BALTIMORE _ Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby now says thousands of court cases may be compromised as a result of the Gun Trace Task Force case and allegations against additional officers that surfaced during the trial.
"At first it was hundreds of cases," Mosby said, speaking on a panel Friday morning at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "Thanks to the testimony that came out just last week, our preliminary estimate is thousands of cases that may be impacted by the wrongful and illegal acts of those police officers."
Mosby said she was including allegations against 10 officers who were accused of wrongdoing during testimony from convicted officers.
"Now that 10 other officers have been implicated, and are still employed by the Baltimore Police Department, we have to then look at all of those cases that are being currently impacted," she said.
The Police Department has not suspended anyone whose name was brought up during the trial. One of them, accused of providing security for a meeting of drug dealers, was moved to desk duties. Others were accused of taking part in robberies or tipping off officers that they were being investigated.
Eight officers have been convicted of racketeering charges for using their badges to rob people, including two detectives convicted by a federal jury this week. The initial allegations in the federal indictment dated from 2015, but officers cooperating with the government have testified to committing crimes as far back as 2008.
The State's Attorney's Office has not released information on its review of cases since early December, when it said about 125 cases had been dropped or the defendant's conviction had been vacated as a result of the allegations against the Gun Trace Task Force.
The Maryland Public Defender's Office has maintained that a far higher range of cases were impacted, putting that number in the thousands. Friday's comments in New York were the first time Mosby said she agreed.
Earlier this week, Mosby's office said in a statement that they lamented having to drop cases with otherwise strong evidence because of the officers' role, saying there were "hundreds of cases where police corruption has impeded our city's ability to deliver justice on behalf of its citizens."
Mosby said at the New York event that addressing the revelations has been impacted by a strain on her resources.
"I'm going to always do the right thing, but unfortunately we have to figure out how we're going to do it because of the constraints on resources," she said.
Federal prosecutors have also said an assistant state's attorney in Mosby's office tipped off the officers to the investigation. Mosby's office has repeatedly declined to comment on whether it knows the identity of that prosecutor, referring questions to the U.S. Attorney's Office, which says it will not comment unless charges are brought.
Mosby was also asked about the Freddie Gray case during the John Jay event.
"It was a no-brainer when I charged those officers," she said. "I did my job. That accountability led to exposure. The Department of Justice came in a week after I charged those officers, exposed the discriminatory police practices of one of the largest agencies in the country. That exposure led to reform. ... We now have a spotlight on some of the entrenched corruption that was taking place in the Baltimore Police Department."
"We successfully did that in 18 months. Although those individual officers weren't held criminally responsible, every single police officer is now being held accountable for the actions of a few. That's better than I could have ever hoped for, and that's the power of being a prosecutor in this country."
