Baltimore police Commissioner Anthony Batts, formerly Oakland’s top cop, has been having a rough time.

First, there have been the tough questions about how Freddie Gray managed to suffer severe spinal injuries while in police custody. Gray died April 19, a week after his arrest. Six Baltimore police officers have been suspended for putting Gray, 25, into the back of a police van, leaving him handcuffed with no seat belt, then ignoring his pleas for medical attention. After Gray’s funeral Monday, riots broke out. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called in the National Guard.

Now Batts and the city’s elected leaders are facing criticism over their failure to act more quickly to stop the violence that engulfed Baltimore as people all over the country and around the world watched the burning, looting and violent clashes with police in shocked disbelief.

Batts is no stranger to police brutality protests. Ten months into his Oakland tenure, there were violent protests in Oakland after former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in July 2010 for fatally shooting Oscar Grant III, 22, on the Fruitvale BART platform. How Batts dealt with those protests and his public comments about how he would have handled Occupy Oakland demonstrations differently had he been in charge — provide some interesting insight into Batts recent performance in Baltimore.

In July 2010, many people in Oakland were outraged by the Oscar Grant verdict of involuntary manslaughter instead of murder. Grant, an unarmed African-American man had been shot in the back while he was handcuffed, an event captured on cellphone video. A relatively small number of people vandalized cars, businesses and looted.

Batts would later say that he had made a strategic decision to give the protesters room.

“We allowed the protesters to start breaking into Foot Locker. … But we had to do that because we didn’t want to look like this was a police action, where we were responding too soon,” Batts told Oakland North in an interview in November 2011. “Then we had a very coordinated plan. It took us time to just kind of corral them, bring them in and take them to jail.”

Batts said people came up to him on the streets to congratulate him for how OPD handled the situation. Though, I recall a lot of people being angry about the destruction and OPD’s hands-off approach.

Now Batts, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and other city officials are facing blistering criticism about what some are calling a lack of speed in addressing violent protesters and waiting too long to ask for help from the National Guard. In some of the most graphic footage, a mob can be seen attacking a police cruiser. The officer who had been inside was forced to seek cover, Batts said.

In their efforts not to repeat the hyper-militarized response that we saw in Ferguson, Missouri, did Baltimore officials err in the opposite direction as some have claimed, enabling those intent on committing violent acts to build up momentum?

Batts and Baltimore’s mayor emphatically insist no, but that hasn’t stopped the criticism.

Batts became Oakland chief in 2009. He said he felt called to take the job to help bring about healing in the community after the murders of four Oakland police officers in March 2009. The officers were killed by a parolee just two months after Grant’s death — together marking one of the darkest chapters in city history.

Yet it became clear early on that Oakland was not what Batts had bargained for.

Besides Oscar Grant-related protests, crime remained high. An already skeleton police force was slashed even more in budget cuts. Batts was under pressure from a federal monitor for the department’s failure to institute court-ordered reforms stemming from the Riders police brutality case. Batts clashed with then-Mayor Jean Quan and City Administrator Deanna Santana, who he said interfered with his ability to run the department as he saw fit.

Two years into his three-year contract, Batts resigned in October 2011. A mere two weeks later, Oakland officials sent in the police to forcibly remove protesters from the Occupy Oakland encampment in front of City Hall. Scott Olsen, an Iraq War veteran, was struck in the head by a beanbag round and seriously wounded. It made national news. The city of Oakland recently agreed to pay Olsen a $4.5 million settlement.

Batts was vocal in his criticism of Oakland officials’ handling of Occupy. He said police had moved in too quickly. “You take your time. You use diplomacy. You talk to people,” Batts told interviewers for an Oakland Museum exhibit, “Portraits from the Occupation.”

If that was the strategy in Baltimore, it didn’t work out so well.

Tammerlin Drummond is a columnist for the Bay Area News Group. Her column runs Thursday and Sunday. Contact her at tdrummond@bayareanewsgroup.com or follow her at Twitter.com/tammerlin.