The Baltimore Police Department engaged in a “pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution and federal anti-discrimination law”, the Justice Department said today in announcing a consent decree between the city and the federal government.
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The Justice Department launched the civil rights investigation past year after the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who suffered a fatal spinal injury in police custody.
The report concluded that there was racial bias within the department in Baltimore and that officers made traffic stops disproportionately in poor and black neighborhoods and that officers often arrested black people during these stops for simply talking back. One man in his fifties was “stopped 30 times in less than four years, none of the stops resulted in a citation or criminal charge”.
Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York Police Department officer and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the report’s conclusions failed to take into account the hard realities of being a police officer in Baltimore.
Six officers, three white and three black, were charged in the death of Gray. And the department has been implicated for unconstitutional strip searches as well.
Officers who blatantly disregard any one’s rights would not be tolerated, he said, accusing those officers of “fostering fear and resentment”.
Gupta says that each police department the DoJ has investigated has unique challenges.
In 2015, the Justice Department released an in-depth report into the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
Baltimore police and civil leaders undertook a collaborative reform process beginning in October 2014 with DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. He told VOA the findings represent “a failure of accountability across the board”, but he is “guardedly optimistic” the negotiations will lead to an improved police department in Baltimore.
“Fighting crime and having a better relationship with the community are not mutually exclusive”, he added.
In addition to these violations against civilians, the report also reveals a lack of proper police training, the improper collection of data regarding police activities, and unreliable rules for holding officers accountable for delinquency.
Anticipating what the Justice Department would discover, city officials have pushed forward on several fronts, revising the Police Department’s policy on use of force and instituting new training. She says there have been longstanding systemic problems with the Baltimore Police Department, including excessive force and the targeting of African-Americans.
“Those things didn’t grab their attention sufficiently – and what we ended up with is a tragedy, pain and suffering in the streets of Baltimore a year ago in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death”, Hosko, the former No. 2 in the agency’s criminal investigative division, told “The Hard Line” host Ed Berliner. “But nothing is as painful as being stuck in a place that we do not belong”, Davis said.
Wednesday morning, the Department of Justice officially released its investigation into the Baltimore Police Department.
Among other outrages, the feds found that between 2010 and June 2015, 44 percent of BPD stops were made in two African American communities containing just 11 percent of the city’s population. “But he said if people are that nervous, they shouldn’t be police officers”.
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Officers frequently used excessive force in situations that did not call for aggressive measures, the report said, and routinely retaliated against residents who were criticizing or being disrespectful of police for exercising their right to free speech and free assembly. Baltimore police officers routinely discriminate against black. “When residents don’t trust the police, that distrust makes it harder for officers to prevent and solve crimes”.
