Civil rights probe of Baltimore Police Department finds serious flaws

bearkat42

bearkat42

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The Justice Department has concluded its civil rights probe into the Baltimore Police Department and officials are expected to release a highly critical report of the agency on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The lengthy report details what federal investigators concluded after a so-called “pattern or practice” review that lasted more than a year and examined the Baltimore department’s use of force, searches, arrests and other policing methods. The probe found discriminatory policing practices, and local and federal officials will now have to negotiate a court-enforceable order to ensure future reforms, one of the people said.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the report ahead of its public release on Wednesday. They also declined to reveal the precise details of federal investigators’ findings.

The civil rights probe into the Baltimore Police Department was announced the month after 25-year-old Freddie Gray died when he suffered a severe spinal cord injury in police custody. That incident sparked protests and rioting in the city and drew attention to what residents said was a long frayed relationship with law enforcement. Justice Department investigators, though, were not focused on Gray’s death in particular — that is part of a separate, ongoing federal investigation — but instead assessed generally how police do their jobs in Baltimore.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/09/civil-rights-probe-of-baltimore-police-department-finds-serious-flaws/?utm_term=.5b1852ad11b8
 
NLXSK1

NLXSK1

Well-Known Member
bravedave said:
Even worse than the infamous Ferguson probe? Oh no.
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The government will just federalize the police in another city. More top down government, more crime, less effective police and a generally less safe society. But maybe peoples feelings will get hurt less... just maybe...
 
bearkat42

bearkat42

Well-Known Member
"To show how officers disproportionately stopped black pedestrians, the report cited the example of a black man in his mid-fifties who was stopped 30 times in less than four years. None of the stops led to a citation or criminal charge. Black residents, the report said, accounted for 95 percent of the 410 individuals stopped at least 10 times."
 
bearkat42

bearkat42

Well-Known Member
Officers often targeted black pedestrians for stops without reasonable suspicion. Based on a sample of about 7,200 cases, only 1 out of every 27 pedestrian stops resulted in a citation or arrest.

Such stops would often occur under a supervisor’s directive’s to “clear corners,” a practice of stopping and questioning a group and ordering them to scatter. During a ride-along with Justice Department officials, a sergeant told a patrol officer to “clear a corner,” but the patrol officer said he had no reason to stop them.

“The sergeant replied, ‘Then make something up.’”
 
bearkat42

bearkat42

Well-Known Member
“Numerous Baltimore residents interviewed by the Justice Department recounted stories of BPD officers ‘jumping out’ of police vehicles and strip-searching individuals on public streets. BPD has long been on notice of such allegations: in the last five years BPD has faced multiple lawsuits and more than 60 complaints alleging unlawful strip searches. In one of these incidents — memorialized in a complaint that the Department sustained — officers in BPD’s Eastern District publicly strip-searched a woman following a routine traffic stop for a missing headlight. Officers ordered the woman to exit her vehicle, remove her clothes, and stand on the sidewalk to be searched. The woman asked the male officer in charge, “I really gotta take all my clothes off?” The male officer replied “yeah” and ordered a female officer to strip search the woman. The female officer then put on purple latex gloves, pulled up the woman’s shirt and searched around her bra. Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity. This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges. Indeed, the woman received only a repair order for her headlight. “
 
bearkat42

bearkat42

Well-Known Member
“In some cases, BPD supervisors have instructed their subordinates to specifically target African Americans for enforcement. A sergeant told us that in 2011 her lieutenant — a commander in charge of setting enforcement priorities for an entire police district during the shift — ordered the sergeant to instruct officers under her command to ‘lock up all the black hoodies’ in her district. When the sergeant objected and refused to follow this order, she received an “unsatisfactory” performance evaluation and was transferred to a different unit. The sergeant filed a successful complaint about her performance evaluation with BPD’s Equal Opportunity and Diversity Section, but BPD never took action against the lieutenant for giving the order to target “black hoodies” for enforcement.

“Similarly, as described above, in 2012 a BPD lieutenant provided officers under his command with a template for trespassing arrests that suggested officers would arrest exclusively African-American men for that offense. As in the first example, this directive is especially concerning because it came from a shift commander. These statements targeting African Americans for enforcement reinforce the statistical disparities in enforcement outcomes that we measured. The enforcement activities ordered by the BPD commanders — arresting African Americans for trespassing and finding any possible basis to arrest ‘black hoodies’ — are consistent with the racial disparities we found in BPD’s discretionary stops, searches, and misdemeanor arrests.”
 
bearkat42

bearkat42

Well-Known Member
Illegal stops result in confrontations that can be avoided, the report said.

In one case, police stopped a black man wearing a hoodie in a “high crime area” because he “thought it could be possible that the individual could be out seeking a victim of opportunity.” The incident escalated with police — who had no legal reason to stop the man — beating the man in the face, neck and ribs and deploying a Taser on him twice.

The man was later taken to a hospital, and not charged with any offense. Yet later, the officer’s supervisor determined in a report that the “officers showed great restraint and professionalism.”
 
LegalizeNature420

LegalizeNature420

Well-Known Member
UncleBuck said:
like all racists, you are a coward and thus you are too afraid to answer a simple question.
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I think my distain started when I realized blacks hate white people more than they love their own kids. If they did love their own kids, they'd protest the mountain of black on black murders instead of ignoring it and pursuing the occasional white on black murder.
 
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