City Councilman Bernard C. "Jack" Young has been chairman of the City Council's public safety and health committee since 2007, and next week he is expected to be elevated to City Council president to fill the vacancy created when Stephanie Rawlings-Blake became mayor. Young, an East Baltimore Democrat, has called investigative hearings to grill police about various issues and in January 2009 was escorted out of a commanders meeting. Young addressed his stint on the public safety committee and his relationship with the Police Department in a brief question-and-answer session with the Baltimore Crime Beat.

Q: What were some your accomplishments as the chair of the public safety committee?

A:  Mostly the issues that we focused on were, police shootings, naming officers involved in shootings. There were [also] investigative committees about how they discipline police officers. Transparency with the Police Department has been one of the issues that I've been working on, and I think they're a bit more transparent than they were.

Q:  Do you think the city is on the right track with its public safety strategy?

A:  I think we're pretty much on the right track, with the exception that I think we need to put more focus on community policing. When you have officers on these beats, they get to know their area and their district. That would foster a better working relationship - they know the good, the bad, and they know the ugly. Also, trying to reconnect with our schools so students will not have the attitude that police officers are against us. I heard students say, 'I don't talk to them, all they want to do is lock us up.' Under Officer Hite [Col. Rick Hite, who retired last year], they were starting to look at officers as Officer Friendly again.

Q:  What are some unanswered questions you still have based on your experience leading the public safety committee?

A:  As you know, the homicides. Those homicides stats - we have all these people that are still at the medical examiner, whose deaths have not been ruled, and we need to know so we know whether we have the correct homicide stats. They say crime is down, but most people in the community don't feel crime is down. We want hard, factual numbers.

I continue to support Commissioner Bealefeld. The incident that happened [when he was escorted from the Comstat meeting] is behind me, and it was always behind me. I never exposed it to the media, and I still want to know how it was done.

Q:  You were pretty upset at the time..

A:  I was a little upset. But I really want to work in cooperation with Commissioner Bealefeld and our new mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, to work as partners to come up with priorities.