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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the unsurprising dept.

The World Socialist Web Site reports [wsws.org]

A US Department of Justice (DoJ) report released [August 10] revealed that the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) has engaged in widespread violations of constitutional rights. These include unjustified stops and searches; arrests without proper cause; racial profiling; use of excessive force; sexual discrimination; and retaliation against actions protected by the First Amendment.

The investigation, which covers thousands of police stops, arrests and court papers from 2010-2016, was requested by Baltimore city officials in the wake of widespread social unrest in the aftermath of the April 2015 police killing of Freddie Gray. The 25-year-old African-American man died after receiving a "rough ride" in the back of a police van that nearly severed his spine. The DoJ investigation purposely seeks to remain neutral on the circumstances surrounding the Freddie Gray case.

[...]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 report found "stop-and-frisks" and other "zero-tolerance policing" practices had resulted in mass discrimination, with two poor neighborhoods, consisting of a total of 11,000 residents, receiving over 44 percent of all stop-and-searches in the city in a six-year period. Of this group, several hundred people had been stopped at least ten times by police, with seven people being patted down over 30 times.

[...]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.

Original Submission