Stephanie Rawlings-Blake
Bernard C. Young
Young and Pratt need to start
asking more questions about police misconduct settlements.
Mayor Stephanie
Rawlings-Blake's administration is right about this much: The fact that a
police officer had been the defendant in a previous misconduct case for which
the city paid a $100,000 settlement should not have influenced the Board of
Estimates decision to approve a $150,000 settlement in a new case this week.
The plaintiff is either deserving of the settlement or not. The fact that
Detective Calvin Moss was accused of wrongfully arresting a woman who was
delivering church raffle tickets in 2007 — and for that matter, the fact that
Mr. Moss was cleared by juries in two other cases — has nothing to do with the
question of whether the city should compensate Marque Marshall, a Baltimore man
who had two fingers shot off by the officer in 2013.
But it is, nonetheless,
extremely important information for the public to know. Although the city
scrupulously insists that settlements do not indicate an admission of
wrongdoing, multiple settlements involving individual officers should be a red
flag, and they should prompt questions about whether the police department is
adequately investigating such cases and meting out discipline where
appropriate. While it's possible that certain officers are just unlucky enough
to be the subject of repeated frivolous lawsuits that the city's law department
determines are easier and cheaper to settle than to fight in court, somebody
outside of the administration ought to be asking questions about it.
Until The Sun's Mark Puente
reported on the nearly $6 million in settlements the city has paid in police
misconduct cases since 2011, it's pretty clear that nobody was. The
administration was not keeping track of whether officers had multiple claims
against them, and evidently City Council President Bernard C. "Jack"
Young and Comptroller Joan M. Pratt weren't either. Both complained this week
about the mayor's failure to mention the previous settlement involving Mr.
Moss, but if they had been paying close attention to the matter, they wouldn't
have needed a heads-up. Mr. Young and Ms. Pratt both attended the 2012 Board of
Estimates meeting at which the first Moss settlement was approved, and both
voted for it.
Given the volume of police
misconduct settlements and judgments that go through the Board of Estimates —
more than 100 since 2011 — it is perhaps unrealistic to expect either of them
to remember a particular officer's name off the top of their heads. (Although
one would think they might have in this case; Mr. Moss was prominently featured
in one of Mr. Puente's articles as the defendant in four lawsuits in 10 years.)
But it's also evident that the frequency of such settlements and the millions
in taxpayer dollars spent to pay them and associated legal fees did not prompt
them to keep close track of the cases or the officers involved, or to ask many
questions about them.
As Mayor Rawlings-Blake
promised, the city's law department is now posting some information about
police misconduct cases on its website. The database contains all court
dispositions and settlements since Nov. 12, so it will be relatively easy for
Mr. Young, Ms. Pratt or any member of the public to determine whether an
officer is involved in multiple settlements after that point. But as yet, the
database doesn't contain much information about each case beyond the settlement
amount, and it doesn't help anyone to determine whether an officer was accused
of misconduct before late 2014.
One would hope that the mayor,
as the person in charge of safeguarding the city's finances, not to mention the
relationship between the police and the community, would raise a stink when the
same officers are doing repeated damage on both those fronts. But in various
forums Wednesday, Ms. Rawlings-Blake was repeatedly dismissive of the idea that
her administration should have disclosed the previous settlement involving Mr.
Moss, and her spokesman said the law department believes releasing such
information before a Board of Estimates vote is bad practice. It's quite clear
that unless Mr. Young or Ms. Pratt requests such information, the
administration won't provide it. "I can't tell them what questions to
ask," the mayor said on WYPR-FM.
Well, we can. Mr. Young and Ms.
Pratt: When considering such settlements in the future, please ask whether the
officers have been involved in previous misconduct cases. Ask what the
dispositions of those cases were. Ask for the details of what happened. Ask
what disciplinary action, if any, was taken. Put pressure on the law department
to drop the clause in its settlement agreements forbidding plaintiffs from
talking about their cases, and then call them before the board to tell their
side of the story. This is the public's money and the public's trust we're
dealing with here, and it can't be given too much attention. Ms. Rawlings-Blake
has taken some steps to increase transparency and accountability when it comes
to police misconduct allegations, and we appreciate that. But the only way
we'll get real and lasting change is if officials like Mr. Young and Ms. Pratt
consistently hold the administration's feet to the fire.
