In at times critical language, it notes African Americans were more likely to be stopped and searched for illegal guns and drugs, that police have blatantly discriminatory arrest practices and that officers are encouraged to have “unnecessary, adversarial interactions” with members of the community.
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Clyde Boatwright, president of the city school police union, said school officers provide a valuable public service by working with city police.
African-American residents in Baltimore are routinely subjected to unconstitutional stops, arrests and excessive force by the Baltimore Police Department, a scathing federal report released on Tuesday said.
The report concludes that Baltimore police are taught to use “aggressive tactics” and often retaliate against those where officers “did not like” what was said.
“It’s 2016. So the Baltimore Police Department is choosing both”.
“Those who have left this agency deserved to leave this agency”, he said.
The Department of Justice also said that it was “troubled” by statements that BPD detectives made, suggesting an “undue skepticism” on reports of sexual assault.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked the Department of Justice to do a full civil rights investigation after Gray died.
The previous memorandum of understanding between the two agencies did not address standards for use of force, leaving it unclear whose authority school police officers were acting under and whether their actions were in accordance with protocol, the DOJ investigators said.
“They only put out there what they want to put just to get the votes and get what they need to get in, and once they get in, they don’t care”, Ross said.
In the past year, two videos have surfaced showing violent altercations between school police officers and students.
She says there have been longstanding systemic problems with the Baltimore Police Department, including excessive force and the targeting of African-Americans. Ifill says it is instructive that the legacy of “zero tolerance policing” is identified as the key source of the systematic unconstitutional conduct.
The report, the culmination of a yearlong investigation into one of the country’s largest police forces, 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”.
Ifill urges “residents, community groups, and leading city institutions to marshal their resources and prepare for the long haul to find a way forward”.
Baltimore Police Department Commissioner Kevin Davis (L) listens as Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta (C), head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, speaks during Wednesday’s press conference in Baltimore.
The report represents a damning indictment of how the city’s police officers carry out the most fundamental of policing practices, including traffic stops and searches.
A mural dedicated to Freddie Gray is shown near the location where he was arrested in 2015 in Baltimore.
The city and the Justice Department have agreed to work jointly “to create a federal court-enforceable consent decree addressing the deficiencies found during the investigation”, according to the department.
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In another instance, Justice Department investigators reviewed correspondence between a prosecutor and a BPD officer that “openly expressed” contempt and disbelief for the women who had reported sexual assault.
