Justice Department's Report on the Baltimore Police Department: It's Basically The Wire

[6souls]

The findings include:

• Too many unjustified stops — for no good legal reason — and with African-Americans bearing the burden.
• Too much unnecessary use of force.
• Police retaliating at people for exercising their right to free speech and protest
• Inadequate training of police in Baltimore and not enough oversight to weed out the bad cops

The review concludes that many of the abuses are after-effects of a now-discredited policy:

Starting in at least the late 1990s, ... City and BPD leadership responded to the City's challenges by encouraging "zero tolerance" street enforcement that prioritized officers making large numbers of stops, searches, and arrests—and often resorting to force—with minimal training and insufficient oversight from supervisors or through other accountability structures. These practices led to repeated violations of the constitutional and statutory rights, further eroding the community's trust in the police.

...

"BPD's legacy of zero tolerance enforcement continues to drive its policing in certain Baltimore neighborhoods and leads to unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests. Many BPD supervisors instruct officers to make frequent stops and arrests—even for minor offenses and with minimal or no suspicion—without sufficient consideration of whether this enforcement strategy promotes public safety and community trust or conforms to constitutional standards. These instructions, coupled with minimal supervision and accountability for misconduct, lead to constitutional violations.

The report says building relationships in all communities is a better way to head-off crime:

We encourage BPD to be proactive, to get to know Baltimore's communities more deeply, build trust, and reduce crime together with the communities it serves.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...ice-department
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fd2e0...&utm_medium=AP

[Andalusian girls]

D'Angelo died for our sins

[BerenTebogo]

And nothing gets changed anywhere else, of course

[6souls]

• Black people make up 63 percent of the population, but 84 percent of people stopped on the street by Baltimore police in those five and a half years were black.
• Officers made 520 stops for every 1,000 black residents in Baltimore, but only 180 stops for every 1,000 white residents.
• Black residents were more likely to be stopped multiple times. Blacks accounted for 95 percent of those who were stopped more than 10 times.
• Despite the higher rate of stops, officers were less likely to find contraband during searches of blacks than others. For example, during traffic stops and searches, police found contraband in 3.9 percent of blacks' vehicles, compared to 8.5 percent of others. The report says that this difference suggests that Baltimore Police are more suspicious, and without justification, of blacks than of people of other races.
• Baltimore police arrested blacks for misdemeanor offenses at a disproportionate rate. For example, blacks accounted for 83 percent of 6,500 arrests for disorderly conduct.
• The rates at which charges for such offenses were dropped suggest that police were arresting blacks on insufficient evidence. Blacks accounted for 89 percent of the 1,350 charges for making a false statement. But booking centers and prosecutors dismissed those charges against black people at a 231 percent higher rate compared to other races. Blacks also made up 84 percent of the 4,000 charges for failing to obey an officer's order, but those charges were 33 percent more likely to be dropped than those of other races.
• Baltimore police charged 657 people with "gaming" or playing "cards or dice." Essentially everybody charged with that, 99 percent, was black. But the Department of Justice said that while it was unable to find specific data showing the demographics of people playing cards or dice, it is "extremely unlikely that African Americans comprise 99 percent of those doing so."
• The BPD used extreme tactics to police misdemeanors in black communities. The department has a helicopter unit, called "Foxtrot", which is normally used to coordinate officers' responses to shootings and other serious crimes. But the police used Foxtrot to patrol "gambling" activities like playing dice, according to the report.
• Drug usage data from to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that only one percentage point more blacks over the age of 12 used drugs than whites. But the rates at which blacks were arrested for drug possession far exceeded those statistics. BPD made 254 drug arrests for every 1,000 black Baltimore residents, but only 52 drug arrests per 1,000 residents of other races. In other words, blacks are five times more likely to be arrested for drug offenses.
• Black people were subjected to excessive force in 90 percent of instances of arrest.
• "Zero tolerance" policing was exercised in mostly black neighborhoods. 97 of the population in the Western District, where Freddie Gray was detained, are black. There, BPD made 147 stops for every 100 residents, compared to 22.5 stops per 100 residents in the mostly white Northern district.
• Accusations of racial bias were routinely covered up. DOJ investigators found 60 separate allegations between 2010-2016 where an officer used the word "nigger" when referring to a black individual. But those complaints were not filed under "racial slur" or "racial bias". Instead they were filed as "discourtesy" or "inappropriate language." The DOJ found that racial slurs were misclassified 98 percent of the time.
• Lack of oversight led to a routine failure to investigate complaints filed against officers. The DOJ refers to one incident from 2010, when a black man filed a report against officers who allegedly used excessive force during an arrest and tried to punch a 14-year-old boy, who was trying to record the arrest on his cellphone. The complainant said the officers used the word "nigger" frequently and asked him if he "takes it up the ass by Allah." When he tried to report the misconduct in person at the police district headquarters, he encountered the same officers who were involved in the initial incident.

https://news.vice.com/article/its-of...-really-racist

Full report - http://s3.documentcloud.org/document...gs-8-10-16.pdf

[dasva]

Not saying their is a problem but it can be somewhat misleading to just compare rate of incidents to population. I mean it could mean racism could also mean more crime from that segment or more likely a bit of both.

