Baltimore Police Department
The Baltimore Police Department is the municipal police department of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. Dating back to 1784, the BPD, consisting of 2,935 employees in 2020, is organized into nine districts covering of land and of waterways. The department is sometimes referred to as the Baltimore City Police Department to distinguish it from the Baltimore County Police Department.
History
Foundation to the 1840s
The first attempt to establish professional policing in Baltimore was in 1784, nearly 60 years after the founding of the colonial town and eight years after United States independence. The city authorized a night watch and a force of day constables to enforce town laws, particularly catching runaway slaves. Nightwatchman George Workner was the first law enforcement officer to be killed in the city; he was stabbed during an escape attempt by nine inmates at Baltimore City Jail on March 14, 1808.The department was founded in its current form in 1853 by the Maryland state legislature "to provide for a better security for life and property in the City of Baltimore". The state did not give the city the power to run its own police affairs. The early decades of the department were marked by internal political conflict over split loyalties. In 1857 the police were reorganized by Mayor Thomas Swann and new men were recruited; many came from Know Nothing gangs in the city and maintained loyalties to former leaders. The first BPD officer to die in the line of duty was Sergeant William Jourdan, who was shot and killed by an unknown gunman during the first city council elections on October 14, 1857.
The 1930s to the Civil Rights era
The first African American officer hired by the department was a woman: Violet Hill Whyte, in 1937. The first black male officers were hired the year after. They were all assigned to plainclothes duty to work undercover. In 1943, African Americans were allowed to wear police uniforms, and by 1950 there were 50 black officers in the department.African American officers at this point were barred from using squad cars, hit a ceiling in promotion and were limited to patrolling black neighborhoods or assignments in the Narcotics Division or as undercover officers. They were subjected to racial harassment from both white coworkers and African American residents. Bishop L. Robinson and Edward J. Tilghman were two black police officers during this period; both later served as police commissioner. In 1962, Patrolman Henry Smith Jr. was the first African American officer to die in the line of duty; he was shot breaking up a dice game on North Milton Avenue.
As with other American cities post-World War II suburbanization, encouraged by government programs, drew large numbers of white residents out of the city. There had always been a large African American minority in Baltimore, which had been growing steadily and became a majority in the mid 20th century. The police department remained dominated by whites; traditionally mostly Irish Americans.
During the Civil Rights Movement, trust between the department and the predominantly black city became increasingly strained, as African Americans pressed for fair treatment and social justice. In the 1960s, race riots erupted in Baltimore and other cities. Some positive change was implemented under Commissioner Donald Pomerleau, appointed in 1966 after consulting for the International Association of Chiefs of Police in the city for two years and writing a damning report on the department. Pomerleau described the BPD as "the most corrupt and antiquated in the nation, and had developed almost no positive relationship with the city's Negro community". Pomerleau oversaw many reforms, including the racial integration of the department by 1966, also partly a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and efforts by local black activists. However, the riot of 1968 broke out across the city's African-American neighborhoods in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Because few black officers held rank within the department, the African American community was confronted by a white-dominated police department.
Late 20th century to present
In the latter part of the 20th century, restructuring of industry and railroads resulted in a massive loss of industrial jobs in Baltimore. These changes resulted in depopulation, unemployment and poverty; all serious challenges for the police department.Police community relations were severely strained in Baltimore during the "war on drugs", as with other cities, adding to the stresses of several African American neighborhoods in East and West Baltimore already hollowed out by drug use. African American police officers were intensely disliked, as were white ones.
In 1971, African American officers founded the Vanguard Justice Society, to represent their rights and interests. Throughout the 1970s, more African Americans advanced in the department; Black officers were promoted to positions of district commanders and chief of patrol.
In July 1974, officers joined other striking municipal workers for five days during the Baltimore police strike.
In 1984, Mayor Donald Schaefer appointed veteran police officer Bishop L. Robinson as Baltimore's first black police commissioner. The department had previously long been dominated by ethnic Irish American and briefly by Italian Americans. Robinson had been the force's first Black officer to command the Eastern District and the Patrol Division. The department redefined several of its policies in effort to avoid the mistakes other departments made in the Watts riots of Los Angeles and Liberty City riots in Miami.
The department began using computerized booking procedures and 911 emergency systems in 1985, and created the first ever 311 non-emergency system in 1996. CCTV cameras began to be used in the same year.
