It was telling that so many Baltimoreans, especially African-Americans, reacted with astonishment to Friday’s news that the six police officers allegedly involved in Freddie Gray’s death would face criminal charges.
Their shock, along with expressions of gratification, sprung not only from the unexpected speed with which State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced the charges but also from the fact that individual officers have so rarely faced justice for alleged negligence and abuse, especially in cases involving black suspects.
While Baltimore has paid millions of dollars in the past few years to settle lawsuits stemming from allegations of abuse, the officers involved have been what amounts to a protected class, all but immune from criminal charges or even the admission of wrongdoing.
As a candidate for office just last fall, Mosby, who comes from a family of police officers, promised that as Baltimore’s chief prosecutor she would be committed to accountability for cops accused of misconduct. On Friday, she made good on that promise, filing a murder charge against the officer who drove the van into which a handcuffed Freddie Gray was thrown, and charges including involuntary manslaughter, assault, negligence, misconduct in office and false imprisonment against the other five officers.
The head of Baltimore’s police union, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge President Gene Ryan, wrote to Mosby insisting that, while Gray’s death was tragic, “none of the officers involved are responsible.” A court will decide whether the officers are guilty, but as a practical matter Ryan’s assertion defies logic: Gray, who was 25 years old, was taken into police custody in good health, and he emerged dead a week later, having sustained a severe injury to his spinal cord. Of course the officers involved were “responsible.”
The political power wielded by the police union in Annapolis has been instrumental for years in shielding officers from legal consequences for their misdeeds. More than 40 years ago, Maryland was the first state to enact a “bill of rights” for law enforcement officers, whose protections from official inquiry go well beyond those accorded to civilians.
Under the bill of rights, Maryland police officers accused of misconduct have 10 days before they can be compelled to answer questions from superiors, a privilege that affords them ample time to refine their stories. State lawmakers have rejected efforts to narrow that protection as well as provisions that impede police chiefs from disciplining bad cops, absent the recommendation of a hearing board composed of fellow sworn officers.
When Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat and a consistent critic of the way police departments are hamstrung by the bill of rights, asked for reforms, lawmakers “looked at me like I had three eyes,” she said in a news conference on Thursday. Chalk that up to the police union’s clout.
The decision to prosecute the six officers involved in Gray’s death therefore affords an opening for justice. That justice would be first and foremost for Gray and — if it provides an impetus for enacting more sensible rules for dealing with police misconduct — for future victims of abuse by police.
— Washington Post
