Inspector Sledge Hammer (David Rasche) is a stubborn, narrow-minded, opinionated, sexist, and reactionary (all of this by his own admission) detective from the San Francisco Police Department. According to many of his fellow detectives, he "makes Dirty Harry look like Mr. Peepers." Hammer's most prized possession is his .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 629 revolver (a stainless steel version of the Smith & Wesson Model 29) with a customized grip, featuring an engraving of a sledgehammer. Hammer sleeps and showers with his gun, (it has its own satin pillow) and even talks to it, referring to it as "her." He believes in shooting and asking questions . Despite this, Hammer is never seen killing anybody on-screen during the whole 41 episodes of the show. In the pilot episode, he deals with a sniper on a skyscraper roof by blowing up the entire building with a M72 LAW...after which he utters "I I got him" to onlooking cops. In "Witless," a mob assassin hides in Hammer's closet; Sledge guns down his would-be-murderer through the closed door (which has a bullseye on it) without ever knowing he's there. Later in the same episode, Hammer fatally kicks a Mafia boss through an open window. Sledge also mentions that his favorite charity is "Toy Guns for Tots". Hammer's father was Jack Hammer, a legendary carnival trick shooter whose repertoire of shooting tricks included catching a bullet in his teeth, which saved his son's life in one episode (another episode reveals that Jack gave Sledge his Magnum). His mother's name was Armin Hammer. In the episode "Brother, Can You Spare A Crime?", while Doreau and Trunk were researching Hammer's family tree, his roots go back to Ivan the Terrible; coincidentally, he had an uncle named "Ivan". He is also a distant relative to Genghis Khan, through an aunt named "Joan Khan". He is a direct descendant of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he refers to as a "black sheep" in his otherwise violent family.