Civilian committee reviewing police misconduct says Baltimore Police send some cases too close to deadline

BALTIMORE — Members of the civilian committee that makes disciplinary decisions for police misconduct cases say the Baltimore Police Department has been turning over some internal investigations too close to deadlines set by law for it to make a decision, leaving little time for a thorough review.

Those tight time frames have forced committee members, at times, to cram hours of body camera footage and case review into weekends, or to schedule emergency meetings in between regular Friday sessions, board members told The Baltimore Sun.

It also has hindered the committee’s ability to request additional information or investigation by Baltimore Police investigators, they said — a key civilian oversight function, as laid out by the Maryland General Assembly statute creating local administrative charging committees.

“When we receive a case so close to its expiration, we can’t do anything but make a decision based on what’s provided to us by BPD,” said Jesmond Riggins, a committee member. “It undermines the way the General Assembly and City Council envisioned for this body to work.”

The issue has popped up in a fraction of the hundreds of police investigations reviewed by the committee. Members including chair Tiera Hawkes still said the process is working overall.

But they characterize the cases arriving close to expiration as a “growing concern.”

Baltimore Police Deputy Commissioner Brian Nadeau acknowledged in an interview that there have been instances where investigations took a long time to reach the administrative charging committee. He said the city is working to address lags, including planning to hire a new attorney.

Nadeau, who oversees the BPD’s Public Integrity and Compliance bureaus, emphasized that the committee has largely agreed with police charging decisions, estimating members had disagreed on 15 to 20 administrative charges, out of hundreds of cases that each could have multiple charges. He described that agreement as a testament to improved internal investigations and oversight.

“We’re trying to — and I think we’ve done a great job since I’ve been here — of ridding ourselves of the bad apples,” Nadeau said. “The bad conduct that this agency had back in, you know, ‘12, ‘13, ‘14, ‘15, that type of conduct, for the most part, is gone now.”

By law, administrative charging committees in jurisdictions across Maryland are expected to review police investigations involving members of the public and issue determinations on whether police officers are guilty of policy violations. They have a year and a day from the date of the initial complaint to do so.

Then, the committees send their opinion and charging recommendation back to the head of the police department, who can either impose the same discipline as the committee suggested or a more severe punishment. They cannot offer any lesser disciplinary actions.

Baltimore’s committee, by far the state’s busiest, considers somewhere between 15 to 25 cases each week, which can require 10 to 20 hours of preparation, said members of the committee, who are compensated for their work.

And every week, members said, there are between three to five cases set to expire before the next weekly meeting.

When board members agree with the police department’s findings, or when the cases are relatively simple, that presents less of an issue. But if the board members have questions for the police department or if they want to see more investigation, it leaves little to no time.

“Oftentimes, we’re in a meeting, thinking we need more information or may be missing a disciplinary record, or something’s missing from the file. We’re like, ‘When does this expire?’ It’s today. Or tomorrow. So we have to make a decision today,” Hawkes said.

“If we just said, ‘We’ll put a rubber stamp on it,’” she added, “then that discredits our integrity.”

When there is enough time for the committee to ask questions of the police department, it has resulted in a different department recommendation on a “few” occasions, according to Riggins, who also sits on the city’s Police Accountability Board.

Nadeau said he wasn’t aware of cases where that happened, but said it’s possible that those wouldn’t rise to his level.

The department’s Public Integrity Bureau handled 1,475 cases last year, roughly half of which involve members of the public and fall under the administrative charging committee’s purview, Nadeau said. The bureau is working to speed investigations — the consent decree calls for a 90-day turnaround, and investigators are averaging roughly 144 days — but he said staffing constraints have hampered those efforts. The Public Integrity Bureau has 11 vacancies out of 50 investigative positions.

Cases that go to the committee also have been slowed by commanders’ review and a subsequent legal review, Nadeau said. To address that, the department in January added a second captain, and city government plans to hire another lawyer to staff the department, he said.

City lawyers, among other tasks, review BPD’s internal investigations and draft administrative charges similar to a criminal indictment. Since the administrative charging committee law went into effect, there is no legal requirement for the attorneys to continue, Nadeau said, but they still are, to help the committee. Nadeau said lawyers’ involvement had resulted in stronger cases brought to trial boards.

“If we’re at full staff, and legal had their additional attorneys, and we were still doing the work we’re doing for the ACC, could we be quicker?” Nadeau said of the committee. “Of course we could.”

Committee members described wanting greater clarity on why these issues are coming up, and how they’re being remedied.

“Mistakes will happen — slip-ups, people will miss deadlines,” Hawkes said. “But what are we doing to prevent that from happening?”

For instance, another point of disagreement has been the disciplinary histories of officers whom the police department doesn’t recommend administratively charging. Committee members say that since they can reach their own conclusions, it’s important to have access to those histories.

Nadeau sees it differently. Compiling those histories would take time, he said, and if the committee is largely agreeing with the department’s recommendations, that effort may not be an efficient use of valuable manpower. As it is now, the board can request disciplinary histories from the Public Integrity Bureau on a case-by-case basis.

Much of how the relationships between police departments and the committees are supposed to work is not spelled out in state rules.

To remedy that, Ray Kelly, another committee member, said he plans to request later this month that staff with the state’s police standards commission begin drafting statewide protocols. Kelly said he’d like to see the standards require the officers’ disciplinary histories and provide a timeline for when a case comes to the committees.

“For me, that’ll be the biggest thing: Having some semblance of standard operating procedures, so to speak,” Kelly said. “All of these ACCs are civilians, and most of us have jobs. We want to provide the service and we want to do what’s right for our communities, but we’re humans.”

Committee members also want to help create a “solid foundation” for future boards, Riggins said.

“It’s all about the future,” Riggins said. “I don’t plan on being on the board for multiple terms. I want to get in on the ground floor, get my eyes on it, and help make sure that it stays on the right path.”

David Cramer, another committee member, said the window into policing in Baltimore has run the gamut from “the ridiculous” to “heartbreaking,” particularly when fatalities are involved. He said he’s come to admire more the work police do, but also to recognize they “will always require someone outside looking over their shoulder.”

“Not to interfere,” Cramer said, “but to keep them honest in it. It can so easily slide into abuse.”

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