Edward Norris and the Baltimore Police Department (a)
27 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2008
There are 2 versions of this paper
Edward Norris and the Baltimore Police Department (a)
Abstract
This undisguised case deals with the topic of extraordinary leadership and managing crime-fighting as a business. It offers students an opportunity to design and explore a large-scale organizational change initiative and develop a comprehensive action plan for managing it. Ed Norris, an assistant commissioner in the NYPD who supervises more than 40,000 officers and is credited with assisting in the turnaround in New York's crime scene, is offered a similar job in Baltimore supervising 3,000 officers in the worst crime-laden city in America. The challenges include entrenched crime, racial tension, declining population, negative effects on business, underfunding, critical media, low arrest rates, and a police department with underused resources and a dysfunctional organization and culture. In the A case, students are asked to lay out their action plan for dealing with the situation and, in so doing, have to wrestle with most of the issues in managing large-scale organizational change. The B case presents Norris's plan and proposed changes so students can compare their own action plans with that of the actual leader. This case series has been taught very successfully as a two-day class. Both cases include extensive video clips for both student preparation and faculty use in class. A teaching note is available for registered faculty, along with a video supplement to enhance student learning.
Excerpt
UVA-OB-0776
Rev. Feb. 11, 2011
EDWARD NORRIS AND THE BALTIMORE POLICE DEPARTMENT (A)
In the mayoral election campaign of 1999, Martin O'Malley made reducing Baltimore's violent crime rate an important part of his platform. For the better part of a decade, the city's annual murder rate had registered well over 300—the highest per capita rate among major U.S. cities—and hovering at more than seven times the national average. After winning the election, Mayor O'Malley sought to strengthen the police department in order to reduce the crime rate in the city—and provide a more stable base for business development. First, he hired consultants from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to assess the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) and its crime-fighting capacity. The incumbent commissioner Thomas Frazier resigned shortly after the election, and the new mayor named Ron Daniel to be commissioner in January 2000.
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Keywords: leadership organizational design public sector change managing
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