Justice Department Issues Scathing Report On Baltimore Police Department

The Baltimore Police Department has dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get­ed African-Americans for stops and arrests, a Justice Department inves­ti­ga­tion has found. After the police depart­ment took a “zero tol­er­ance” approach to polic­ing in the ear­ly 2000s, the report finds, it began engag­ing in a pat­tern and prac­tice of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry policing.

Statistics ana­lyzed in the scathing 163-page report show that the mag­ni­tude of racial dif­fer­ences in stops, search­es and arrests is so pro­nounced, it might point to “inten­tion­al discrimination.”

In one case, for exam­ple, an African-American man in his mid-50s was stopped 30 times in less than four years by police, yet none of the stops ever result­ed in a cita­tion or crim­i­nal charge. Investigators found instances in which lead­ers in the depart­ment ordered offi­cers to direct­ly tar­get black residents.

In one case, a com­man­der alleged­ly told a lieu­tenant to order her offi­cers to “lock up all the black hoodies.”

The sta­tis­tics reveal that the Baltimore Police Department stopped and arrest­ed more peo­ple in pre­dom­i­nant­ly black areas of town. From January 2010-May 2014, police made some 300,000 stops — 44 per­cent of which were in two pre­dom­i­nant­ly black areas that make up 12 per­cent of the city’s population.

Citywide, the report finds, the Baltimore Police Department “stopped African-American res­i­dents three times as often as white res­i­dents after con­trol­ling for the pop­u­la­tion of the area in which the stops occurred.”

The Justice Department launched a civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion in May 2015, after the city was beset by protests and riots over the death of Freddie Gray.

The report finds that police made too many unjus­ti­fied stops and used force unnec­es­sar­i­ly. Other times, police offi­cers react­ed sim­ply because a cit­i­zen was exer­cis­ing their right to free speech.

One offi­cer, for exam­ple, list­ed an arrestee’s “mouth” as his weapon.

The review con­cludes that many of the abus­es are the result of inad­e­quate train­ing and the after-effects of a now-dis­cred­it­ed policy:

Starting in at least the late 1990s, … City and BPD lead­er­ship respond­ed to the City’s chal­lenges by encour­ag­ing ‘zero tol­er­ance’ street enforce­ment that pri­or­i­tized offi­cers mak­ing large num­bers of stops, search­es, and arrests — and often resort­ing to force — with min­i­mal train­ing and insuf­fi­cient over­sight from super­vi­sors or through oth­er account­abil­i­ty struc­tures. These prac­tices led to repeat­ed vio­la­tions of the con­sti­tu­tion­al and statu­to­ry rights, fur­ther erod­ing the com­mu­ni­ty’s trust in the police. …

BPD’s lega­cy of zero tol­er­ance enforce­ment con­tin­ues to dri­ve its polic­ing in cer­tain Baltimore neigh­bor­hoods and leads to uncon­sti­tu­tion­al stops, search­es, and arrests. Many BPD super­vi­sors instruct offi­cers to make fre­quent stops and arrests — even for minor offens­es and with min­i­mal or no sus­pi­cion — with­out suf­fi­cient con­sid­er­a­tion of whether this enforce­ment strat­e­gy pro­motes pub­lic safe­ty and com­mu­ni­ty trust or con­forms to con­sti­tu­tion­al stan­dards. These instruc­tions, cou­pled with min­i­mal super­vi­sion and account­abil­i­ty for mis­con­duct, lead to con­sti­tu­tion­al violations.”

The report says build­ing rela­tion­ships in all com­mu­ni­ties is a bet­ter way to head off crime:

We encour­age BPD to be proac­tive, to get to know Baltimore’s com­mu­ni­ties more deeply, build trust, and reduce crime togeth­er with the com­mu­ni­ties it serves.”

Over the past few years, the Justice Department has con­duct­ed sim­i­lar inves­ti­ga­tions in places like Newark, Ferguson, Mo., and Albuquerque. It has often come to sim­i­lar con­clu­sions: Police depart­ments were vio­lat­ing the civ­il rights of cit­i­zens with racial­ly biased police prac­tices and exces­sive use of force.

Many times, these inves­ti­ga­tions lead to nego­ti­a­tions and agree­ments between police depart­ments and the Justice Department that are designed to curb some of the vio­la­tions. Those agree­ments often involve more strin­gent record-keep­ing and the appoint­ment of an inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor who makes sure changes that are agreed to actu­al­ly happen.

In Baltimore, it was out­go­ing Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake who called for a fed­er­al probe after near-dai­ly protests boiled over into a night of riots in the spring of 2015.

The demon­stra­tors demand­ed jus­tice for Gray, who suf­fered a fatal spine injury in police cus­tody. A total of six offi­cers were charged in the death. Three were acquit­ted dur­ing bench tri­als, and pros­e­cu­tors dropped charges for the remain­ing three offi­cers last month.
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