The General Assembly seized control of city police in 1860 following years of bitter, and often bloody, battles between the virulently anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party - which controlled Baltimore and its police force in the 1850s - and the proslavery Democratic Party.Įlections frequently devolved into pitched gunbattles between gangs affiliated with each party, said Matthew Crenson, an emeritus professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. It also forces the police commissioner and city leaders to seek Maryland General Assembly approval for the sorts of internal overhauls - such as redrawing police district maps, which haven’t been updated since the 1950s - that other jurisdictions handle with council actions. The city handles the department’s budget, and the mayor holds the power to hire and fire the police commissioner.īut its status as a state agency leaves the council without the authority to regulate the department directly, a factor that played into a power struggle over the implementation of body cameras, for instance.
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