Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III gave an interview to the Internet site Exhibit A, in which he talks about crime, police overtime and staffing and frustrated officers and citizens.

It comes as the top cop releases figures showing that crime has dropped in Baltimore this year, good news for the city and the department. In Friday's paper, I'll be examining whether a 9 percent crime drop or a 5 percent crime increase really mean anything to anybody. We have a disconnect between cops saying crime is dropping and people reporting that crime is out of control.

Here is an exerpt of the interview with Bealefeld (the entire interview can be reached through the link above):

They [people] get bombarded with the negative. And it’s not smoke and mirrors. People perceive that. They say, “It’s just fuzzy math – the crime rate’s not really going down, look at all this unreported crime.” There was a big push on that when I first got here, there was a lot of noise about all the numbers, and [people saying] it’s a lie, and part of that is fed by disgruntled people. We had people working against us inside the police department. I had to get rid of them. And there were people who focused on the anecdotal and, God bless them, here’s a reality: You think cops up here in the early 1980s weren’t taking reports? You think cops in the ’90s weren’t taking reports? And so, in 2008 when people say “Oh, my gosh, they didn’t take a report!” It’s happened before.