Overall the investigators found that agency found that Baltimore Police engage in “a pattern or practice” of discriminatory policing against African-Americans – a finding that will eventually result in a federal consent decree, yet to be negotiated, and an outside monitor, federal officials said.
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The DOJ investigation was prompted by the death of Freddie Gray from injuries he sustained while in police custody in April of 2015. Officials say there have been longstanding systemic problems with the Baltimore Police Department, including excessive force and the targeting of African-Americans.
People were detained and arrested for “using freedom of speech”, she said, which the police interpreted as being disrespectful.
In recent years, the justice department has conducted similar investigations into the police in Chicago, Cleveland, Albuquerque and Ferguson, Missouri.
The Department of Justice credited the Baltimore Police Department for already undertaking key reforms, including revising its use of force policies and initiating increased communication with community leaders and residents.
Second, it will unfold over the course of many years – holding the city to certain standards and reform priorities that will not shift each time a new mayor is elected or a new commissioner takes the helm of the nation’s eighth largest police force.
The department’s record on how it investigates sexual violence is particularly awful.
Vanita Gupta, head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division, said the agreement provides a framework for developing a final consent decree and includes a timeline for the process.
“We have not been standing still while this inquiry was underway”, she said.
Police enforcement strategies “produce severe and unjustified disparities in the rates of stops, searches and arrests of African Americans”, the report concluded. The long overdue reforms and changes that Commissioner Kevin Davis has already begun to enact and has pledged to fully implement are encouraging. But what we are saying is that proactive policing has to be done in partnership with the community.
Officials warned, however, that reforming a department entrenched in a culture of unconstitutional policing would be a slow process and could cost millions.
“There were individual police officers that were witnesses to the case, yet were part of the investigative team, interrogations that were conducted without asking the most poignant questions, lead detectives that were completely uncooperative and started a counter-investigation to disprove the state’s case”, Mosby said. Cooperation with law enforcement must suffer as the trust required between a police department and its citizens is eroded by the rightly perceived unbalanced enforcement.
Officers routinely use unreasonable and excessive force, including against juveniles and citizens who aren’t risky or posing an immediate threat, the report said.
Gupta said the report was commissioned a month after Freddie Gray’s death in 2015. “Where are you going?'” he said.
Wayne Cohen, law professor at George Washington University and former president of the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington D.C., said the Justice Department report probably will quicken the pace of change in Baltimore.
The Justice Department’s investigation after Gray’s death found that the Baltimore Police Department had routinely made unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests.
The government report represented a damning indictment of how the city’s police officers carry out the most fundamental practices, including traffic stops and searches.
“BPD teaches officers to use aggressive tactics”, the report said.
“A White House task force on policing a year ago recommended better reporting of police-involved shootings, de-escalation training for officers and stronger relationships with communities, but those recommendations are not binding and do not address problems in individual police departments”.
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In one of numerous incidents cited in the report, police stopped a female motorist merely for a missing headlight.
