“I’m impatient,” Mayor Catherine Pugh said. The new commissioner announced plans to flood city streets with waves of officers.
The mayor of Baltimore abruptly announced on Friday that she had relieved the city’s police commissioner of duty after a year of unprecedented violence in the city.
Mayor Catherine Pugh said that Darryl D. De Sousa, a 30-year veteran of the department who was most recently a deputy police commissioner, would replace Kevin Davis, who became commissioner in 2015.Mr. De Sousa will be Baltimore’s ninth police commissioner since 1994.
Baltimore experienced a record murder rate last year and had by far the highest rate of the largest 30 cities in the United States.
There have been more than 300 homicides in the city in each of the past three years, including 343 recorded in 2017. By comparison, New York, which has a population more than 10 times that of Baltimore, experienced only 286 murders last year.
“The fact is, we are not achieving the pace of progress that our residents have every right to expect,” she said in a statement.
In a news conference shortly after the statement was released, Ms. Pugh introduced Mr. De Sousa and explained why she had suddenly chosen him to replace Mr. Davis, with whom Mr. De Sousa had worked hand-in-hand.
“I’m impatient,” she said. “We need violence reduction. We need the numbers to go down faster than they are.”
She turned the podium over to Mr. De Sousa, who announced that he had already begun an initiative to flood the city’s streets with waves of police officers from 9 a.m. to midnight.
“The priority as of this moment right now is really simple — it’s a really simple priority and that’s violence reduction,” he said. “Second priority is violence reduction, and third priority is violence reduction at an accelerated pace. That’s the bottom line.”
He added that the department had identified the “trigger-pullers” in the city and that it would be pursuing them.
“I’m a chess player,” he said. “I don’t like to be outwitted.”
Mr. Davis had presided over years of violence and protest but had said that he was dedicated to reform. He worked closely with the United States Department of Justice as required by the city’s consent degree with the federal government.
