But they warned that reforming an agency entrenched in a culture of unconstitutional policing would be a slow process and could cost millions of dollars.
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Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division, told reporters in Baltimore today that investigators combed through “hundreds of thousands of pages of documents – covering 2010 to 2016 – including policies and training materials, internal affairs files, data on stops, searches, and arrests and use-of-force reports”. Over the years, the strategy has divided academics and police and government officials. But the numbers plateaued and crept back up to 282 in the a year ago before he took office as Maryland governor in 2007.
“Improving community trust and reducing violent crime are mutually reinforcing actions, not an either/or proposition”, he said in a statement. He says Baltimore’s residents who were denied justice and equal treatment under the law are owed? the opportunity to make the police department a model for the nation.
“The Department’s current relationship with certain Baltimore communities is broken”, the report stated.
The investigation into the Baltimore Police Department found that the unconstitutional practice of stopping and arresting citizens stemmed from “zero tolerance” approaches to policing that were handed down by supervisors.
In a statement released Wednesday, O’Malley, who made a failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, defended his record. The Justice Department report also found that Baltimore police officers tend to treat minors the same as they do adults and have no training in dealing with those with mental health issues.
She says there have been longstanding systemic problems with the Baltimore Police Department, including excessive force and the targeting of African-Americans. “Make no mistake about it – enforcement levels rose when we started closing down the open air drug markets that had been plaguing our poorest neighborhoods for years”.
The Baltimore Police routinely stopped pedestrians without reasonable suspicion, the DOJ found – even though 26 out of 27 pedestrian stops don’t result in any finding of criminal activity.
That includes, she said, “making unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests; using enforcement strategies that produce severe and unjustified disparities in the rates of stops, searches, and arrests of African-Americans; using excessive force; and retaliating against people engaging in constitutionally-protected expression”.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake says she anticipates, based on reforms implementation in other cities, that the annual cost could be between $5 million and $10 million.
“The report and its follow-up will help to heal the relationship between the police and our communities”, Rawlings-Blake said.
In the wake of the Justice Department’s report, Baltimore and federal officials will meet to work out details of a consent decree, enforceable by the courts, that will outline steps to be taken by Baltimore in an effort to reform their police department.
The court-enforced order will be independently monitored.
City police Commissioner Kevin Davis said that he has already fired some officers as a result of the Justice Department’s investigation. “But nothing is as painful as being stuck in a place that we do not belong”, Davis said.
The federal investigation was launched after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, who sustained fatal injuries while handcuffed and shackled but left unrestrained in the back of a police van.
[Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images] The federal civil rights report does not mention the behavior of the officers involved in the death of Gray, and comes just weeks after the charges against the last of those officers were dropped.
The report noted that one detective who reported misconduct in 2012 “found a dead rat on his vehicle 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.
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The Department of Justice is conducting a separate investigation into Gray’s death.
