An Odd Comment

This series of statements from this morning's Sun is just odd:

Mayor Sheila Dixon said yesterday that she replaced her unpopular police commissioner because she "wasn't feeling that drive like I wanted to" and said she was impressed with the way his interim replacement, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, peppered colleagues with engaging and challenging questions during crime meetings.

In an interview hours after she formally announced she had asked Leonard D. Hamm to resign amid plunging support and soaring numbers of homicides and shootings, Dixon confirmed long-standing claims from officers and their union that Bealefeld has effectively been running the department for months.

For this reason, the mayor said Bealefeld's appointment would not signal a change in the strategy to fight crime. But his style could reinvigorate a department struggling with what Dixon called an "out-of-control" murder rate.

So in an effort to turn around crime in the city, Mayor Dixon is appointing the guy who has been running the show while things were going to hell in a handbasket? Is that really the kind of admission that any Executive wants to make? That their department head has been an absentee manager and was replaced due to performance while simultaneously promoting the guy who was in charge while performance was poor?

That's no way to run the Rotary Club, much less a city with a skyrocketing murder rate...