BALTIMORE _ The Department of Justice report that outlined dysfunction and civil rights violations in the Baltimore Police Department could help people looking to sue the city over misconduct allegations, legal experts say.
While the findings in the report released last week may not necessarily lead to an increase in lawsuits, they could strengthen cases of people with claims against the police.
"I think that lawyers suing the city for police brutality will get a lot of help from the report about where they should look for the shortcomings in the department in training and personnel matters," said Jose Anderson, a law professor at the University of Baltimore. "It will help them to know where to look, what to subpoena, what documents they should request to examine."
Since 2011, Baltimore has agreed to pay more than $12 million in settlements for police misconduct.
But City Solicitor George Nilson said the number of claims against police has been trending downward _ and he doesn't expect that to change. In 2009, people filed about 120 lawsuits against police, he said. In recent years, the number has been closer to 60 a year.
Nilson said he expects that some attorneys will use the findings in an attempt to get higher settlements for their clients. They also may seek to have the report entered as evidence in court, as lawyers in other states have done, he said.
"We all assume that plaintiffs' lawyers will attempt to make use of the report," he said. "Clearly, some plaintiffs' lawyers will see opportunity in the DOJ report."
An agreement between the city and the justice department on expected reforms contains a provision saying the agreement is not admission of liability by the city or police department.
It's up to a judge to decide when to allow that evidence and how much weight to give the federal report, Nilson said.
"Somebody can't just throw the report into evidence and say this report talks about all this bad stuff," he said.
Baltimore attorney J. Wyndal Gordon said he and other lawyers are researching how to use the federal investigation as evidence in cases against the police.
"I think the DOJ has come down very hard with some very empirical evidence to show that there are some policies and practices that involve discrimination and violating individuals' constitutional rights," Gordon said. "A lot of us are still going through (the report) ... But we do believe that it is going to be a very important piece to civil litigation in the future."
Gordon held a news conference Wednesday about a criminal case involving his client Aaron Winston, whose arm was broken by police during an arrest in February.
A jury acquitted Winston of all charges this week, and the 25-year-old said he is planning to pursue a lawsuit against the police.
David Malik, a civil rights attorney in Cleveland, said he did not notice an increase in lawsuits after that city entered into a court enforceable consent decree with the federal government last year. The agreement followed an investigation that found the Cleveland police had a pattern and practice of using excessive force.
But "on a certain level, it's changed the way we frame the discovery in the cases," Malik said.
"Prior to these DOJ reports, (the city) would tell you the information wasn't there," he said. "And you would either have to accept that or try to take other steps to find it. But when you actually know it's there...it's additional light at the end of the tunnel."
For instance, federal investigators in Cleveland found problems with police response to people with mental illness _ so a lawyer would know to request data on mental health calls, Malik said.
The federal investigation has also been cited in lawsuits in Cleveland, Malik said, such as a lawsuit filed by the family of Tanisha Anderson, who died after being restrained by police. The lawsuit is pending in federal court.
"The death of this joyful, loving, unarmed 37 year old woman in the midst of a mental health crisis is part of the pattern and practice of excessive force by the Cleveland Police Division (CPD) officers recently documented by a Department of Justice (DOJ) Investigative report," the lawsuit states.
The goal of a federal consent decree is to fix structural policy issues, not to address individual claims brought by private citizens, said Randolph M. McLaughlin, a civil rights attorney in New York and professor at the Pace University law school.
"That has to be done by individual lawyers," McLaughlin said.
But McLaughlin said the findings could still bolster legal arguments of people with civil claims against Baltimore police.
"I certainly would use it as a civil rights lawyer, as evidence that the city had a policy of either violating constitutional rights of African-Americans, or being deliberately indifferent to those violations," McLaughlin said.
The federal investigation in Baltimore covered a period between 2010 and 2015.
For many civil claims involving police misconduct, the statute of limitations is three years in Maryland, though there are exceptions in some cases of wrongful death actions, according to Latoya Francis-Williams, an attorney who handles civil lawsuits against Baltimore police.
Francis-Williams said she now wants to seek "raw data" that federal investigators received from the city.
"I cannot think of any reason under the law why the information should now be protected given that it's in a public report," Francis-Williams said.
In the long term, the federal investigation could decrease the city's civil liability because of reforms that are expected, said attorney A. Dwight Pettit, who has filed numerous lawsuits against city police.
"If everything is put into place under the consent decree, then it seems like the correct response of the police officers on the street would either be to conform or to get another career," Pettit said.
