The law has been a concern of Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, since even before her city was racked by
protests after the death of Mr. Gray from spinal cord injuries he sustained
while in police custody. Ms. Rawlings-Blake said at a news conference on Thursday, her latest of a string of complaints about the law this week. Earlier this year, Jill P. Carter, a Democratic lawmaker in the Maryland House of Delegates, introduced a bill that would have eliminated the 10-day rule. The legislation never advanced out of committee in the face of intense opposition from police unions around the state.“It sat in the drawer,” Ms. Carter said in an interview. “It was like I was screaming in a tunnel and no one was there and no one cared.”“I absolutely will introduce law enforcement accountability and reform bills next session,” she said.
Police say they need the special protections because while criminal defendants, including law enforcement officers, have the right to remain silent during the course of criminal investigations, officers are placed in the unusual position of facing dismissal if they refuse to answer questions from superiors. They also say the bill of rights laws are critical in safeguarding the constitutional rights of the police and point to studies that show officers and others involved in traumatic events have more reliable memories of the encounter after at least one night of sleep. “Your initial recollections tend to be blurred and distorted, and so before an officer makes inaccurate statements, he has a chance to compose himself,” said James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which says it represents more than 325,000 sworn law enforcement officers. Mr. Pasco said social media and other new technologies had made the public accustomed to receiving information ever-faster, which has exerted pressure on investigators and by extension officers involved in high-profile cases in which they have used deadly force.
Maryland law enforcement groups released a statement in February, when the debate over amending the officers’ bill of rights was at its height. “The law must both effectively respond to police misconduct and protect those dedicated law enforcement officers who are unfairly targeted,” said the statement from the Maryland Chiefs of Police Association and the Maryland Sheriffs’ Association. “Citizens and other public employees are entitled to due process before the government takes negative action against them, and our law enforcement officers deserve nothing less.” But criminologists say the special legal protections for officers erodes public trust in the police during a time that public confidence in officers has fallen after a series of deaths of unarmed black men and boys around the country. “These are rights that civilians are not entitled to,” said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and an expert on police accountability. “Don’t you think that two or 10 days is the perfect time to get your story straight, talk to other officers, get the forensics results to make sure you don’t make mistakes?” In Baltimore, demonstrations and rioting that have occurred since the April 19 death of Mr. Gray, and weeks of unrest that occurred after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., last year, have been inflamed by a lack of information about the investigations, police officers and others say.
“People have an expectation that they’re going to have all the facts at the end of the business day,” Mr. Pasco said. The United States Supreme Court in 1967 determined that because police officers had in some instances been deprived of their constitutional right against self-incrimination, officers could not be compelled to give evidence against themselves, including as part of administrative investigations. Since then, the extra layer of legal protection for officers has expanded, in large part because of the power of police unions, which have had similar rules inserted in union contracts and have frequently paid for television advertisements that label politicians who disagree with them as antipolice. In Maryland, law enforcement unions have donated tens of thousands of dollars to state and local elected officials, including to Ms. Rawlings-Blake. “Police unions are fairly powerful and pretty active politically, especially in local elections,” said Seth W. Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina. “It’s difficult to find a politician who doesn’t want to be on the side of crime-fighting. That gives unions a lot of sway.” Reporting was contributed by Rebecca White and Alan Blinder from Baltimore, Richard Pérez-Peña from New York, and Matt Apuzzo from Washington.
