BALTIMORE (AP) – The Justice Department and Baltimore police agreed to negotiate court-enforceable reforms after a scathing federal report released Wednesday criticized officers for using excessive force and routinely discriminating against blacks.
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The report faulted supervisors for their monitoring of officers, saying that federal reviewers “did not identify a single stop, search, or arrest” that a front-line supervisor found to violate constitutional standards even though incident reports “describe facially unlawful police action”.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by the New York Times, found that the Baltimore police for years has hounded black residents who comprise most of the city’s population, systematically stopping, searching and arresting them, often with little provocation or rationale.
Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), similarly declared: “The report released by Department of Justice has confirmed what many African American residents of Baltimore have known and lived too long”. The report examined a slew of potentially unconstitutional practices, including excessive force and discriminatory traffic stops, within the department.
City and BPD leadership responded to the City’s challenges by encouraging “zero tolerance” street enforcement that prioritized officers making large numbers of stops, searches, and arrests-and often resorting to force-with minimal training and insufficient oversight from supervisors or through other accountability structures.
The police are not adequately held accountable for misconduct, according to the report. Twenty percent of force incidents reviewed by investigators involved someone who was not being arrested for a crime or who suffered from a mental health disability.
U.S. police are widely accused of using excessive force against African Americans. Investigators found instances in which leaders in the department ordered officers to directly target black residents.
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. Witherspoon, president of the Baltimore chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said in a statement Wednesday that for those who have been fighting what he calls the “War Against Police Brutality”, the reports contains no startling revelations.
Federal investigators spent more than a year interviewing Baltimore residents, police officers, prosecutors, public defenders and elected officials, as well as riding along with officers on duty and reviewing documents and complaints.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said Tuesday that he looked forward to reviewing the federal findings.
Mosby’s office dropped charges against three of the six officers charged in the Gray case after a judge acquitted the first three officers who went to trial. The mayor said it could cost the city anywhere from $5 million to $10 million annually to make the suggested changes, which include improved training programs and new technology and equipment to modernize the police force.
Gupta said there were “long-standing systemic deficiencies” within the Baltimore Police Department and that “sustainable reform” was necessary to keep both officers and the community safe.
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The review also included internal-affairs investigations of alleged misconduct by officers and the police department’s failure to fully probe allegations of sex crimes, the Journal said. Officials said he received a severe spinal injury during transport and died a week later.
