Last week, a consent decree between the City of Baltimore and the Department of Justice was finalized. It is a legally binding agreement that is supposed to enforce reforms to the Baltimore Police Department, which was subject to one of the most damning “patterns or practice” reports by the DOJ in recent memory.
Sean Yoes (Courtesy Photo)
The report concluded, “BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that implicates our statutory authority. This pattern or practice is rooted in BPD’s deficient supervision and oversight of officer activity, leading directly to a broad spectrum of constitutional and statutory violations.”
However, the consent decree states, “The City and the BPD deny the allegations in the Complaint and Report…Nothing in the report…was intended to be used by third parties to create liability.”
So…
This caveat, designed specifically to cover the city’s fiscal a$$ (I’m told this language is not uncommon in consent decrees in other jurisdictions and functions in the same way), also essentially tells thousands of Baltimore residents who have had their heads busted, arms broken, or have generally been hassled by police in violation of their constitutional rights over decades, `You’re lying, it never happened.’
For example, the DOJ documents the case of a Black man in his mid-fifties who had been stopped 30 times in less than four years, yet none of the stops, none, resulted in a citation or criminal charge.
The city is telling that brother, `It’s all in your head.’ The fact that he, and countless others, have been treated like they live in Apartheid era South Africa, is simply an inconvenient reality of being poor and Black in Baltimore. And what are you going to do about it? What can you do about it?
We talked about the city’s duplicitous position connected to the consent decree on First Edition, Jan. 17, and one caller who identified himself as, “Smitty,” a Black man in his 70’s, asked perhaps the most cogent question of the night, “Where does a Black man go to get justice?”
Ironically, on the same night I listened to people’s thoughts and insights on the consent decree, I had the opportunity to talk to Ron Davis, the father of Jordan Davis, the 17-year old Black Florida high school student who was murdered by Michael Dunn, a 47-year old White man, in the infamous, “loud music,” case in Nov. of 2012.
Since the murder of his son and Dunn’s conviction, Davis has been traveling around the nation and the globe telling the tragic story of his son’s death and speaking out against the inherent bias within the U.S. criminal justice system. And he cogently laid out how the system often fails to protect most Black, mostly poor people.
“Understand that in Baltimore and every other city in this nation the system is designed to protect itself,” Davis said.
“When I went to Ferguson because of the shooting there, you look at the police department that is hired by the city. The prosecutor is working for the city, the city budget manager is telling the prosecutor, don’t prosecute the policeman, because if you prosecute the policeman and find him guilty, the family is going to sue the city. And if they sue the city…the city is going to go broke. So, therefore as a prosecutor you may lose your job and you as a policeman may lose your job. So, we’re all together in this,” Davis added.
“It’s the system that protects itself for fear of being broke.”
The DOJ’s report stated, “…(there is)profound lack of trust…in particular, between BPD and certain communities in Baltimore.”
Those communities are mostly Black and mostly poor and for them, whatever trust there is between them and the police is tattered and torn, dangling by a thread.
Now, the city comes forward like Pontius Pilate, washing its hands of the findings of the DOJ report and in the process dismissing the broken, bruised and dead bodies of Baltimore citizens at the hands of the BPD. What happens
to that alleged trust between the police and the people now that the city officially, “deny the allegations in the Complaint and Report?”
Sean Yoes is a senior contributor for the AFRO and host and executive producer of, “AFRO First Edition,” which airs Monday through Friday, 5-7 p.m. on WEAA, 88.9.
