Pubdate: Fri, 12 Aug 2016
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2016 The Baltimore Sun Company
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37

DOJ AND FREDDIE GRAY

The Department of Justice's Report on the Baltimore Police Doesn't 
Say How Freddie Gray Died, but It Does Explain Why

When Vanita Gupta, who heads the Department of Justice's Civil Rights 
Division, announced the findings of the 14-month frederal probe of 
the Baltimore Police Department, she made clear that it was not an 
investigation of Freddie Gray's death. That's true; it barely 
mentions him and certainly comes to no conclusions about the specific 
circumstances of his arrest and fatal injury. But in its searing 
critique of the department's practices, it explains everything that 
happened that morning.

'Daily measurables'

At 8:39 a.m. on April 12, 2015, four Baltimore police officers 
spotted Freddie Gray at the corner of West North Avenue and North 
Mount Street. It was no coincidence that the officers were there; 
they were part of a "daily narcotics initiative" as a result of a 
request from State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's office to a Western 
District commander to target that corner for "enhanced" attention. 
That translated into orders from the commander to officers - 
including Lt. Brian Rice, the highest-ranking officer who faced 
charges after Gray's death - to produce "daily measurables."

The DOJ report explains exactly what that means. Federal 
investigators found a pervasive attitude among patrol officers and 
supervisors that their job was to produce statistics - stops, 
searches, arrests - and to clear corners. It was a vestige of the 
department's "zero tolerance" strategy of a decade ago that 
"prioritized attempts to suppress crime by regularly stopping and 
searching pedestrians and arresting them on any available charges, 
including discretionary misdemeanor offenses." Though recent police 
commissioners have tried to steer the department away from it, the 
DOJ found that many supervisors "continue to encourage officers to 
prioritize short-term suppression, including aggressive use of stops, 
frisks, and misdemeanor arrests." The federal investigators found a 
flier posted in several districts making a joke about the Violent 
Crimes Impact Division, a specialized unit designed to address the 
most serious crimes. It showed what appears to be three officers 
leading a handcuffed, hoodie-wearing man down an alley toward a 
transport van with the words "VCID: Striking fear into loiters [sic] 
City-Wide."

Stop and frisk

We don't know what was going through Freddie Gray's mind when he saw 
the officers, but the context provided by the DOJ report gives a good 
guess. He would have had good reason to believe he would be stopped, 
frisked and perhaps arrested even though he was doing nothing more 
than walking home with friends after trying to get breakfast at a 
carry-out that was closed. The DOJ found that Baltimore police 
recorded more than 301,000 pedestrian stops during a four-year 
period, heavily concentrated in poor, black neighborhoods. The true 
number, the report says, was likely much higher, owing to shoddy 
record-keeping. Forty-four percent of the stops were in the Western 
and Central districts. Gray himself had been stopped twice in the 
same week in February, and the federal investigators found reason to 
conclude that he had likely been stopped many other times that were 
not recorded.

Gray wasn't carrying drugs or a gun. He had a knife clipped inside 
his pants, but in an ordinary, constitutional encounter with the 
police, they would have had no cause to discover it. The Baltimore 
police, however, "pat-down or frisk individuals as a matter of 
course, without identifying necessary grounds to believe that the 
person is armed and dangerous. And even where an initial frisk is 
justified, we found that officers often violate the Constitution by 
exceeding the frisk's permissible scope" - for example by conducting 
strip searches in full view of the street. Police often detain people 
to check for warrants or even take them to Central Booking for no 
discernible reason.

