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Fort Worth police chief Joel Fitzgerald will be Baltimore’s selection for the city’s next police commissioner, Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price told Dallas-area media.
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, however, refused to confirm Fitzgerald’s selection. She said she was still in her vetting process and is on track to name the new commissioner by the end of the month, following a nationwide search.
Pugh’s spokesman Greg Tucker said the process is still ongoing and no decision has been made.
Top City Council officials said early Friday they were in the dark on Pugh’s selection process.
The incoming police commissioner will become the fifth to lead the Baltimore department since 2015.
In that time, the department has struggled with unprecedented violence while endeavoring to regain the community’s trust following the unrest after the death of Freddie Gray from injuries suffered in police custody and the federal racketeering case against members of the rogue, now disgraced Gun Trace Task Force.
Councilman Brandon Scott, chairman of the public safety committee, said he has asked the mayor’s office repeatedly for information on finalists for the job, neither Pugh, nor her team have provided any names. The council must confirm the police commissioner.
Scott said he is not familiar with Fitzgerald but he knows some elected officials in the Texas community and will be researching his history “as much as humanly possible,” given the stakes in Baltimore amid surging violence. Scott said he wants to know whether Fitzgerald’s track record is one of effectively reducing violence using community policing and if he has ever had to deal with a consent decree, as Baltimore must.
Lester Davis, a top aide for Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young,” said when the mayor makes her selection, Young and a delegation from Baltimore — including community members and council members — will travel to the new commissioner’s previous community and research his or her background. Davis said he could not confirm whether Pugh had offered the job to Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald was also a longtime Philadelphia police officer and is from the Philadelphia area. He has previously served as police chief in Missouri City, Texas, and Allentown, Pa. He took the Fort Worth position in 2015.
In Fort Worth, he has endured controversy. After the leak of body-camera footage led to the discipline of two high-ranking police commanders in 2017, two local ministers called for Fitzgerald’s removal, according to the Fort Worth Fox affiliate.
Also last year, a survey of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association showed 84 percent of respondents indicating morale had declined during Fitzgerald’s tenure, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
He did not respond to a call for comment about the selection Thursday evening.
The selection process has not been public, which many community groups have said is the wrong approach and that the public should have had more input.
City Solicitor Andre Davis said previously that more than 50 applications have been received, and a panel of three law enforcement experts from around the country is helping in the search.
City officials would not name the applicants, citing confidentiality agreements with them.
Interim Gary Tuggle, who has been leading the department since May, expressed interest in the job but withdrew his name from the process last week.
Tuggle took over after Darryl De Sousa resigned in May, after federal authorities charged him with failing to file his tax returns for three years.
Pugh had named De Sousa after she fired Kevin Davis in January when the city pbaded 300 homicides for the third year in a row.
Former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake hired Davis after firing Anthony Batts in July 2015 amid backlash over Gray’s death and the riots that followed.
The next commissioner faces numerous challenges from increases in violence in recent weeks to implementing reforms mandated under a federal consent decree.
U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar who is overseeing the process has lamented the importance of the role at recent hearings on the progress of the decree, and has called the job the most difficulties enforcement job in the country.
The department needs a leader “who is bold, strong and capable of inspiring the community but also conforms with this reform initiative,” Bredar said at a recent hearing.
This article will be updated.
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