ANNAPOLIS — Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm has resigned, an official said yesterday, as the worrisome homicide rate rises.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Mr. Hamm’s departure had not been announced, declined to discuss further details.
Baltimore police spokesman Troy Harris and Anthony McCarthy, a spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon, declined to comment on the resignation.
The city’s long-running struggle with violent drug crime appears to have intensified. Baltimore has recorded 176 homicides this year, putting the city on pace to have 300 homicides in a year for the first time in seven years.
Mr. Hamm was named commissioner in November 2004, when Mayor Martin O’Malley fired Commissioner Kevin Clark after domestic abuse charges against the chief proved a distraction from fighting crime.
The police commissioner’s job in Baltimore has been marked by instability for years. Mr. Hamm was the fourth police chief in as many years when he took the job in March 2005.
Paul Blair, president of the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 3, said the mayor’s office didn’t notify him of Mr. Hamm’s resignation.
“Morale has been down in the agency a long time; there are issues of low pay,” Mr. Blair said. “City Hall has been running the police department for long while.”
Mr. Hamm was a Baltimore police officer before retiring in 1996 as a major. He then oversaw security for the Downtown Partnership in Baltimore, was the city schools police chief and was the police chief at Morgan State University in Baltimore before returning to lead the Baltimore Police Department.
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