Black people accounted for 91 percent of all those charged exclusively with trespassing or failure to obey; 89 percent of people charged for making false statements to an officer; and 84 person of those charged with disorderly conduct. But, given the DOJ’s scathing indictment of the department arrestee transport practices, was Mosby right to assert that Baltimore officers had done something seriously wrong in Gray’s arrest?
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On Wednesday afternoon, Davis announced that six Baltimore police officers had been fired due to the report’s revelations.
The investigation was launched in 2015 following the widely publicized death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American who died from wounds he sustained while in BPD custody.
His death sparked protests and riots.
The federal report comes weeks after charges were dropped against the remaining officers facing trial in the 2015 death of Freddie Gray.
She said that the city has already begun trying to reform the police department even while the Justice Department was undertaking the investigation.
The report will mark the culmination of a federal civil rights investigation into potentially unconstitutional practices, including excessive force and discriminatory traffic stops, at one of the country’s largest police forces.
The Justice Department is now enforcing consent decrees in 14 cities-including Ferguson, Missouri; Cleveland; and Newark, New Jersey-where it found constitutional violations by police.
As Bernadette DiPino, the police chief of Sarasota, Florida, told the Associated Press, sexual assault reports by officers are underreported: “It’s so underreported, and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them”. The “zero tolerance” policies are practiced in specific neighborhoods and encouraged, regardless of whether an officer has reason to be suspicious of the people being stopped, searched, and arrested.
While this report rightly warrants a collective call for change, we can not ignore the good and just service of the vast majority of policemen and women who put their lives on the line every day as they carry out their duties with respect for their office and those they serve. The directives often come from supervisors. 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.
Baltimore police officers disproportionately targeted black residents for stops, searches, and arrests.
It found that one African-American man was stopped 30 times in less than four years and never charged. At least 15 of those stops, he said, were to check for outstanding warrants. The racially disproportionate stops regularly resulted in strip searches – including one case in which a woman was subjected to an anal body cavity search which was carried out in the street, in public view. The report also revives a public dialogue that surfaced repeatedly on the presidential campaign trail, particularly as former Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, who still defends the zero-tolerance policy, sought the Democratic nomination.
Newnewshawna Scott, 30, said she once watched a police officer chase a boy and hurl him over a fence. But when the officer checked his pockets, he found no cash or drugs. At the same time, they noted that the reforms will be slow and hard – an epic understatement.
The report also uncovered widespread use of excessive force against civilians in unnecessary circumstances. Of those stopped, only 3.7 percent were cited or arrested. Without comprehensive use of force standards that include training on de-escalation and crisis intervention, police interactions will remain risky for both police and those they encounter.
“Change is painful. Growth is painful. The transparency of the report offers crucial a crucial foundation if we are going to move forward”, said the mayor, who spearheaded the unsuccessful prosecution of the officers involved in gray’s fatal detainment. We need to demand reforms!
The problems detailed in the 163-page report are broad and deep. “DOJ’s findings will serve to solidify our road map”, Davis said. In recent years, the Justice Department has undertaken similar action in Cleveland, Ohio and Ferguson, Missouri, among other cities. In response, the Justice Department entered into a consent agreement with the BPD to reform the latter.
Gupta said “the city’s African-American residents and African-American neighborhoods bore the brunt” of unwarranted stops by police. We don’t have to choose one or the other.
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The mayor has promised reforms with a sense of urgency, and next steps will be closely monitored by the federal government.
