Last August, the Justice Department announced the results of a 14-month investigation into the Baltimore Police Department. The review was triggered by weeks of protests in the city following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of a spinal cord injury while in the custody of police.
In a 163-page report, DOJ found that for years, police in Baltimore engaged in a pattern of “aggressive use of stops, frisks, and misdemeanor arrests” in poor, urban neighborhoods with mostly African-American residents.
Police routinely stopped and detained people on the streets without reasonable suspicion that they were involved in criminal activity. They detained and questioned people who sat, stood or walked “in public areas, even where officers have no basis to suspect them of wrongdoing.” According to the report:
“During a ride-along with Justice Department officials, a BPD sergeant instructed a patrol officer to stop a group of young African-American males on a street corner, question them, and order them to disperse. When the patrol officer protested that he had no valid reason to stop the group, the sergeant replied ‘Then make something up.’ This incident is far from anomalous.”
In January, the city and DOJ filed with a federal judge in Baltimore a series of reforms that call for officers to try to resolve incidents without force when possible and to use force that is in proportion to the threat. “I would not say the consent decree is not needed,” said Catherine Pugh, Baltimore’s mayor, a month earlier.
Jeff Sessions, who in February became attorney general, apparently disagrees. On Monday, DOJ asked the court to delay implementation of the consent decree for three months to allow the department and the city to revisit the terms of the agreement.
In court papers, DOJ cited “alarming spikes in violent crime” in Baltimore and cities across the country, as well as an order issued Feb. 9 by the White House that directs the government “to prioritize crime reduction.”
The filing comes as part of a review by DOJ of a series of a series of agreements negotiated by the Obama administration that, as the Times notes, “aim to improve relations between the police and the communities they serve.” It also reflects a view by Sessions that such agreements undermine police and contribute to an increase in crime. As Sessions said in a speech in February:
“Unfortunately, in recent years law enforcement as a whole has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the unacceptable deeds of a few bad actors. Our officers, deputies and troopers believe the political leadership of this country abandoned them. Their morale has suffered. And last year, amid this intense public scrutiny and criticism, the number of police officers killed in the line of duty increased 10 percent over the year before.”
Officials in Baltimore “strongly oppose” DOJ’s request for delay, Mayor Pugh said on Monday, noting that “reforming our police department is long overdue.” The next day, Pugh added that the city is “ready to move ahead” to finalize the consent decree.
Pugh noted that while the city is already equipping police with body cameras and working to improve relations with the community, “we also know that inside of the consent decree… are some things that need to be done,” adding the DOJ’s report “indicates that there is a great need.”
Kevin Davis, Baltimore’s police commissioner, told reporters he is “disappointed” with DOJ’s request for delay. “What a consent decree does is bind the police commissioner… it binds the mayor… to getting those reforms enacted under a timeline that’s not necessarily our own,” he said.
Why must the city be bound? In its report, DOJ cited an incident from 2010, when two police officers approached a group of people who stood on a sidewalk in a residential neighborhood and ordered them to disperse. Brian, a juvenile, and his sister, walked onto the steps of their home, remaining outside.
When one of the officers warned the siblings about loitering, the sister informed them, yelling and cursing, that she and her brother lived in the house. The officers neither disputed her claim nor sought to verify it.
But the officers did continue to warn the sister to leave (to go where?) and to stop causing a disturbance. Eventually, they arrested her for so-called non-compliance. When one of the officers walked up the stoop to arrest her, Brian tried to block the officer, who began a struggle with him.
According to witnesses whose accounts the police summarized in their reports, the officer punched Brian in the face. The officer also used pepper spray against both siblings and arrested them for loitering, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.
“All of the officer’s uses of force against the siblings, who were standing on or in front of their own property, were unreasonable,” DOJ wrote. Brian and his sister “were placed into the criminal justice system for standing on their own steps.”