Grayling Williams (left) and John King. Should’ve brought a bet­ter cam­era, I know.

Bal­ti­more Police Com­mis­sioner Fred­er­ick H. Beale­feld III intro­duced three key staff mem­bers Fri­day morn­ing dur­ing a one-hour round table dis­cus­sion with reporters. Major Mar­garet Bar­ialaro will be lead­ing the department’s efforts to become accred­ited by the Com­mis­sion on Accred­i­ta­tion of Law Enforce­ment Agen­cies, known as CALEA. Grayling Williams, a 22-year vet­eran of the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion, has taken over the department’s Inter­nal Affairs Divi­sion. And John King, a 26-year vet­eran of the Mont­gomery County Police and for­mer chief of the Gaithers­burg Police, is the new civil­ian head of training.

“Inter­nal Affairs basi­cally sets the tone for pol­icy and pro­ce­dure,” Williams said. “I can count the num­ber of cops on one hand that I know and social­ize with.”

The pre­vi­ous direc­tor of Inter­nal Affairs, which con­trols the mostl­y­se­cret police dis­ci­pli­nary system—resigned last year after pho­tos sur­faced of him and another offi­cer who had been arrested for deal­ing heroin while in uniform.

“Bal­ti­more is a big city depart­ment with big city issues,” Williams, who grew up in New York City, said. “But they’re not insurmountable.”

King defended the department’s unique Dia­mond Stan­dard train­ing sys­tem, which was ques­tioned last year in an inde­pen­dent review board report on last year’s fatal vio­lence at the Select Lounge on the west side. (We wrote about it here). Dia­mond Stan­dard “is so effec­tive and so pos­i­tive,” King said, cit­ing police offi­cer reviews of the train­ing. It is also always chang­ing to meet new con­tin­gen­cies, he said.

Bar­ialaro said she was review­ing the department’s “gen­eral orders,” which she described as a 5-inch-thick man­ual. The orders—which are the same as poli­cies and procedures—will be adjusted over the com­ing year or three to con­form with the CALEA stan­dards, she said.

Most big city depart­ments are not accred­ited under the pro­gram, offi­cials said. Bal­ti­more and Mont­gomery coun­ties are accredited.

Beale­feld said he had been work­ing to improve train­ing and other stan­dards since he became chief in 2007, and that the changes have paid div­i­dends. The crime lab is now accred­ited to national stan­dards, he said, and the smarter, military-inspired train­ing has cut annual arrest num­bers from more than 100,000 in the early 2000s to 42,000 last year. He said the Dia­mond Stan­dard Train­ing cost amounted to about $250 per officer.

“Jayne,” Beale­feld said, address­ing WBAL TV’s Jayne Miller, “three years ago you were doing sto­ries, some of them three blocks from here, about peo­ple hail­ing cops and they were dri­ving by. We’ve been doing this [retrain­ing] for a while—challenging our­selves to do it bet­ter tomor­row than we did it today.”

The Sun’s Justin Fen­ton asked some of the most pointed ques­tions. Cit­ing the department’s secrecy about its inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tions, Fen­ton asked whether his col­league, Peter Her­mann, had bro­ken the law in 2000 when he used to rou­tinely attend the trial board hear­ings of city police fac­ing dis­ci­pli­nary action.

Beale­feld did not answer the question.

The law that makes trial boards open did not change. Police pol­icy did. Not sure why Fen­ton and Her­mann didn’t ham­mer that again in their own blog.

Tags: Baltimore police department, diamond standard training, Grayling Williams, internal affairs division, John King, Margaret Barialaro, Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld