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BPD asks for details of misconduct in DOJ report

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Specific examples of civil rights abuses and misconduct are littered throughout the 163 page Department of Justice report.

For example, when a patrol officer said he had no valid reason to stop a group of African American males, his sergeant replied, “Then make something up.”

The report points out in some cases supervisors issued discriminatory orders like telling his shift to arrest, “all the black hoodies” in a neighborhood.

There are also details of humiliating instances of strip searches, baton strikes for mouthing off and force used after a person was already detained, much of it unchecked or swept under the rug.

There was even a template created for making unconstitutional trespassing arrests in one district, a fill in the blank form where the fixed suspect information is “black male.”

All of it is damning, building the case of a police department plagued by the abusive remnants of racial profiling.

"It's really a learned behavior,” Commissioner Kevin Davis said in an interview Wednesday. “So as police officers come up through this organization, they learn how to police in a way that their commanders and supervisors expect them to police. So to transition away from that type of policing just doesn't happen overnight."

Follow Brian Kuebler on Twitter@BrianfromABC2.

 

But it was exposed all at once overnight and now those quotes and evidence used to make the DOJ’s case may soon be new internal affairs cases for the BPD.

The report doesn't name names of who said what or what email went to whom, but the DOJ says if asked, it will disclose.

When asked Thursday, the Baltimore Police Department sent ABC2 this statement:

“We read for the first time, the day before yesterday, some reports of misconduct. We have asked the DOJ to provide us with the details they discovered during their investigation.”

The Baltimore Police Department said based on the details provided, it will investigate beyond just the damaging narrative gathered by the department of justice.

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