A scathing report also cited evidence that Anthony Batts had instructed officers to refrain from arresting rioters involved in looting during Freddie Gray protests

Baltimore police commissioner Anthony Batts has been fired by the city’s mayor, in a shock announcement made amid a sharply increased murder rate and scathing criticism of his handling of civil unrest earlier this year.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said on Wednesday afternoon that she had decided to replace Batts, who has led the police department for almost three years. Deputy commissioner Kevin Davis is to take over as interim commissioner, she said.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Rawlings-Blake said she made the decision in an attempt to reverse a “crime surge” being suffered by the city. “Families are tired of feeling this pain, and so am I,” she said.

“We need a change,” said the mayor. “This was not an easy decision, but it is one that is in the best interests of the people of Baltimore. The people of Baltimore deserve better.”

Batts, 54, had been under increasing pressure to tackle a spike in violent crime. So far in 2015 the city has sustained a 48% rise in homicides and 86% rise in shootings compared with the same period last year.

The mayor’s statement came just hours after a sharply critical police union report that lambasted Batts’s management of the department during riots and protests that broke out in the city following the death of Freddie Gray in April.

Calls for Batts’s resignation had been mounting from members of the city council and Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), a coalition of local religious leaders.

Rev Andrew Foster Connors, a co-chairman of BUILD, said on Wednesday the firing of Batts should allow the city to install “a new leader who can quiet the streets and begin to rebuild the relationship between police and the people they serve”.

“He was a leader who lost his following,” Foster Connors said in a text message. “It’s not a celebratory day but it’s the right decision for the city. We need leadership who can command both the respect of the community and the respect of his officers. Mr Batts lost both.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Baltimore’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge Three cited evidence that Batts directly instructed officers to refrain from arresting rioters involved in looting in the city and placed much of the blame for the city’s descent into civil unrest at the hands of Batts.

Gray, 25, died after sustaining severe spinal injuries in police custody on 12 April. The city erupted in protests following his death before descending into riots that attracted international attention and raised serious questions over the city police’s treatment of African American residents, and brought racial disparities in the city to the fore.

Six police officers involved with Gray’s arrest have been criminally charged over his death. The driver of a police van in which Gray suffered a broken neck is charged with murder. All six have pleaded not guilty.

Baltimore City state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby, whose office will prosecute the Gray case, said in a statement on Wednesday she had already met with interim commissioner Davis and praised Batts “for his service to the city of Baltimore”.



Activist leaders said after the announcement they were skeptical that the change would have significant consequences. “Removing Commissioner Batts at this point will give the Baltimore Police a chance to claim they’re ‘starting over’ without actually changing,” DeRay Mckesson, a prominent protester and Baltimore native, said on Twitter.