Bealefeld defends department on Steiner
Baltimore Police Commissioner went on the Marc Steiner show on Morgan State University's WEAA-Radio and confronted his critics. Listen to show here.
On police protecting their own: "One of things I've tried to do is avoid all these blanket indictments and over-generalizations. We should be constantly testing and challenging ourselves in the community. What kind of service do we provide or don't we provide? What kind of professionalism do we have?"
He noted the arrests of officers in a towing scandal and reminded people that the department lured them to the training academy under a ruse that their guns needed to be checked and then busted them. He said that despite rumors the arrest plan had been compromised, all but two officers showed, proving to him that the rumors were false. The other two had been out of town.
But he said he felt there were legitimate concerns about what sergeants and lieutenants were doing while officers were directing unsuspecting motorists to a towing company not approved by the city, but one that was paying off cops for the extra business. "If they were really paying attention to their people, why wouldn't they know?" he asked.
Asked whether the commander of internal police investigations compromised the office in charge of routing out bad cops because of his friendship with an officer charged with dealing heroin, Bealefeld said this:
"I wasn’t in the dark about what was going on there. Obviously knew what was going on there. At the end of the thing, we moved them out. People want to know every intimate detail, every single thing. But they have to at least acknowledge that we’re committed to doing something and taking action. One man is in federal custody facing substantial criminal charges and we moved the head of the IID unit out of there."
Bealefeld said he's "backing up what he said" and "holding people accountable."
On the shooting of Officer William H. Torbit Jr., who was killed by fellow officers who mistook him for a civilian shooting another civilian, Bealefeld said:
"What happened on that parking lot outside that club is a horrible, horrible tragedy. That’s what happened on that lot. That night was just an absolute tragedy for this whole city. What can I say, what more could I say, could the mayor say, could anyone else way about that case?"
Steiner asked about why 42 shots were fired (by all the officers including Torbit). "Forty-two shots in a crowd," Steiner said, quoting some pundits he had on the show recently. "There is no reason to fire that many."
Bealefeld answered: "It's just foolishness, absolute foolishness and frankly totally irresponsible for people who weren’t there, who weren’t in that situation, to come in and purport themselves as experts into the minds of those four unfortunate people ... to promote themselves through some kind of purported expertise about the difference between one shot and 10 shots. It's just flat out wrong.
"The bottom line is that these two men are dead and three women are injured. It was a horrible, horrible tragedy that those families are never going to get over and our family is going to be suffering for a long time. Do we want know how to do it better, how to move forward, how to better train our officer? The answers is yes, yes and yes."
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Downtown, Neighborhoods, Police shootings, Top brass
Comments
Great interview Marc. Thanks for showing how uncaring and incompetent he is. Wanting police to be out of their cars, why not? Because of technology, he said. That's why they have radio's and Blackberry's. So they can actually walk with the technology in hand. Why doesn't he know what's going on in the field when he was a officer that came through the ranks. He has a lot more insight to the flaws then some other Commissioners. He's a fake and a phoney and needs to be dismissed.
Posted by: uncleollie41 | August 17, 2011 1:56 PM