Zero-tolerance under Martin O'Malley
After he was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1999, Martin O'Malley instituted a policy of zero tolerance modeled after that of New York City. He made Ed Norris, a deputy commissioner of the New York City Police Department, commissioner of the BPD in 2000 and hired the creators of CompStat, a management system used by the NYPD, to write a report analyzing the BPD. The report claimed that residents saw the police as unwilling to counter the illegal drug trade, officers felt unsupported, and almost a quarter of BPD officers believed a quarter of their colleagues stole drugs and money from criminals. After this report, the BPD ran over 200 sting operations against officers, of which only four officers failed.Norris was replaced by Kevin P. Clark, also from the NYPD, who sought to counter the illegal drug trade using two strategies: teaching more undercover detectives to buy drugs and citing suspected dealers for petty crimes. In 2003, Norris was indicted and sentenced to six months in prison for misusing an unreported bank account as commissioner. Clark was removed by O'Malley in 2004 amid accusations of domestic violence.
In 2005, a DVD titled Stop Fucking Snitching began to spread throughout Baltimore, deriding dealers who cooperate with the police. In one scene, a person accuses a group of dealers in West Baltimore of being protected by William King and Antonio Murray, a duo of BPD officers. Other drug dealers helped the case against the duo: in one case, a dealer who was supplied drugs by King and Murray to split the profit but told he would face consequences if he didn't help take down other dealers reported King and Murray to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. King and Murray were convicted of around 36 charges and sentenced to 315 years and one month and 139 years in prison, respectively.
Under O'Malley's zero-tolerance policy, arrests increased to over 100,000 in 2005, of which only two-thirds were prosecuted. While O'Malley rejected the notion that his policies "encourage arrests for the sake of arrests", officers later claimed that BPD culture encouraged making many arrests. Under O'Malley, the department was made up of 43% African American officers.
Under Sheila Dixon and Frederick H. Bealefeld III
After Martin O'Malley became governor of Maryland, acting mayor Sheila Dixon sought to move away from her predecessor's policy. She appointed Frederick H. Bealefeld III, a member of the department's narcotics and homicide units and the de facto head of the department for a few months, as commissioner of the BPD.Bealefeld wished to shift the department from focusing on drugs and indiscriminate arrests towards repeat offenders and illegal guns. Bealefeld also helped improve officer training. Bealefeld appointed Anthony Barksdale as deputy commissioner of operations. Barksdale believed that while tough policing was needed, the department could control itself with tight oversight. The BPD formed the Violent Crimes Impact Division, a roughly 300-member plainclothes unit of high-ranking officers. The department identified high-risk areas and kept these officers in those areas.
In 2007, shootings decreased and the homicide rate went below 200 for the first time since the 1980s. Despite this, officer-involved shootings doubled, and the BPD did not review if these shootings were avoidable and followed department rules. Patricia Jessamy, state's attorney of Baltimore, created a "do not call" list for cops known to have poor integrity but who remained employed. These officers could not be called as witnesses of a crime, which high-ranking officers and the police union opposed. The department proposed a "gun offender registry", where people convicted of gun-related crimes would be checked for compliance.
Modern day
Following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in 2015, there was rioting in black neighborhoods. The city invited the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation of the police department and its relations with the community. It found evidence of widespread unconstitutional and discriminatory police practices in the city, especially in poor, black neighborhoods.Following reporting from the investigation, the city, police department and the Civil Rights Division of DOJ negotiated a consent decree,
including limits on when and how the can engage individuals suspected of criminal activity. It orders more training for police on de-escalation tactics and interactions with youths, those with mental illness and protesters, as well as more supervision for officers.
U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar approved the decree in early April 2017, with commitment from Mayor Catherine Pugh and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis to make the changes proposed. Pugh already had included $10 million in the city budget for this purpose. The city will also be required to invest in better technology and equipment, and "for the Police Department to enhance civilian oversight and transparency." He denied a Department of Justice request to postpone signing the decree for 30 days in order to allow review by the Trump Administration.
On May 10, 2018, newly appointed Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa was charged in U.S. District Court with three misdemeanor counts of failing to file federal taxes for 2013, 2014 and 2015. Mayor Catherine Pugh initially expressed support for De Sousa, but a day later she suspended him with pay pending the resolution of the charges against him. De Sousa resigned several days later.
In 2021, the Maryland General Assembly passed a bill to transfer full control of the department from the state to the city. The transfer is contingent on city voters' approval of a charter amendment. Mayor Brandon Scott plans to assemble a panel tasked with finding ways that funding could be shifted from police to other agencies. Though Gov. Larry Hogan publicly questioned Scott's plans, he let the bill become law without his signature.
As of 2021, 60% of sworn BPD officers were racial or ethnic minorities, with both black and white officers making up 40% of the force. Female officers comprised 15% of the department.