BALTIMORE — The Baltimore Police Department is “turning the corner” in reforming unconstitutional policing practices, according to the federal judge overseeing the city’s consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice.
But it’s not sufficiently sharing that progress with the communities it serves — a vital piece of rebuilding trust and repairing damaged relationships, U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar said at Thursday’s quarterly public hearing.
“If the department is going to regain the community’s trust, support and collaboration, then the department has to show that it is worthy of that trust, support and collaboration,” Bredar said. “A huge part of that, of course, depends on how officers conduct themselves on the street. But another part is the department doing a better job of telling the story of what it is accomplishing.”
“Not doing so,” Bredar added, “will cause the department to fail to accomplish one of its most basic responsibilities: winning back the public.”
Six years into its consent decree, Baltimore Police has created the “architecture” for court-mandated reforms, Bredar said. Now, it must work to fully meet expectations and to scale up some of its promising programs — the Group Violence Reduction Strategy targeting would-be victims or perpetrators of violence with services, for example, or the early intervention system meant to flag problematic officer behaviors.
The decree, which dates back to 2017, laid out a series of reforms to address a federal investigation’s finding that Baltimore Police routinely violated residents’ rights.
One big challenge to the work ahead, according to Bredar: Staffing.
The federal judge, who previously called staffing woes the department’s No. 1 hurdle to getting out of the consent decree, pointed Thursday to two specific examples where manpower shortages were hindering reform execution.
The Public Integrity Bureau, he said, has improved the average internal investigation completion time from 303 days in 2020 to 176 days in 2022. But with only 36 detectives and civilians, out of the staffing plan’s goal of 48 investigators, it “may be impossible” for the agency to achieve the required 90-day timeline, Bredar said.
Community policing, too, has faced setbacks, he said. When the department has “barely” the patrol coverage to respond to all calls for service, officers likely aren’t able to spend the recommended 15 to 20 minutes of each hour in community engagement, such as business checks or resident conversations.
The department has nearly 500 fewer officers than its staffing plan lays out, with roughly 2,100 sworn officers of a recommended 2,600, officials said.
Bredar bemoaned Thursday the overtime expectations that shortages create.
“Requiring officers to work two or three extra full shifts per week on a regular basis is too much, particularly at a moment when we are otherwise so focused on achieving strict compliance with a plethora of new policies and procedures flowing from the Consent Decree,” Bredar said. “Tired officers are going to make mistakes.”
Ebony Thompson, Baltimore’s acting city solicitor, told Bredar on Thursday that the city’s budget remains a “persistent challenge,” adding that unlimited resources would make reaching the consent decree’s expectations easier but state-mandated increases are straining Baltimore’s spending.
Mayor Brandon Scott’s $4.4 billion spending proposal, unveiled last week, would keep police funding roughly flat to last year’s allocation. Five new proposed civilian positions dedicated to serving violent crime victims would be funded by eliminating five vacancies.
Baltimore Police officials appeared to agree with Bredar’s desire for more public messaging around reform progress. This week, the department released a four-year report highlighting its “achievements” since 2018, including some crime reduction, increases in officer proactivity and other reform steps.
Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said Thursday the report was “just the beginning” of the department telling its story. Other officials emphasized progress including around First Amendment-protected activities, police shootings, uses of force and innovative trainings including EPIC, or “Ethical Policing is Courageous,” which teaches officers to intervene in problematic officer actions.
The police document reported a 16% reduction in violent crime across Baltimore since 2018, and a 26% reduction in property crime during the same timeframe.
It also included a year-to-year comparison showing 24% fewer shootings and 21% fewer homicides in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2022.
“We’re never perfect, but like you heard me saying this morning: Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we will catch excellence — which is what the department is doing, and the world is now seeing,” Harrison told reporters outside of the federal court building in downtown Baltimore.
In terms of the department’s “architecture” of reforms, Bredar pointed to revised policies, new trainings, an updated records management system on the way, body camera implementation, a new police academy and the overhaul of the agency’s Internal Affairs unit.
Areas with room for improvement, according to Bredar, meanwhile, included behavioral health interventions, namely a mobile crisis response for Baltimore that the judge said remains in “the laboratory,” and basic equipment fixes such as fleet and computer upgrades.
The consent decree monitoring team has released and is working to complete a number of assessments to gauge the effectiveness of reforms, officials said Thursday. Those underway range from evaluations of the department’s sexual assault investigations, arrests and its performance review board.
“Enough of this beating up on the Baltimore Police Department,” Bredar said. “It deserved it previously. There’s no denying it. But it’s a different agency now. And the department has to be bold, and drop the modesty.”
