NEW YORK, United States (AFP) – by Jennie MATTHEW
A US government report on Wednesday delivered a scathing indictment of the Baltimore police department, concluding that officers had disproportionately and illegally stopped, searched and arrested African Americans for years.
The Justice Department findings follow a 14-month investigation, launched after a 25-year-old black man, Freddie Gray, died from injuries sustained in police custody.
His death sparked riots in a city troubled by crime, poverty and segregation problems, and mirrored nationwide outcry about the deaths of other unarmed African Americans at police hands across the country.
The 163-page report uncovered “systemic failures” and “structural deficiencies” in the Baltimore police department, said Vanita Gupta, the head of the civil rights division at the justice department.
“The city’s African Americans bore the brunt,” she told a news conference alongside Baltimore’s mayor and police chief.
The “severe and unjustified disparities,” in the rate of African Americans being stopped, searched and arrested violate the US Constitution and US federal law, the report said.
For example, police made 44 percent of stops in two small, predominantly black districts that contain only 11 percent of the city’s population, Gupta said.
Erode trust
Although the city is 63 percent black, African Americans accounted for 84 percent of pedestrian stops, and 95 percent of 410 individuals who were stopped at least 10 times by police officers from 2010-15, the report said.
The report also found that officers were let down from the start — poorly trained, not held accountable for misconduct and not given the equipment and the resources they needed to effect safe policing.
The data also shows that police were on a quest to make a large number of stops, despite having a limited impact on solving crime and eroding trust.
Only 3.7 percent of more than 300,000 pedestrian stops from 2010-2015 resulted in officers issuing a citation or making an arrest. Many of these stops and the resulting frisks lacked constitutional justification, Gupta said.
One African American man was stopped 30 times in less than four years with none of the stops resulting in a citation or criminal charge.
The violations had deeply eroded trust in the community, which is essential to good policing, Gupta said.
Police also used excessive force and got into “unnecessarily violent confrontations” with people suffering poor mental health, Gupta said.
Officials said the report would carve out the blueprint for sustainable reform over the long haul, estimated to cost $5-10 million a year to implement, and which would be enforced by the courts and independently monitored.
“Police reform won’t happen overnight or by chance. These problems were not created overnight. It’s going to take time and going to require a focused effort and a sustained commitment,” said Gupta.
New culture
The Baltimore mayor and police chief stressed that while reforms were already underway, they were committed to making long-term, comprehensive changes.
“Over the next few months we will put in place a concrete plan for change as well as concrete plans for a new culture for the good of the city,” said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
“It’s so very important that we get this right.”
Police commissioner Kevin Davis said the report was an indictment of “a relatively small number of police officers” and said he had fired six police officers in 2016 alone.
Officers who blatantly disregard any one’s rights would not be tolerated, he said, accusing those officers of “fostering fear and resentment.”
“We are very, very serious and committed. Change takes time. Change takes commitment, and change tasks trust,” he told the news conference.
“It’s undoubtedly a tough moment, but a moment we will be able to reflect upon in the future and know that this was a turning point for better policing, not just in Baltimore, but in our United States,” he said.