Among the findings reported by the Baltimore Sun, police officers also frequently used excessive force in situations that did not warrant such measures and were found to have regularly retaliated against individuals who were exercising their right to free speech and free assembly.
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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.
The Department of Justice monitored the department’s policing methods, including use of force, searches and arrests, for more than year.
A police spokesman declined to comment today on the report.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake requested the DOJ investigation of the police force in May 2015 after 25-year-old Freddie Gray, a black man, sustained a spinal injury following a rough ride in a police van and later died.
For a city seeking an end to the deep mistrust between residents and police – hostility that built up over decades and exploded past year after Gray’s death – news of the impending report is significant.
The department since has worked closely with the Baltimore police, which set up a team of officers and officials to deal directly with federal investigators. Black residents, the report said, accounted for 95 percent of the 410 individuals stopped at least 10 times in the 51/2 years of data reviewed.
One result, it said, was over 300,000 pedestrian stops in a roughly five-year period for minor offenses and with minimal or no suspicion of lawbreaking, concentrated in African-American neighborhoods. None of the stops resulted in charges. Police routinely detained and arrested people without cause, the department said, and even strip-searched them in public. It says officers often employed excessive force on people with mental-health problems, juveniles and people who were restrained and presented no threat to police. Officers told investigators they see themselves as controlling the city, rather than being a part of it, and said that many commanders “view themselves as enforcing the will of the ‘silent majority.'” One patrol officer emphasized the importance of being able to “own” the block. “BPD’s trainings fuel an “us vs. them” mentality we saw some officers display toward community members, alienating the civilians they are meant to serve”.
The report says numerous department’s raced-based policing practices were encouraged by supervisors who told officers to target African Americans. When the officer was able to detain the man, he frisked him but found no weapon.
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.
The review also included internal-affairs investigations of alleged misconduct by officers and the police department’s failure to fully probe allegations of sex crimes, the Journal said.
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Six officers were charged in Gray’s April 2015 death. Prosecutors dropped the remaining charges last month.
