The Department of Justice monitored the department’s policing methods, including use of force, searches and arrests, for more than a year at the request of the Baltimore Police Department, after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody.
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Police representatives are absent from community meetings and some organizations told investigators that police stopped coming to meetings after the sometimes violent protests that followed Freddie Gray’s death.
Many times, these investigations lead to negotiations and agreements between police departments and the Justice Department that are created to curb some of the violations. The report found widespread civil rights abuses by authorities, including systematic racial discrimination in the Missouri city’s police department and municipal court. A copy of the report was first posted Tuesday by The New York Times. “It was clear to a number of people looking at the situation that the community’s frayed trust – to use an understatement – was even worse and has in effect been severed in relationship to the police department”. It fuelled a national debate on police tactics and stoked the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Police stopped pedestrians and motorists more often in black neighborhoods, and often without reasonable suspicion.
Among the findings: Black residents account for roughly 84 percent of stops, though they represent just 63 percent of the city’s population.
Police had arrested Gray, 25, for fleeing unprovoked in a high-crime area.
The report found that numerous department’s raced-based policing problems were encouraged by supervisors who told officers to target blacks.
Unconstitutional frisks are also rampant, the report says. “But he said if people are that nervous, they shouldn’t be police officers”.
It adds that a computer template was provided to officers writing up trespassing reports; a single computer keystroke enters the term “a black male” into arrest reports, noting “The supervisor’s template thus presumes that individuals arrested for trespassing will be African American”.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department is expected to publicly release a long-awaited report on its investigation into the practices of the Baltimore Police Department.
The Baltimore Police Department has routinely violated the constitutional rights of residents, according to a US Justice Department investigation stemming from the death of black detainee Freddie Gray previous year.
Because of the Justice Department’s investigation, the city will now likely have to agree to a series of reforms, including possibly a federal monitor.
Gupta’s remarks came as she announced the results of a yearlong investigation into the police department’s policies. The Justice Department will hold a press conference Wednesday in Baltimore to discuss the findings. He said they will help him improve the force.
“We have begun this journey to reform long-standing issues in many real, tangible ways”, Davis said. “DOJ’s findings will serve to solidify our road map”.
Baltimore has at times been the epicenter of discord between police and residents, particularly after Gray’s death.
Six officers were charged in Gray’s death, but four trials ended without a conviction. Critics said the collapse proved the prosecution was misguided from the start, while Mosby defended her actions and accused the police of undermining the investigation. “The Justice Department report should increase the pace of change”. That ultimately convinced local leaders to approve an agreement calling for for policy revisions and more training at the city’s police department.
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Information for this article was contributed by Matt Zapotosky, Wesley Lowery, Lynh Bui, Peter Hermann, Clarence Williams and Keith L. Alexander of The Washington Post; by Del Quentin Wilber and Kevin Rector of Tribune News Service; and by Richard A. Oppel Jr., Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Matt Apuzzo.
