Stuart Gharty

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Stuart Gharty is a fictional police officer played by Peter Gerety in the television series Homicide: Life on the Street. He was introduced in the season four one-shot episode Scene of the Crime, as a cowardly and incompetent patrolman who chooses to allow two homicides rather than venture into a housing project to prevent the crime. This exercise in poor judgment, compounded by his failure to call for back-up (which would have been following police procedure and would have likely saved the life of one of the two shooters), and his attempt to later cover up these failings, led to a hearing in which he was unjustly exonerated. In the end of the episode, Detective Megan Russert, the chief witness against Gharty, seems to be successful in her attempt to talk Gharty into resigning and admitting to himself that he is not cut out for police work.

However, Gharty later returns in the two-part season five finale, Partners and Other Strangers and Strangers and Other Partners, in which it is revealed that Gharty not only didn't resign, but was offered a promotion into a senior position in Internal Affairs -- one of many unjust promotions featured in the show. Gharty plays a key role in solving the murder of Detective Beau Felton, whom, Gharty reveals, had been working for I.A.D. Megan and Kay Howard blame him for Felton's death and Frank Pembleton originally doesn't want to work with him. Gharty later tells Frank that he suffered a brutal beating during an IAD investigation and got over his fear of being hurt on the job. Afterwards, he works well with the Homicide detectives and helps clear Felton's murder.

In season six, Gharty is transferred to the Homicide Division as a result of a "departmental rotation" program recently implemented in the Baltimore Police Department. As a homicide detective partnered with Laura Ballard (to whom he is extremely loyal), Gharty sometimes displays racial paranoia and other forms of pettiness, but for the most part redeems himself as a police officer, demonstrating aptitude, confidence, and devotion he had not exhibited as a patrolman. He is the squad member most affected in Season 6 by the murders of two high-ranking Catholic Church leaders. However, John Munch is openly disdainful of his presence in the unit, and begins in Season 7 to openly question Stu's statement that he served in Vietnam. Stu and Munch also clash when both fall for bartender Billie Lou, as Stu had begun an affair with her that led to his divorce but she ended up with (and briefly married to) Munch. After Munch illegally obtains Gharty's service records and finds he received an "other than honorable" discharge, Stu tells the whole story: he witnessed American troops committing atrocities against the residents of a village, and a superior officer who was insane with rage threatened to kill him before he left the area without stopping the war crimes. Stu later cut a deal to keep his mouth shut about what happened and was cut loose from the Army. He also gets a divorce from his wife early in Season 7 after she finds out about his affair with Billie Lou, and begins drinking heavily later in that season before he is able to pull himself together and return to doing his job well.

[edit] The Movie

In Homicide: The Movie, Stu has replaced Lt. Giardello as the Homicide unit's leader as Al is running for Mayor, but admits that he is there because the bosses know they can push him around and he took the job because he wasn't going to last much longer on the streets. Stu then ignores the bosses and gives a returned Pembleton and Bayliss a shot to clear Gee's shooting, which they do.