Discretionary arrests

Freddie Gray was no stranger to these facts. He had been arrested 
many times, almost exclusively for low-level drug charges. That's not 
surprising; the DOJ report found that despite similar levels of drug 
use, blacks in Baltimore were five times more likely to be arrested 
for drug possession than whites. Also typical of Baltimore, Gray's 
arrests rarely led to convictions. The DOJ found 11,000 instances 
when prosecutors or supervisors at Central Booking rejected charges 
by Baltimore police because they lacked probable cause. Gray also had 
a record of what the DOJ calls "discretionary arrests" for things 
like trespassing and, in one case possessing "gaming cards, dice" - 
crimes for which African-Americans are arrested at overwhelming 
rates. Blacks make up 63 percent of Baltimore residents but 91 
percent of arrests for trespassing or failure to obey, the DOJ found.

(For those in the suburbs who can't get past Gray's criminal record, 
try this experiment: Sit on your front porch and play dice. See how 
long it takes you to get arrested. You may want to bring snacks.)

Foot chases and use of force

So, when Freddie Gray made eye contact with one of the officers that 
morning, he ran, and the police chased him, evidently for no reason 
other than the fact that he was fleeing and in a high-crime area. 
That's no coincidence either. "When officers encounter civilians who 
flee from them, officers nearly always give chase, without weighing 
the severity of any suspected crime, whether the person poses a 
threat, and any alternative, safer means to affect a stop or 
seizure," the DOJ found.

The police report of Gray's arrest says he was taken into custody 
"without force or incident." But witnesses and cellphone video tell a 
different story. Those at the scene say he was forcibly taken to the 
ground, that an officer pinned a knee to his neck and that another 
bent his legs backward, "like he was a crab or a piece of origami," 
as one witness put it. And that's not uncommon either. The DOJ 
reports that Baltimore police foot chases frequently result in the 
use of force out of proportion to the needs of safety or the 
suspected criminal activity - and remember, in this case, they had no 
specific suspicion at all. Foot pursuits are high-adrenaline 
activities that frequently render officers unable to make sound 
judgments and prone to unconstitutional use of force, the report says.

For that reason, departments need clear policies and specific 
training on foot chases, but Baltimore police have neither, the DOJ 
found. According to the report, the department has been aware of the 
need for a policy since at least 2013 but has never adopted one. 
Until 2015, the department had no specific training on foot pursuits 
for new recruits at the police academy or refresher training for 
experienced officers.

Dangerous transport practices

The video of Gray's arrest shows officers dragging him into a police 
van. Video from a later stop shows him handcuffed and shackled and 
loaded face-down into the back. At no point was he seat-belted. Those 
decisions - to put Gray in a defenseless and unrestrained posture in 
the back of the van - were likely the ones that led to his death. 
They were also standard operating procedure for the Baltimore police.

The DOJ report confirms that Baltimore police had for years routinely 
flouted a policy that detainees should be secured with seat belts in 
the back of vans, that commanders knew it and did little about it. 
The department conducted sporadic audits of seat-belting practices in 
2012, 2014 and 2015. "With each audit, BPD inspected one transport 
vehicle from each of the districts, one time," the report says, and 
though some of the audits showed improvement, their findings were 
contradicted both by reports from officers and detainees. "One 
officer who spoke to us described the transportation process before 
Freddie Gray's death as 'load and go,' often with little regard for 
seatbelts," the DOJ reported.

The vans themselves were dangerous - the way they were partitioned 
made it "possible for detainees being transported, if not properly 
secured, to strike their head on the divider or walls relatively 
easily; and there is virtually no padding to protect the person from 
injury." The vans lacked functional video cameras or any other means 
for the driver to observe the passengers, or even to hear them well, 
so it's altogether plausible that the officer transporting Gray would 
have had no way to know he was injured until he reached the Western 
District. A post-Freddie Gray retrofit of the vans still has 
substantial flaws that fail to address that problem.

The DOJ report may not provide any insight into how Freddie Gray 
died, but it says a lot about why. Every element of his encounter 
with police that morning reflected a pattern of practices by the 
Baltimore Police Department that was at best flawed and at worst 
unconstitutional. For those still wondering why the city agreed to a 
$6.4 million settlement with Gray's family before they even filed a 
lawsuit, there's your answer.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom