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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ent-justice-department-investigation-findings
'Two Baltimores': DoJ investigation into police finds vast racial disparity
The Baltimore police department regularly conducted unlawful stops and used excessive force on residents of the city, federal officials found in a civil rights probe.
The damning findings by the US justice department (DOJ), set to be officially announced Wednesday, identify a “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional conduct in the city.
The justice department launched its investigation into the city’s policing a month after Freddie Gray’s death last year. Gray, a 25-year-old African American man, died a week after he was arrested from a spinal injury sustained while he was held in the back of a police van. The city erupted in weeks of unrest, including numerous mass demonstrations against police brutality and a day of rioting.
The report found a vast racial disparity in enforcement, especially in stops, searches, and discretionary misdemeanor arrests. African Americans, for instance, account for 91% of “failure to obey” and trespassing charges, and over 80% of charges such as making a false statement to an officer or disorderly conduct, even though they account for roughly 60% of the population. African Americans were arrested for the possession of drugs more than five times as frequently as their white counterparts, although drug use, the report notes, is roughly the same.
Justice department officials found that residents believe there are “two Baltimores” including “one wealthy and largely white, the second impoverished and predominantly black”, the report reads. “Community members living in the City’s wealthier and largely white neighborhoods told us that officers tend to be respectful and responsive to their needs, while many individuals living in the City’s largely African-American communities informed us that officers tend to be disrespectful and do not respond promptly to their calls for service. Members of these largely African-American communities often felt they were subjected to unjustified stops, searches, and arrests, as well as excessive force.”
The report documented extensive evidence of these perceived racial disparities. It found that over a five year period, African Americans accounted for 95% of people stopped by police more than ten times. One African American man, according to the report, was stopped 30 times in less than 4 years. “Despite these repeated intrusions, none of the 30 stops resulted in a citation or criminal charge,” the report states.
This finding falls into a nationwide debate about unfair traffic stops of African Americans after the deaths of Sandra Bland in Texas last year, and Philando Castile in a Minnesota traffic stop last month. Although Castile had been stopped 46 times, only six of those were for offenses that an officer could have seen before stopping the car.
The report traced these police practices back to the “zero tolerance” policies of the late 1990s, which “led to repeated violations of the constitutional and statutory rights, further eroding the community’s trust in the police”.
Although the report notes that the Baltimore police department has made progress, it is clear that the “legacy of zero tolerance enforcement continues to drive its policing in certain Baltimore neighborhoods and leads to unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests”.
The report concludes that “BPD’s systemic constitutional and statutory violations are rooted in structural failures”.
In finding that the department violated rights guaranteed by the constitution, the DOJ’s conclusions were similar to those in their report on the Ferguson, Missouri, police department which began following the death of Michael Brown. That investigation resulted in a consent decree agreement between the Department of Justice and the city of Ferguson that laid out a series of mandated reforms.
In Baltimore the DOJ says it is already working with the city to “forge a court-enforceable agreement to develop enduring remedies to the constitutional and statutory violations we found.”
“Our goal is to work with the community, public officials and law enforcement alike to create a stronger, better Baltimore,” attorney general Loretta Lynch said last May, announcing the investigation. “The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has conducted dozens of these pattern or practice investigations, and we have seen from our work in jurisdictions across the country that communities that have gone through this process are experiencing improved policing practices and increased trust between the police and the community.”
Investigators for the DOJ look at “whether the police department has engaged in a pattern or practice of stops, searches, or arrests that violate the Fourth Amendment; use of excessive force; discriminatory policing; violation of the constitutional rights of criminal suspects; or violation of First Amendment rights,” according to DOJ guidelines.
In addition to interviewing members of the police department and other law enforcement stakeholders, DOJ investigators sought testimony of community members, taking statements from advocacy groups such as the No Boundaries Coalition in the Sandtown neighborhood where Freddie Gray was killed, Health Care for the Homeless, and Power Inside, a group that works with at risk women. Investigators were also often seen at protests over police issues, especially surrounding the anniversary of Gray’s death.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked for the justice department review last year in the wake of Gray’s death. After a series of violent months in the city and a scathing “after action” report that condemned police handling of the riots that followed Gray’s death, Rawlings-Blake fired then-police commissioner Anthony Batts, and replaced him with Kevin Davis.
Neither Davis nor Rawlings-Blake have publicly commented on the report.
Six officers were also charged in Gray’s death. But after a mistrial and three acquittals, prosecutors dropped the remaining charges.