BALTIMORE (Map, News) - On a Saturday morning on the campaign trail a few weeks back, City Councilman Keiffer Mitchell Jr. had to stop in his tracks. He was trying to go door to door off East Baltimore’s Ellwood Avenue. The only thing standing in his way were some gang members who believed this was more their turf than any prospective mayor of Baltimore’s.

It happened as Mitchell walked down the street with half a dozen volunteers in orange and black campaign T-shirts. The guys on the corner were doing their own business, Mitchell said. Probably drugs, he said.

“They wanted to know what we were doing,” Mitchell said the other day. “They needed to decide if they would ‘allow’ us to come through. I’m running for mayor of Baltimore, and they’re going to decide what I can do in my own city.

“It was the same on the west side,” he said. “We got over to Mount Street, and they wanted to know what we were doing before we could come through. That sense of intimidation. You go onto certain blocks in this city, and you see people held hostage in their own neighborhoods.”

Mitchell recalled the incidents last week. Two days ago, Baltimore’s police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, endorsed him for mayor. While this was happening, the Baltimore Retired Police Benevolent Association endorsed Mayor Sheila Dixon for the job.

Now that everyone’s sorted out their political affiliations, maybe they can tell us what they would do about these gangs, and the shootings that afflict the city’s most self-destructive neighborhoods, and the anxiety they produce across the metro area.

Police endorsements of politicians are a tricky business. The cops live in America and are therefore entitled to speak their minds like anybody else. In fact, they’ve got a better notion of the crime problem, and the politics attached to it, than anybody else.

But there’s a dangerous flip side when it comes to politics and police. How close do we want them to be? How beholden do we want any officeholder to be? How independent of politics do we want police to be?

One of the whispered laments about Leonard Hamm, removed from his job as police commissioner last week, was that he was a good cop who wasn’t allowed to run his own department. The complaint wasn’t new and didn’t strictly focus on Mayor Dixon; it went back to the administration of Martin O’Malley, who made crime his political centerpiece.

Two days ago, the new commissioner, Frederick Bealefeld III, was asked about any pressure exerted by Mayor Dixon. Bealefeld has the job on an interim basis but would like to keep it. He said he and Dixon were on the same page: She’s expressed her intense desire to cut crime, and they’ll meet regularly — but, over his first week in office, he said she’s letting him do his job.

“I’m not a figurehead, and I’m not a puppet,” Bealefeld said.

In a quarter-century on the force, Bealefeld’s won considerable respect from fellow officers. But, as his first high-profile act in office, he fired the department’s spokesman, Matt Jablow. At least, City Hall says Bealefeld did the firing. And Bealefeld concurs.

But to what end? In a city desperate to cut crime, this is the new guy’s first big move? To fire the department’s messenger? It’s like the Orioles saying, sure, we need hitting and pitching. So our first big move is to fire the public relations guy.

What raises eyebrows here is that City Hall had been pressuring Hamm to get rid of Jablow — and Hamm said no.

It gets us back to police independence from politics. Endorsements are nice. Keiffer Mitchell will take his FOP endorsement and wave it like a banner, because it says rank-and-file cops trust him. And Sheila Dixon can do the same with her nod from the Retired Police Benevolent Association. It says the cops with years of experience trust her.

But it makes us question the tricky relationship between politics and police: Who expects what in return?

And it takes us back to Mitchell campaigning in the streets where gang members challenged his right to move about.

“The perverse thing,” Mitchell said, “is that, when we actually talked to these gang members, they said they were providing most of the protection in the community, and that the police couldn’t. How outrageous is that?”

Outrageous, and inaccurate.

But what’s next? The gangs start endorsing political candidates?

Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com