“This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges”.
Advertisement
The morning after the Department of Justice’s report laid bare the scope of the deep and systemic problems within the Baltimore Police Department-confirming the many stories of abuse of power and civil rights violations that residents have been complaining about for years-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, gathered in front of the media to tell the citizens of Baltimore: we’re on top of this. His death sparked protests and rioting. Yet his recent ruling that officers under investigation could view police footage of the incident in question before being questioned – a privilege unavailable to other subjects of investigations – cast doubt on whether he and other community leaders have the spine to effect a culture shift that includes real accountability.
The police department is budgeted to spend $480 million in the current fiscal year, or 18 percent of the city’s operating budget.
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.
“We heard complaints from the community that some officers target members of a vulnerable population-people involved in the sex trade-to coerce sexual favors from them in exchange for avoiding arrest, or for cash or narcotics”, the report states.
“It’s 2016. So the Baltimore Police Department is choosing both”. “Now, they don’t even arrest you, they just take you in the alley and they beat you up”. The directives often come from supervisors. The report says African-Americans make up 64 percent of the city’s population but 86 percent of criminal charges.
If found that one African-American man was stopped 30 times in less than four years and never charged. At least 15 of those stops, he said, were to check for outstanding warrants. According to the report, Baltimore’s cops showed bias by targeting African-Americans for unconstitutional stops, excessive force and bogus arrests. Ninety-nine percent of all arrests for misdemeanor gambling offenses, including “gaming”, or playing “cards or dice”, were black.
When you translate the data in this report into lives harmed, “stop and frisk” really means detain, demean and dehumanize.
Anthony Williams, a 27-year-old father raising young children in Sandtown-Winchester, the neighborhood where Gray was arrested, said he was once with his kids and saw officers chasing a teenager for smoking marijuana. Seven men reported they had been stopped over 30 times. These actions were directed toward persons who were not acting suspiciously, offered no suggestion of risky actions and did not pose any immediate threat. Police often used the “same aggressive tactics they use with adults”, for instance, according to The Sun.
People in wealthier and largely white areas told the Justice Department that officers are usually respectful and respond to their needs, while those in largely black neighborhoods said police are disrespectful and do not respond promptly when they call for help.
“Change is painful. Growth is painful”. We need to demand reforms! A lot of them lacked probable cause, the report says, and about 44 percent were made in two black areas of the city. Independent review of police violence: The DOJ report revealed serious deficiencies in accountability that allowed unconstitutional actions to go unchecked in the BPD. “Because they wear this uniform proudly and they serve the citizens of Baltimore honorably each and every day”.
The Department of Justice is conducting a separate investigation into Gray’s death.
The “severe and unjustified disparities”, in the rate of African Americans being stopped, searched and arrested violate the US Constitution and US federal law, the report said.
Ashley Overbey called the police to investigate a robbery at her Northeast Baltimore apartment in April 2012.
Advertisement
“It’s undoubtedly a tough moment, but a moment we will be able to reflect upon in the future and know that this was a turning point for better policing, not just in Baltimore, but in our United States”, he said.
