Stanislaus Valchek is a career officer in the Baltimore Police Department. Valchek was former commander of the South-eastern District, embodying the remaining white ethnic neighbourhoods in Baltimore, and is a political survivor and bureaucratic player of the first order. Backed by Andrew Krawczyk, the politically influential developer who has a stranglehold on the city's valuable waterfront real estate, and an early backer of Councilman Carcetti's run for mayor, Valchek is never above a behind-the-scenes manipulation. When his son-in-law Prez needed a new assignment and a fresh start, Valchek palmed him off on the Barksdale unit which Cedric Daniels organized. On the occasion that union leader Frank Sobotka clashed with him over a petty church matter, Valchek ordered an investigation into