ‘disrupter’ of the status quo,” she wrote.

Fitzgerald could not immediately be contacted for comment on Pugh’s announcement.

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Tarinelli reported from Dallas, Texas.