The drug one does seem to at least try in that regard. That said seems like it's household survey data and a bit old as the most recent data (2014) shows Black or African American only to be 2% higher white only. Also holy shit on the differences between races on that though. Like Pacific islanders are 4 times more likely to use illicit drugs than Asians.

I love the part at the top though about too many legally unjustified stops and too much unnecessary force. Does that mean there are acceptable amounts of bad behavior?

[Salodin]

Except in only 3.9% of black stops was something illegal found, compared to 8.5% for others. There's no justification to believe black people are more prone to do illegal things as others, because as evident they haven't found jack shit.

[dasva]

Except that's not what that means. Those were percentages of those stopped not of the population. On top of that it should be noted that for the stop comparison they did whites vs blacks but for hit rates of contraband they did others vs blacks. I'd like to see them comparing the same sets for both

Anyways given the highly disproportional amount of stops and the fact we are more or less assuming that the cops are stopping black people more often without reason then it's fairly logical that the racial methodology being used to determine who to stop is lowering the hit rate by adding a whole bunch of that are much more likely to miss. In theory though obviously nearly impossible twice as many blacks could be carrying contraband than others but because the cops are stopping 5 times as many most of whom they have no reason to suspect the percent found will be lower. Again that is an extreme example to illustrate a point that those stopped aren't necessarily representative of the population because of racial bias

Again not saying there is no problem in fact that argument above only works if there is a racism issue. I'm saying they are presenting/manipulating the data/stats to make it sound worse.

[Salodin]

Idk man, 1.44 compared to .225 stops for every 100 residents is a huge gap, especially when whities are more likely to have contraband.

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[dasva]

Idk man, 1.44 compared to .225 stops for every 100 residents is a huge gap, especially when whities are more likely to have contraband.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

Read again. It's not whites it's others for contraband. But it is white vs black on stops. Making comparing the 2 comparison tenuous at best. And it's not the population it's those stopped

[Salodin]

It's not like I'm saying those are the sole explainations, but when 90% of arrests on black people involves excessive force, 99% of gaming charges are on black people, etc, you start to wonder just how much it affects things. Not enough evidence to say with certainty, but shit if your mayor is a black woman then you'd think the BPD would have their shit together when it comes to relations with the black community.

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[Drai]

It's not like I'm saying those are the sole explainations, but when 90% of arrests on black people involves excessive force, 99% of gaming charges are on black people, etc, you start to wonder just how much it affects things. Not enough evidence to say with certainty, but shit if your mayor is a black woman then you'd think the BPD would have their shit together when it comes to relations with the black community.

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One could also say the same thing about having a Black President and the state of Black relations in the country as a whole though =\

[BerenTebogo]

One could also say the same thing about having a Black President and the state of Black relations in the country as a whole though =\

I mean, one could definitely say that.

Many people say that one who would say that would be pretty fucking retarded though.

[dasva]

It's not like I'm saying those are the sole explainations, but when 90% of arrests on black people involves excessive force, 99% of gaming charges are on black people, etc, you start to wonder just how much it affects things. Not enough evidence to say with certainty, but shit if your mayor is a black woman then you'd think the BPD would have their shit together when it comes to relations with the black community.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

Yeah I was just saying that with variables unaccounted for they probably attribute some though don't think it's possible to be even close to all. And skimming the full report even parsing thru things like that it still seems like there is a rather huge racism problem there. I just don't like how they are trying to make it even worse or try to get us to read the data in a different way than what it says. Just going to turn off the people who were looking for a reason not to believe and make it harder to determine the full extent of the problem and therefore fix. Like on stops I'd imagine they didn't choose blacks vs others that time because some other demographics (probably Hispanics) are also getting targeted which should be addressed. Might help you narrow down more where/who these policies started from if some of the ones that appeared to just be less of a problem could be factored out. Get better idea who or which precincts really need to be gutted etc. Long term you can even work out the extent to which it is self feeding to push an effort to not only do their jobs but try to regain goodwill of the community. Like hey guys if you look at these statistics if you be nice to the citizens and they will be less likely to shoot you so stop being pricks ok