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NPR reports:
On Wednesday morning, the United States Department of Justice announced the result of a yearlong investigation into the Baltimore Police Department, which found that BPD habitually violates the civil rights of its residents. These violations, the Justice Department found, have an outsized effect on the city's black population.
[...] The report's findings were far-reaching. Between 2010 and 2015, BPD recorded over 300,000 pedestrian stops (a number the DOJ believes vastly underrepresents actual stops.) Those stops often lacked reasonable suspicion, and were mostly confined to black neighborhoods — 44 percent occurred in two low-income black neighborhoods that make up 11 percent of Baltimore's population.
In the same time period, the report found that BPD made "warrantless arrests without probable cause," stopped black residents three times as often as white, and arrested black folks on drug charges at five times the rate of white folks, despite comparable levels of possession. They were also found to have used unreasonable force against juveniles and people who presented "little or no threat to officers or others."
According to the investigation, the BPD has also failed to respond adequately to reports of sexual assault, resulting "in part, from underlying gender bias." It reported BPD detectives asked questions like, "Why are you messing that guy's life up?" when interviewing women who reported sexual assault.
The World Socialist Web Site reports:
The report finds that despite making up 63 percent of the city's population, African-Americans account for over 83 percent of all criminal charges and are regularly over-represented in arrest reports in comparison to their percentage of the population.
The DoJ found that the percentage of people arrested in a five-year period on the petty and highly subjective charges of "failure to obey" or "disorderly conduct" was 91 and 84 percent African-American respectively. Even starker, African-Americans made up over 83 percent of the area's traffic stops, despite being less than 30 percent of the entire metropolitan region's total driving population.
[...] The DoJ found that over a five-year period, BPD officers made over 11,000 arrests that were subsequently thrown out at central booking for being groundless. [...] Investigators found "BPD uses overly aggressive tactics that unnecessarily escalate encounters, increase tensions, and lead to unnecessary force".
[...] Then there is the first African-American president, who has handed out military grade weaponry to local police departments across the country--at the same time his Justice Department has routinely rejected calls for killer cops to be prosecuted under federal civil rights laws and invariably opposed every attempt to bring police violence cases before the Supreme Court.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:20PM
What happened after a similar kind of report in Cleveland, for comparison:
- The DoJ and the police department put together a "consent decree", describing concrete changes to how the department will operate.
- A citizen review board was established to oversee police activities, particularly shootings and other deadly interactions.
- There have been not-insignificant changes in how the police do business, coming from the chief all the way down through the ranks.
- However, the police officer's union has been fighting most of the reforms tooth and nail: The union president in particular is defending the right of his officers to do pretty much whatever they want without consequences.
Unfortunately, union contracts with cops mean that you can't simply fire them for insubordination when they don't actually follow the rules.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fishybell on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:29PM
How I wish shooting unarmed people in the back, kids with toy guns, and people laying on the ground wasn't just "against the rules."
(Score: 2, Informative) by Arik on Saturday August 13 2016, @05:11PM
Oh it is, it's flat out felonious misconduct, and doing it under color of law makes it worse, not better. Should it ever be prosecuted fully, and a conviction occur. In theory that's exactly what's supposed to happen, and prevent the current situation. In practice any prosecutor that attempted to do it would be demonized by the police union and the media until they lost the case, their ability to make a living, and quite possibly their life.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:00PM
Absolutely. What's needed is a federal independent prosecutor to handle the cases of bad cops.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the Congress to correct the 1866 federal law that deals with this.
N.B. A judge disallowed all 250 employees of the Orange County District Attorney's office from participating in a trial he was conducting because of their demonstrated pattern of dishonesty.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @08:39PM
Another article at the World Socialist Web Site goes into your points.
The Justice Department’s whitewash of police violence in Baltimore, Maryland [wsws.org]
.
union contracts with cops mean that you can't simply fire them
...but it IS completely possible to give a bad cop an assignment where his behavior WRT the public is less likely to be repeated:
Assign him to e.g. meter maid duties or cataloging incoming evidence.
Time spent doing these unexciting tasks will also count against him in getting promotions|raises|future assignments.
.
Oh, and the NPR item that leads TFS was -not- part of my submission.
It would have been good if the editor had moved the "OriginalOwner writes" notation down to where it applied.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:05PM
I'm extremely pro-union, but an ex-police officer (can't imagine a police union run by a civilian) advocating against justice is fucking ludicrous. I bet they "fight tooth and nail" with internal affairs too huh?
Fuck that shit. Reforms of the police department have nothing to do with the rights of the worker, and unions were never meant, nor intended to be, stalwart defenders of the lazy and incompetent. Certainly not defenders of what are increasingly highwaymen and robbers, not properly acting police officers.
Firing of police officers!? Where the hell is the jailing of police offers !? Fired should be the very first thing to happen to them, and the least of their worries.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.