BALTIMORE — Baltimore Police say they've reached a significant milestone related to the 2017 consent decree with the United States Department of Justice.
City officials on Wednesday touted progress specifically in the areas of in-custody transport safety and officer support.
On Tuesday both parties filed a joint motion in federal district court seeking approval to declare the police department in "full and effective compliance" with those two key aspects.
According to the DOJ, an independent monitor issued a report on December 29 finding the department in compliance.
If a judge agrees to grant the motion, Baltimore Police would have to maintain both provisions for a year before they can officially be removed as part of the consent decree.
The consent decree was implemented following a DOJ investigation into the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, who died while being transported inside a police van.
As result the police department overhauled its fleet, adding new passenger safety equipment and updated policies.
Now all police transports are tracked, including any injuries suffered by detainees.
During a 17-month period the independent monitor reported over 16,000 transports and just 11 injuries.
Below is a more in depth list provided by the DOJ of changes made by the police department:
- Safe Transport Vehicles: BPD has overhauled its transport vehicles to outfit all with necessary safety equipment.
- Improved Video Recording Equipment: BPD has completed the installation of required video recording equipment and conducts and documents monthly inspections to confirm that the equipment is functioning.
- Proper Searches of Detainees: BPD has adopted policies that require searches of detainees by both the arresting officer and the transporting officer to protect the safety of the detainee during transport.
- Improved Data Collection: BPD has implemented a new records management system to streamline data collection, analysis and review. BPD now tracks important data, like whether a detainee reported an injury or medical distress, needed to be transported with individuals of the same sex or gender identity or required an accommodation for their medical equipment. The new software enables real time compliance assessment, which BPD can use to inform policy changes and identify training needs.
- Enhanced Auditing: BPD has developed an audit process to examine transport of detainees. The audit unit reviews the documentation and video recordings to determine the transporting officer’s compliance with policy. Violations of BPD policy constitute misconduct and result in referrals to BPD’s internal affairs unit for investigation.
“The failure to secure and safely transport Freddie Gray is one of the main incidents that got BPD into a consent decree in the first place,” Mayor Scott said at Wednesday’s press conference.
"Our reform initiatives are not only helping us win back our community, but they are also the road map to sustained reductions in gun violence," said Commissioner Richard Worley,
"I am proud that for the first time in the consent decree's nearly 7 year history, we're able to join the DOJ in recommending the court to find us in full and effective compliance with sections of our consent decree. It's no coincidence that as we make progress in implementing the consent decree, we have also managed to achieve the record year reductions in violence in Baltimore City,” Mayor Scott said.
But after 7 years, it's just two pieces of reform listed in the consent decree, with many left to go.
“The two areas we're hitting today are 24 paragraphs roughly of 470. So it's about 5%, but you have to start walking before you can start running,” Worley said. "As of December 2023, 25% of all paragraphs of the decree have been given a rating of being in initial compliance, and an additional 60% of all paragraphs in the decree are on track for reaching full compliance."
While those numbers mean a lot to the department as it works to get itself out of the consent decree, they don't mean much to the people who live here if they don't feel like the police are doing a good job.
The independent monitoring team assigned to track BPD's progress partnered with researchers at Morgan State University to do a public survey between 2021 and 2023.
They found a lot of city residents were dissatisfied with BPD, even among respondents didn't observe or experience negative behavior by the police.
“Let's say the survey happened today. Some of the responses may be the same in terms of their perception of crime, but the rate of violence in our city - we know the numbers are down, but perception drives a lot of this stuff," said principal investigator of the survey, Dr. Natasha Pratt-Harris.
“Perception takes a while to change. Unfortunately we kind of earned the reputation we had over several years and it's going to take us several years to change it,” Worley said.
Commissioner Worley thinks that perception is slowly but surely, starting to shift.
“We could’ve never gone under 300 homicides if the community didn’t trust us enough to give us tips.”
"Yes we know what the data say and what the reports say, but we also know we are getting more calls and more tips in and we are getting less complaints in about behaviors of the women and men in the police department which shows that we're moving in the right direction," Mayor Scott said.
The consent decree monitoring team also released a report in August 2023 that highlighted the obstacles the department is facing when it comes to staffing, and how that is preventing it from effectively engaging with the community.
Part of the lengthy report reads: "For example, BPD continues to fall short of meeting its commitment to allow patrol officers to spend 40 percent of their time on engaging in proactive and community policing. For a variety of reasons, officers also do not currently have sufficient time and support to engage in the longer- term problem solving with communities that is more likely to result in solutions for chronic problems and community trust- and relationship-building."
We asked Worley about that today, as he says the department is still about 500 officers short. Below is his response:
"Obviously that's one part of the consent decree that we struggle with. But we've made some changes. We've redone our community policing model. We have a new deputy commissioner of patrol and community policing. And the area that obviously we failed the most was Brooklyn. Well the deputy commissioner used to be the major in the Southern District, which includes Brooklyn. And she along with her team is rebolstering the community policing plan because we didn't do well, because we didn't put as much emphasis on it as we should have. So we have to correct that and move forward. We started a lot of things under the criminal investigation bureau to relieve our district commanders of some of the burdens that kept them from the time of being able to work with community policing with the officers," Commissioner Worley said.
He also said he's explained to his officers the importance of doing foot patrols three times a shift. "They'll do whatever we ask them to do if we tell them why," he said.
