BALTIMORE _ The U.S. Department of Justice report finding the Baltimore Police Department had engaged in a pattern and practice of unconstitutional, unjustified policing that has disproportionately affected black residents is not the first report to lay out systemic problems in the department.
Former Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, who was fired shortly after the Justice Department review began last year, had his own plan for reforms. The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, the union that represents officers, has a plan, too. Activists, nonprofits, law enforcement think tanks and politicians have also weighed in over the years. And each new police commissioner in the city's long list of police commissioners in recent decades has arrived with a strategy all his own.
But the DOJ report is different, and will have a far greater impact, for two reasons, according to Vanita Gupta, head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, which conducted the investigation.
First, it will be court enforced. Second, it will unfold over the course of many years _ holding the city to certain standards and reform priorities that will not shift each time a new mayor is elected or a new commissioner takes the helm of the nation's eighth largest police force.
"There hasn't been before an investigation or a report that has delved into hundreds of thousands of pages of documents where we had access to the kind of information that we had. ... We will be producing an agreement that will be court enforceable by a third party monitor that is going to be a long term set of reforms," Gupta said. "We know that our consent decree is going to be going further and more comprehensively and is going to have long term implementation, which is actually what is needed to produce sustainable culture change in a police department."
She added: "What's important is that the findings in any agreement that we reach are meant to survive the political winds, the personnel changes, not only at BPD and the city but also at the Justice Department."
Gupta said that with the announcement of the findings Wednesday, the Justice Department will enter into negotiations with the police department and the city that she is "optimistic" will result in a consent decree, shaping the department's reform priorities. The city will then seek out a court-appointed monitor, under the supervision of a federal judge, to ensure that those priorities are met.
The negotiations ahead of the consent decree will include input from citizens, but also from members of the law enforcement community, Gupta said.
"We aren't saying that the Baltimore Police Department shouldn't be engaging in proactive policing. To fight crime, a police department needs to be able to engage in proactive policing. But what we are saying is that proactive policing has to be done in partnership with the community. And that actually, proactive policing when done right is community policing, where the community trusts police, is sharing information, where witnesses are coming up sharing information," Gupta said.
"These communities need policing. They want fair policing. And we say it's not just about the absence of crime, it has to be the presence of justice, too. And where communities have the trust of police, they are going to be sharing information and being partners in fighting crime and creating safety in their neighborhoods."
Gupta said the hope of the Justice Department is that the Baltimore Police Department "will be able to do the kind of proactive policing it needs to do to keep communities safe, working with the community in partnership and having more targeted crime fighting strategies that are both smarter and are going to produce the outcomes that everyone in Baltimore wants, which are safer streets."
"There isn't a dichotomy between effective policing and constitutional policing," she said. "Those things actually go hand in hand, and that's what we've found in our work around the country with police departments."
