By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer
(Courtesy Photo/associatedcontent.com)
|
(June 26, 2009) - Sergeant Louis Hopson Jr., keeps a huge chunk of the last 17 years of his life in the trunk of his roadster sports car.
It’s filled with thousands of documents all of which in some way support his argument that the Baltimore City Police Department for decades has systematically discriminated against its Black officers.
Over the last 17 years—even as he has remained a member of the department—Hopson has never wavered from his claims.
And this week, the Baltimore City Council’s Board of Estimates approved a $4.5 million settlement on behalf of 15 former and current police officers led by Hopson in the Baltimore City Police Department.
“Vindicated,” was Hopson’s initial one-word response after the settlement became official during Wednesday’s Board of Estimates meeting. “I think it speaks to the vindication of myself, and other officers…who have undergone all this discrimination and corruption and racism in the Baltimore City Police Department.”
Hopson and the other officers were represented by Weil Gotshal & Manges’ pro bono team, lead by Perter Isakoff, who worked with attorneys from the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. They formally filed suit on behalf of the officers in December 2004 in the U.S. District Court in Maryland, alleging a pattern and practice of racial discrimination in their case that dated back 12 years.
“This is a fantastic outcome for both our clients and for the people of Baltimore,” said Isakoff.
“Racial discrimination in the Baltimore City Police Department has been a prominent public issue for several decades, and the successful resolution of the suit will require the implementation of a new race-blind disciplinary system.
“We will continue to monitor and provide input on the work of the independent consultant over the next several years to ensure that the Department adheres to its obligations and that ‘business as usual’ does not continue.”
Hopson says the work of the two legal teams on behalf of the officers was invaluable.
“They so much believed in this case, and the discrimination and retaliation issue, that they opened up their check books,” Hopson said.
“And all of their officers and their partners voted and said it didn’t matter how much money it cost, they wanted justice for this case.”
Several of the officers who started on this odyssey back in 1992 have left Baltimore and abandoned policing all together. Hopson, a 28-year veteran of the department has persevered. But, he says his ultimate vindication has come at a steep price.
“First, I give all praise to my Lord and Savior, I kept my faith,” declared Hopson, who said the tipping point for him back in 1992 came when he was promoted to sergeant.
“I was sent to a district that had a huge racial problem,” Hopson said, referring to the Northeast District, which Hopson said was known as, “The Country Club.”
“I endured a lot of things at that district…I endured them referring to me as 30-1 and 30-2, that’s the name that you give to suspects,” he revealed.
“They took pictures of my wife and put them on the bulletin board and referred to her as a nigger lover. They took pictures of my children and they would draw zebra stripes on them. And this is really crazy—and this is all documented—they would take feces and put it in the AFRO newspaper, wrap it up and put it on my desk.”
This was the treatment Hopson, a highly decorated officer, who was a two-time “Police Officer of the Year” in Baltimore and the recipient of two bronze stars, was subjected to.
“I think the overriding factor was any group of people who would attack your wife and your children…I’ve had to move my family out of the state, I lost my home, I lost my car…I said enough was enough,” he recalled.
“And so I went to report it, as we’re supposed to do, to the internal affairs division, and I was told by the internal investigation division, `we don’t investigate discrimination in the police department because there was no such thing.’ He actually refused to take the complaint. And once I got back to the district, apparently he or somebody else called and it was like a living nightmare.”
And that “nightmare,” Hopson claims, included being stripped of his police powers, suspension and being terminated on three different occasions.
“That’s what people have got to understand is that this discrimination is intermingled with corruption and many officers in that police department, both White and Black, have a duty to report corruption, discrimination. But they can’t do it because they’re retaliated against,” Hopson argued.
“We’ve got many members of the command staff with a history of EEOC discrimination complaints against them, but they’re still elevated to positions of power and authority.”
In fact, there is only one Black district commander and one Hispanic district commander in a city that is majority Black with a rapidly growing Hispanic community.
“The most common thread all through the years, the common thread that links all these things together and why it continues to exist and continues to be a horrific problem is that not one person has ever be terminated or punished for discriminating or retaliating against these African-American officers—not one—and I think that speaks volumes,” Hopson proclaimed.
“The community has got to demand more from the police department and they have to make sure that their rights are protected. They need to call upon their elected officials...and hold them accountable because ultimately the people that pay the ultimate price for corruption and discrimination are the citizens of Baltimore.”
But, Hopson ultimately holds the city of Baltimore accountable for the racial discrimination so many Black officers have endured for decades.
“What this lawsuit shows is that the city solicitor’s office and the city of Baltimore have not only been facilitators and enablers of discrimination, but they’ve been on the wrong side of history,” he said.
As Hopson exited the Union Baptist Church in West Baltimore following a NAACP meeting earlier this week, a woman asked him if he was going to retire since the multi-milliondollar award was imminent. “This was never about the money,” Hopson replied.
“No amount of money, no amount of money, can justify, can compensate me or the many other people, or my family for what we had to suffer and endure, no amount of money.”