During the quarterly public hearing updating the US District Court of Maryland on the progress of the consent decree put into place in 2017, the judge and parties addressed the progress that had been made.
"The most recent scorecard shows compliance of 95%," said one of the members of the Independent Monitoring Team, while saying that there are still areas that need data collection and still areas that need significant work.
Judge James Bredar began the hearing with some opening remarks, saying that BPD has made progress, but six years into the consent decree, the department and City needs to start focusing on completion.
One of the main areas he critiqued as needing more work was the continuing staffing shortages.
"BPD must do better, much better on recruitment and retention," said Judge Bredar. "I require better results."
During the discussion Bredar said that he's "going to keep banging the table" on the issue of recruitment.
"The net loss to the Department [last year] was 170 sworn officers - the Department can't take another hit like that," said Bredar.
Members of the Department and the City said they are working to better understand why people leave the department, and what are factors that would bring people into the department.
They emphasized that the recruitment and staffing issue is not unique to Baltimore, but a nationwide problem.
The judge added a side note in his opening comments that some may expect completion of the consent decree goals to result in a drop in the homicide rate or violent crime, but that's not necessarily the case.
"The success or failure of this consent decree will not be measured by the crime rate," he said.
However, "the public's trust will only be won slowly, one positive interaction at a time."
BPD Commissioner Michael Harrison said, "Baltimore is leading and showing the country that reform and crime reduction can happen at the same time."
He added that people who say the two can't be done together are wrong.
"We're proving that to be false," says Harrison. "You can do both."
Another issue that was addressed was technology implementation, which is in progress, but is also needed to help gather data on how the Department is doing in certain areas.
Officer wellness, how mental health resources have been publicized and utilized was also a topic of discussion.
