The report calls on the department to address “racism” within its ranks. In one debate, he noted that he was elected at a time when the city was “burying more than 300 young, poor black men every year”.
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The Baltimore probe was prompted by the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray, an unarmed black man fatally injured while in police custody.
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.
Reforms are already underway, and officers who committed the most egregious behavior have been fired, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said. “But nothing is as painful as being stuck in a place that we do not belong”, Davis said, reports CNN. “DOJ’s findings will serve to solidify our road map”, Davis said. 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.
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.
The probe found that almost half of BPD’s 300,000 pedestrian stops between 2010 and 2015 occurred in two, majority-African American districts. One African-American man was stopped 30 times in less than four years, with none of the stops resulting in a citation or criminal charges.
Baltimore police officers disproportionately targeted black residents for stops, searches, and arrests. But officers found contraband twice as often when searching white residents during vehicle stops and 50 percent more often during pedestrian stops, the report notes. The DOJ found 60 incidents where a black complainant alleged an officer had used a racial slur, but which was then classified as a lesser offense by Baltimore police supervisors. Complaints against individual officers’ misconduct were ignored, sometimes for years. “If you lock up everybody for anything, you’re inevitably going to get some bad guys off the street”. And they say the practices are underpinned by “systemic deficiencies” in the force’s training, supervision, and accountability structures.
In fact, despite how little press it’s been getting, the Justice Department’s Baltimore police report shouldn’t be ignored, given the nature of the discoveries the Justice Department unearthed.
“Those who choose to wear this uniform and choose to blatantly disregard someone’s rights absolutely should be uncomfortable, because we are not going to tolerate it”, he said.
“My office looks forward to reviewing the Department of Justice’s civil rights investigation into the Baltimore City Police Department, but the report will likely confirm what many in our city already know or have experienced firsthand”, the statement read.
Since Gray’s death, BPD has begun using new police vans with built-in surveillance, instituted training in community policing, and made mandatory body cameras for officers-though uncertainty remains about when these cameras must be turned on.
While the Constitution requires individuals to receive pre-arrest notice of the specific conduct prohibited as loitering or trespassing, BPD officers approach individuals standing lawfully on sidewalks in front of public housing complexes or private businesses and arrest them unless the individuals are able to “justify” their presence to the officers’ satisfaction.
“Unfortunately, we not only found evidence of this conduct in BPD’s internal affairs files, it appeared that the Department failed to adequately investigate allegations of such conduct, allowing it to recur”.
But a scathing federal government report on the Baltimore Police Department suggests the costs of that strategy outweigh any reduction in crime.
In 2015, the Justice Department released an in-depth report into the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
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A Baltimore Sun investigation, published in March, revealed that police agencies across the state predominantly used Tasers against suspects who posed no immediate threat.
