At the same time, they noted that the reforms will be slow and hard – an epic understatement.
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The Justice Department’s top civil rights official says the Baltimore Police Department has agreed to negotiate with the agency on reforms to policies that have led to discrimination against African-Americans. They are held and given jail time and criminal records that causes them to have difficulty in getting jobs, going to college, and in housing searches.
The report on the 2,600-officer department released on Tuesday found that black residents were regularly subjected to stops as pedestrians and motorists, arrests, strip searches and excessive force in violation of US constitutional rights and federal anti-discrimination laws. Freddie Gray died after suffering a fatal injury during his arrest and transport to the Baltimore police station.
Baltimore police found contraband twice as often when searching white drivers who they stopped in comparison the African American stop. “There are many of us who recognized that it was making the community less safe”. But in two key ways, Baltimore is not like other cities, according to Smith.
The police regularly “stop and frisk” African Americans at considerably higher rates than Caucasians.
Homicides dropped to 261 in O’Malley’s first year in office.
O’Malley, who served as mayor from 1999 until January 2007 and later served as governor of Maryland, repeatedly defended zero-tolerance policing when asked about it on the campaign trail in the a year ago.
“Community policing and proactive crime fighting are not mutually exclusive”.
She stressed that “most officers in the Baltimore Police Department work hard to provide vital services to the community and to abide by the Constitution and federal law”.
The federal investigation found that Baltimore’s African-American residents suffer unfairly under a “zero tolerance” policing philosophy that routinely uses “overly aggressive tactics that unnecessarily escalate encounters”.
Cummings said in a statement that the statistics in the report released Wednesday are “astounding” and the violations of rights are unacceptable.
But the Justice Department’s report is a sort of victory when it comes to holding police departments accountable for their actions.
Numerous stories describe retaliation against residents who question or challenge police actions – and against other officers who attempt to speak up for victims.
Moving forward, Stokes said he is looking for reform in how police brutality and settlements with victims are handled. “But after peaking in 2003, arrest levels declined as violent crime was driven down”.
Although the city is 63 percent black, African Americans accounted for 84 percent of pedestrian stops, and 95 percent of 410 individuals who were stopped at least 10 times by police officers from 2010-15, the report said.
The report went far beyond the circumstances of Gray’s death to examine a slew of potentially unconstitutional practices, including excessive force and discriminatory traffic stops, within the department.
Given the staggering amount of documentation of police officers using excessive force across the country of late, the Baltimore police department shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise – but it should act as a reminder.
When asked how the DoJ findings relate to police accountability in those cases, Mayor Rawlings-Blake said: “One has nothing to do with the other”. In shocking news this week, the Justice Department said its investigation into the group had turned up more troubling information than expected. “If the leadership in the city or in the police department stops valuing and enforcing whatever agreements are made, it’s going to be hard”, says David Kairys, a law professor at Temple University and a longtime Philadelphia civil rights attorney. The reforms will be enforceable by the courts.
During today’s press conference, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said steps have already been taken to improve the relations between the police and Black citizens and to correct the problems in the department.
“We can’t come out of our doors without being harassed”, she says.
Stepping in as top cop after Anthony Batts was sacked for his handling of the unrest provoked by Freddie Gray’s death, Davis pledged to implement significant reforms while remaining loyal to the officers he commands.
Rudolph Jackson, 52, was sitting Thursday on the stoop of a formstone rowhouse near the spot where Gray was put into the back of a police van more than a year ago.
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Rosalyn Kelly, 54, said she was once chased and choked by a police officer in West Baltimore, where she was born and raised.
