The agency won't comment, but I'm told that the Baltimore Police Department's chief of administration, Ann Wells, is no longer with the agency as of this morning or yesterday afternoon. It's not clear whether she resigned, was laid off, or terminated. Wells' job was a civilian position, but she was listed as the second-highest-ranking official on the administrative side, below Deputy Commissioner Deborah Owens, and the sixth highest-ranking official in the agency overall (at least according to an ever-shrinking list of command staff members published in graduation/promotion ceremonies). The dismissal may be part of a general downsizing both in the agency's administrative ranks and its command staff. Numerous command-level positions have been left vacant or merged with other positions as officers leave or are fired (for example, a replacement was not named when Col. Dean Palmere moved from heading the Violent Crimes Impact Division to the broader Criminal Investigations Division, which oversees homicide, the crime lab, sex offense unit, etc. Instead, they made VCID a subsection under CID) and the agency has been aggressively pushing desk-duty officers into operations functions to keep cops on the street. Then again, you wouldn't think something like that would elicit a "no comment on personnel actions" response from the agency...

We'll post more as we hear it.