By Darcy Costello
Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — The Baltimore Police Department has “markedly” improved the quality of its misconduct investigations, the consent decree monitoring team said in a new evaluation, but still has work to do to reach compliance in that area.
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The monitoring team graded the quality of the department’s misconduct investigations, finding 72% to be of very good or excellent quality, compared with 23% six years ago.
One prime concern noted in the report regarding BPD’s officer investigations and discipline: Investigations still take longer than the 90 days required by the consent decree.
“Unless [the Police Integrity Bureau], BPD and the city focus more attentively on simultaneously enhancing the timeliness and quality of [Police Integrity Bureau] investigations, this area risks lagging far behind on progress in others and extends the duration of the decree for much longer than may be necessary,” the monitor team wrote.
Additionally, the monitoring team found, the police department has yet to implement a program to test the public’s access to filing misconduct complaints or to begin publishing summaries of adjudicated cases. It also still does not consistently meet procedural requirements, like documenting how investigators considered and weighed aggravating or mitigating factors.
Baltimore Police said in a statement Friday that the department will use the monitor team’s review to guide it going forward. Spokeswoman Lindsey Eldridge said the agency acknowledges there is more work to be done and “changes take time.”
Already, the department’s Public Integrity Bureau has modernized its case management platform, updated policies and taken steps to promote transparency, Eldridge said. Looking ahead, the department is hiring civilian investigators for misconduct cases.
“The quality of the investigations cannot and will not be compromised; therefore, we are increasing the number of members, sworn or professional, for these investigations,” Eldridge said.
The compliance review is one of several recently published or underway for different portions of the city’s policing consent decree with the federal government. Earlier this year, the department reached full and effective compliance in the first two sections of its lengthy consent decree, around the transportation of persons in custody and officer assistance and support.
Community advocates stressed at the time that there are some heavy lifts remaining, including sections about police stops and searches, officers’ interactions with youth and adopting a real community policing posture.
The length of time it takes the department to complete misconduct investigations, a key part of the latest compliance review, spilled into the news earlier this year when the newly established Administrative Charging Committee raised concerns that misconduct cases were reaching the body too close to the deadline of a year and one day for administrative charges.
The police department, members said, regularly sent a handful of cases each week that needed to be adjudicated immediately or risk expiration.
According to the monitoring team’s evaluation, which reviewed misconduct cases that were closed or suspended in 2022, 32% were completed within the 90-day window. The average duration of a Public Integrity Bureau investigation that year, it found, was nearly 180 days.
Among the investigations that took longer than 90 days in the 2022 sample, none contained written documentation of a commander approving an extension of time, as allowed for in the consent decree, the monitor team said.
More recently, in early July, Deputy Commissioner Brian Nadeau said at a Police Accountability Board meeting that the average length of a Public Integrity Bureau investigation is 136 days. Nadeau, who oversees the Public Integrity Bureau, said then that the current staffing plan calls for 50 investigators, 40 sworn members and 10 civilians. But even if that full staffing were reached, Nadeau said the department would remain challenged to reach the 90-day threshold, with the amount of self-auditing the department does.
“The Monitoring Team remains highly concerned about [the Police Integrity Bureau’s] ability to meet the Decree’s ultimate requirement that all [Police Integrity Bureau] investigations be completed within 90 days. Although there has been some improvement, the rate of progress to date has been insufficient,” the team’s review said. “Although the numbers are generally moving in the right direction, it does not appear that BPD has developed a sufficiently concrete plan for making more meaningful, swifter progress.”
The evaluation, however, said the department should be “commended” on the quality of its investigations.
In one case, a complainant alleged she was unlawfully stopped by Baltimore Police because there was no stop sign at the intersection for which she’d been given a warning.
An internal investigator who reviewed body camera footage and visited the intersection found a stop sign partially obscured by tree branches, and exonerated the officer.
The monitoring team found the case to be “excellent,” one of nearly 29% in its sample, writing that the investigator made “comprehensive efforts … to determine which of two competing factual claims were accurate.”
Other cases were less impressive, with several found “materially deficient.” Of the 2022 sample, 3.3% were graded poor, compared to 19% in 2018, and 6.6% were fair, compared to 21.2% in 2018.
For example, in one case graded poor, the investigator uncritically adopted the FBI’s decision not to criminally charge an officer accused of involvement in ATM robberies and drug sales, the monitor team found. The investigator did not interview the accused officer or provide substantial information from the FBI before closing the Baltimore Police administrative investigation as “unfounded.”
Other areas of progress highlighted by the monitoring team included the Public Integrity Bureau’s implementation of new policies, its move to investigate misconduct even when an officer resigns, and its practice of tracking and analyzing data about misconduct.
The monitoring team urged the department to prioritize meeting all of the procedural steps laid out in the consent decree, adding that they are imposed “in light of the significant historical deficiencies in BPD misconduct investigations.”
It cited specific examples including sending written updates to people who complained every 30 days; documenting why complainant interviews aren’t part of an investigation; considering the findings of prior complaints, even ones that were not sustained; and considering whether other tactics would have been more appropriate.
“The consent decree’s administrative and procedural requirements are not pointless exercises in paper-shuffling,” the team wrote. “BPD’s rigorous adherence to procedures not only ensures that investigations are thorough and fair but it also provides transparency to foster public trust that, unlike in the past, BPD is adequately policing its own.”
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