The U.S. Justice Department is preparing to announce that it has found unconstitutional practices within the Baltimore Police Department in a probe stemming from the death of black detainee Freddie Gray previous year, two newspapers reported on Tuesday.
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The DOJ investigation of the Baltimore Police Department was triggered by the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray, who allegedly died from injuries sustained while being transported in police custody.
Department of Justice and Baltimore officials are expected to announce a new, court-enforceable agreement Wednesday that will outline reforms and actions the BPD must take to comply with the law, and begin to regain the trust of the community. A copy of the report was first posted Tuesday by The New York Times.
“While the vast majority of Baltimore City Police officers are good officers, we also know that there are bad officers and that the department has routinely failed to oversee, train or hold bad actors accountable”.
DOJ investigators found a police force infected by an “us-versus-them” mentality, with officers throughout the chain of command who “openly harbor antagonistic feelings towards community members”.
Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, in a statement, said the report “will likely confirm what many in our city already know or have experienced firsthand”. African Americans make up 63 percent of the city’s population but account for 86 percent of criminal charges issued by police.
For example, the report, which looked at 2010-2015, found that “Of the 2,818 force incidents that BPD recorded in the almost six year period we reviewed, BPD investigated only ten incidents….”
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.
In one telling anecdote from the report, a shift commander provided officers with boilerplate language on how to write up trespassing arrest reports of people found near housing projects. “When the patrol officer protested that he had no valid reason to stop the group, the sergeant replied, ‘Then make something up, ‘” the report said. One black man in his mid-50s was stopped 30 times in less than four years, the report says, and none of the stops resulted in a citation or criminal charge.
Lt. Brian Rice, a Baltimore police officer who got acquitted last month from the Freddie Gray murder case, will receive 127K dollars of back pay.
According to the report, one 22-year-old black man was detained merely for walking through an area known for high crime and drugs; another man wearing a hooded sweatshirt on a cold night was stopped because an officer “thought it could be possible that the individual could be out seeking a victim of opportunity”. Physical force is used unnecessarily, including against the mentally disabled, and black pedestrians and drivers are disproportionately searched during stops, the report says.
According to the report, the unlawful practices were “driven by systemic deficiencies in [the police department’s] policies, training, supervision and accountability structures that fail to equip officers with the tools they need to police effectively and within the bounds of federal law”.
When an officer shot a person to death in 2013, an internal affairs detective interviewed the officer for five minutes, only three minutes of which were substantive.
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The Department of Justice is conducting a separate investigation into Gray’s death. No charges were filed, but the officer eventually resigned after he came under investigation once again.
