By Luke Broadwater, Mark
Puente, The Baltimore Suncontact the reporters
George NilsonPublic
OfficialsAnthony BattsStephanie Rawlings-BlakeBaltimore Police Department
Sun investigation prompts city
to create police brutality database
Baltimore officials will begin
this month posting the outcomes of all civil lawsuits alleging police brutality
and will reconsider their policy of requiring plaintiffs to keep silent after
settlements are reached — part of a series of changes made in response to a
six-month Baltimore Sun investigation of police misconduct.
City Solicitor George Nilson,
who enacted the new policy regarding police settlements and court judgments,
said officials also would seek to provide increased training for officers who
are most often cited in lawsuits. The moves would give the public more
information about the lawsuits, he said Thursday, adding, "I want to end
the thinking that we're hiding the ball, because we're not."
Nilson said the moves were made
in response to The Sun investigation, which showed the city has paid about $5.7
million since 2011 over lawsuits alleging police brutality and other
misconduct. The U.S. Justice Department has since begun a review of the
Baltimore Police Department. The investigation revealed that police leaders,
city attorneys and other top officials were not keeping track of officers who
repeatedly faced such allegations. Meanwhile, judges or prosecutors cleared
nearly all of those alleging misconduct of criminal charges in the incidents
that led to the lawsuits with the highest payouts.
The Sun's investigation also
showed that city policies helped shield the scope and impact of alleged police
brutality from the public. For example, settlement agreements include a clause
that prohibits injured residents from making any public statement — or talking
to the news media — about the incidents.
After the investigation was
published, some members of the City Council said they weren't aware the problem
was so widespread.
Some prominent area defense
attorneys said Thursday that the nondisclosure clause included in settlement
agreements should be eliminated. Someone who violates that clause risks losing
part of the monetary settlement. Last month, for example, the city withheld
$31,500 from a woman who had posted online comments about an incident; that was
about half of her settlement.
A. Dwight Pettit, who
frequently represents plaintiffs in lawsuits against police officers, says it
appears the city is trying to be more transparent, but he questioned the
substance of the changes. The city needs to eliminate the nondisclosure
clauses, he said.
"That's a suppression of
First Amendment rights," he said. "I don't see any reason for that.
That's continued intimidation."
Bryan A. Levitt, who also has
represented plaintiffs in such lawsuits, agreed.
"That would be real
transparency in government," he said. "There is no reason to keep it
a secret. The only reason to do so is self-serving. It establishes a wall
between the public and public servants."
Nilson said the online
database, which will note the outcome of lawsuits as court decisions and
settlements are reached, will allow the public to have a fuller understanding
of how often the city wins or loses cases. The database will not include cases
already settled, but their outcomes will be available upon request, he added.
In about 70 percent of such
lawsuits, the city wins or settles for less than $10,000, he said.
"I'm proud of our record,
frankly," Nilson said. "I intend to make sure our wins are robustly
posted."
The database will contain
summaries of excessive-force lawsuits, similar to the information presented to
the Board of Estimates. Some have criticized those summaries because they often
omit accusations of police brutality, but city officials argue that many
allegations are unfounded.
The city spending panel,
controlled by the mayor, must approve all expenditures greater than $25,000.
The excessive-force database will include all cases, no matter the size of the
settlement, Nilson said.
As part of the new policy,
Nilson said, a representative of the Police Department will be invited to
attend meetings at which city lawyers discuss whether to settle a case, and
officers in need of further training will meet one-on-one with city lawyers.
One example of a
"teachable moment," he said, might be the case of an officer who
doesn't buckle in a suspect while being transported, then gets in an accident,
injuring the suspect. Or an officer who tries to move an injured man without
calling for medical help. City lawyers can offer advice on ways to avoid
lawsuits, he said.
Nilson said city lawyers would
also research nondisclosure clauses in other cities to see whether Baltimore's
policies are "fair and consistent with best practices."
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake
said she has pushed to make Baltimore's government more transparent since
taking office in 2010, including creating the Open Baltimore website, where
city salaries, liquor licenses, crime data and other sets of information are
routinely posted.
"I was really perplexed
that so many elected officials said they had no idea the city has been making
these settlements," Rawlings-Blake said. "I want to make sure the
public and elected officials have this information. Now there's no excuse for
not knowing."
The issue of police brutality
has been a prominent topic in the city recently.
On Monday, the City Council
overwhelmingly gave preliminary approval to a bill to require all of
Baltimore's nearly 3,000 police officers to wear body cameras — despite
arguments from the mayor's office that the bill is illegal.
City Councilman Warren Branch,
the lead sponsor of the two-page bill, said residents of his district
repeatedly asked him to have police wear the cameras to cut down on brutality.
As reasons for the proposed law, he has cited questions surrounding the
in-custody death last year of Tyrone West and a recent video showing an officer
repeatedly punching a suspect, among other cases.
In October, Rawlings-Blake and
Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts presented a plan to reduce police
brutality, calling for increased staff in the Internal Affairs Division, which
handles allegations of misconduct, and giving Batts wider authority to quickly
punish rogue officers. The plan included the creation of a task force to study
the implementation of body cameras.
The Justice Department is in
the early stages of conducting its review of the department, an examination
made at the request of the mayor and police commissioner.
