The probe was launched shortly after Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died in police custody after being driven-cuffed and shackled but without a seatbelt-through six stops before arriving at a police station unconscious in April 2015. Gray’s death led to mass protests in Baltimore and beyond. “You’ve got to be the baddest motherfucker out there”, one officer said, explaining his approach to policing.
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A report by a supervisory officer said the officer “thought it could be possible that the individual could be out seeking a victim of opportunity”. He recalled being out with his children and seeing police chase down a teenager for smoking marijuana.
“There was five of them”.
In another officer-involved shooting in 2013, an investigator told the officer, “Sir, please just as we did before we went on the tape, just tell us what happen [sic]”. “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”. If they cared, he said, this city would not look like “a damn abandoned area”. “I’m very, very concerned by some of the information contained in this report”, he said.
In a damning report released Wednesday, the Department of Justice details the ways in which the Baltimore Police Department has violated the rights of the people its officers are sworn to protect.
The department recognizes community policing as an effective strategy to improve its relationship with the public, but it is not being carried out fully, the report says. In recent years, the Justice Department has undertaken similar action in Cleveland, Ohio and Ferguson, Missouri, among other cities.
“Over the next few months we will put in place a concrete plan for change as well as concrete plans for a new culture for the good of the city”, mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.
To help curb the problem, the DOJ is seeking a court-enforceable consent decree to force the department to institute improvements, but activists and organizers remain skeptical. Ten years later, the department was back, finding ongoing use-of-force issues – and last year the city once again adopted a consent decree and is now in the process of discussing reform – though community advocates have already expressed frustration at officials’ refusal to implement their recommendations. Department records showed more than 2,800 force incidents during the almost six-year review period, of which only 10 were investigated and one found to be excessive.
German Lopez at Vox describes the Baltimore Police Department as a “complete and utter disaster” but points out that the Justice Department’s report raises broader questions race relations in American society.
For example, police made 44 per cent of stops in two small, predominantly black districts that contain only 11 per cent of the city’s population, Ms Gupta said.
These injustices are compounded by the many others faced by Black people of all gender identities and sexual orientations at the hands of BPD.
One man who spoke to investigators said he was stopped 30 times in less than four years. At least 15 of those stops, he said, were to check for outstanding warrants.
According to the report, officers would frequently ask women who brought up sexual-assault claims, “Why are you messing that guy’s life up?” Force is often used as a retaliatory tactic in instances where officers “did not like what those individuals said”. “BPD’s trainings fuel an “us vs. them” mentality we saw some officers display toward community members, alienating the civilians they are meant to serve”.
In the early 2000s, the Baltimore PD maintained a “zero tolerance” policy, allowing arrests for minor charges. Most of these are cultural problems stemming from the era of so-called “zero tolerance policing” that began in Baltimore in the late ’90s.
“Nearly everyone who spoke to us. agreed the Baltimore Police Department needs sustainable reform”, Gupta said.
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“This pattern or practice is driven by systemic deficiencies in BPD’s policies, training, supervision and accountability structures that fail to equip officers with the tools they need to police effectively and within the bounds of the federal law”, the report concludes. Even though officers found contraband 50 percent more often on white pedestrians and twice as often during vehicle stops of white residents, blacks pedestrians were 37 percent more likely to be stopped than white ones, and black drivers were 23 percent more likely to be stopped than white drivers.Blacks had a higher rate of arrest than any other group. It ended with her strip-searched on the side of a road, with a female officer even searching her anal cavity in public.
