With the pressured resignation of Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm, his second in command, Deputy Commissioner Col. Frederick Bealefeld, is expected to take over as acting commissioner.

Baltimore police union President Paul Blair said he hoped Bealefeld would work closely with the union but didn’t like a recent patrol decision the deputy commissioner made.

“He was the one who put homicide guys on foot,” Blair said. “We disagreed with that policy when it was done. I guess the union will find the same criticisms we had.”

In May, Hamm and Bealefeld began requiring the detectives, along with internal affairs officers and other investigators and administrators, to occasionally walk foot patrols while in uniform — a decision that added about 85 patrol officers to the department’s ranks.

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But a spike in fatal shootings caused the department to switch gears and discontinue the program.

“Many of us have wanted this for a long time,” mayoral candidate Del. Jill Carter said of Hamm’s resignation. “The issue now is whether or not the second in command is prepared to take leadership immediately and begin to pull the city out of the public safety crisis it’s in.”

Carter said the change in leadership calls into question Mayor Sheila Dixon’s crime plan.

“It doesn’t inspire any confidence in her ability to lead the city,” Carter said. “The city is in the throes of death. She has no control, and her commissioner resigns in the middle of it. She has no plan of action.”

Bealefeld did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

lbroadwater@baltimoreexaminer.com