Due to improper training, Baltimore Police Department officers regularly use excessive force against minors and individuals with mental disabilities.
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Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who asked the Justice Department to conduct the probe in the wake of the rioting following the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of police, said Wednesday the report is an important step on the path to reforming BPD, the Baltimore Police Department. The death set off protests and the worst riots in decades.
Police practices in Baltimore “perpetuate and fuel a multitude of issues rooted in poverty and race, focusing law enforcement actions on low-income, minority communities” and encourage officers to have “unnecessary, adversarial interactions with community members”, the report said. And then they’ll say you’re resisting arrest. “All we ask, we just want some supportive cops who are anxious about our people, and not just black people: white people, Mexicans, all types of people”. He recalled being out with his children and seeing police chase down a teenager for smoking marijuana.
“There was five of them”. I pray the reaction to this report will not obscure their selfless service and will inspire others to follow them and to join efforts to address this resounding call for urgent change. “But he said if people are that nervous, they shouldn’t be police officers”.
“One day I was walking down the street to the store, and one of them jumped out on me and forced me to empty my pockets”.
Calvin Void, 45, said Wednesday that he was once tackled by a police officer who was convinced he had just participated in a drug deal. “They just harass people”.
“Fighting crime and having a better, more respectful relationship with the community are not mutually exclusive endeavors”. We don’t have to choose one or the other. “We’re choosing both. It’s 2016”, Davis said.
“We have begun this journey to reform long-standing issues in many real, tangible ways”, Davis said.
Gupta said “the city’s African-American residents and African-American neighborhoods bore the brunt” of unwarranted stops by police.
Rep. Elijah Cummings says the Justice Department’s report on the Baltimore Police Department validates what many city residents already know, that the trust between police and communities “is in desperate need of fix”.
Final details of the agreement will be completed by November, officials said.
“Nearly everyone who spoke to us … agreed the Baltimore Police Department needs sustainable reform”, Gupta said.
It found that officers make a large number of stops – mostly in poor, black neighborhoods – with dubious justification and unlawfully arrest citizens when officers “did not like what those individuals said”.
Despite making up just 63 percent of Baltimore’s population, blacks accounted for 95 percent of those stopped by police at least 10 times during the time period under review. Black residents made up 91 percent of those charged with “failing to obey” an officer, and 84 percent of those charged with “disorderlyconduct”. Seven men reported they had been stopped over 30 times. The Department of Justice report found that Baltimore’s African-Americans were discriminated against by the police department, who stopped African-Americans far more often than their population proportion would deem reasonable. None of the stops resulted in charges.
In addition to pat-downs, Baltimore officers perform unconstitutional public strip searches, including searches of people who aren’t under arrest. “Yeah” the male officer replied, a female officer proceeding to search her anal cavity with a latex glove before releasing her without a criminal charge.
The report noted that one detective who reported misconduct in 2012 “found a dead rat on his auto with its head severed under his wiper blades”, with a sergeant later telling the detective “you better pray to God you’re not the star witness” against the accused officers. The directives often come from supervisors. The department was on a ride-along when a supervisor told a patrol officer to stop and question a group of young black men for no valid reason.
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State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, the city’s top prosecutor, said she expected the report to “confirm what many in our city already know or have experienced firsthand”. The agency fails to provide officers with sufficient policy guidance and training; fails to collect and analyze data regarding officers’ activities; and fails to hold officers accountable for misconduct.
