BALTIMORE — Three Maryland State Police troopers have pitched a class action lawsuit alleging that the Maryland State Police have engaged in a pattern of systemic discrimination against officers of color.
This incident, which is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, alleges the department maintains policies that treat officers of color unfairly.
The lawsuit goes into detail about specific racist incidents the troopers experienced. This includes an incident where officers of color were forced to shoot at a paper training dummy with black face and an "afro wig."
This class action lawsuit was brought on by two current troopers, Martin Dunlap and Byron Tribue, and former trooper Annalise Diaz.
Diaz was fired in 2019 and is a Black Puerto Rican woman. Dunlap and Tribue are both Black.
In the lawsuit, Tribue alleges that MSP doesn't subject Caucasian officers to similar discipline. He was suspended for a timecard discrepancy and during his suspension, an officer in his barrack would leave his shift early to "beat traffic," and got into a car accident.
MSP chose to write up the officer without a suspension or investigation.
Dunlap said in the lawsuit that a Caucasian Corporal placed a banana on the windshield of his patrol car. Dunlap took this as a racist reference to him being a monkey since he is Black.
He made a complaint to the internal office which handles discrimination at MSP, and they determined it wasn't a racist incident.
The officer wasn't disciplined, instead, he was promoted repeatedly.
After this incident, MSP re-opened an already closed complaint and placed Dunlap on suspension for three years.
The lawsuit doesn't say why MSP decided to fire Diaz, but she says it happened because she filed a discrimination complaint.
The attorney representing the troopers in the case has released the following statement:
Our comment is that we look forward to litigating this case and making sure Officers of Color at the MSP are treated fairly and holding the MSP responsible for their actions. The officers in the Complaint, the other officers with claims at EEOC, and officers of color around the State of Maryland put their lives on the line, and in exchange simply want to be treated equally.
