Before Baltimore officers took Freddie Gray on a paddy wagon ride that would lead to his death previous year, the local police force had been routinely violating civil rights and using brute force against residents in the majority-black Maryland city.
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FILE – In this April 28, 2015 file photo, police and protestors gather at the intersection of North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, bottom right, in Baltimore, a day after unrest that occurred at the intersection following Freddie Gray’s funeral.
The report, the culmination of a yearlong investigation into one of the country’s largest police forces, also found that officers make large numbers of traffic stops – mostly in poor, black neighborhoods – with dubious justification and unlawfully arrest citizens for making speech deemed rude or offensive.
When newly confirmed Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a year ago that the Justice Department would look into Baltimore, she said the review was requested by the city’s mayor and she expected it would be a “collaborative reform process”.
The Justice Department’s report focuses more on the systemic issues of the Baltimore police practices and less of the details of Gray’s arrest., the Baltimore Sun reported.
The Department of Justice monitored the department’s policing methods, including use of force, searches and arrests, for more than year.
The incident triggered rioting and protests in Baltimore, a majority black city of about 620,000 people.
The Sun cited two people familiar with the findings as saying the report showed that police routinely violated the constitutional rights of city residents by conducting unlawful stops and using excessive force.
In pattern or practice investigations, Justice Department officials review police records and policies, interviewing officers and local officials and talking to residents who have been affected by police work. But among the 300,000 reported stops of pedestrians between January 2010 and May 2015, 44 percent took place in two small districts that contain just 11 percent of the city’s population and are predominantly African-American. At least 15 of those stops, he said, were to check for outstanding warrants. None of the stops resulted in charges.
“Officers frequently resort to physical force when a subject does not immediately respond to verbal commands, even where the subject poses no imminent threat to the officer or others”.
The Justice Department said almost 90 percent of excessive force incidents it identified involved force against African-Americans.
The report further criticizes the department for using what it says are overly aggressive tactics that only escalate situations.
“In some cases, BPD supervisors have ordered officers to specifically target African-Americans for stops and arrests”, the report said.
“The supervisor’s template thus presumes that individuals arrested for trespassing will be African-American”, the report stated, describing the sort of detentions the language was meant to facilitate as “facially unconstitutional”.
Police had arrested Gray, 25, for fleeing unprovoked in a high-crime area. The officer proceeded to fire his stun gun at the running man’s back, striking him several times.
Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, in a statement, said the report “will likely confirm what many in our city already know or have experienced firsthand”. The probe found discriminatory policing practices, and local and federal officials will now have to negotiate a court-enforceable order to ensure future reforms, one of the people said.
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Gray reportedly made eye contact with Baltimore police before he was chased by a unit of bicycle officers, on April 12, 2015. Three were acquitted during bench trials and prosecutors dropped charges for the remaining three officers last month.
