Gary McLhinney, the former chief of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police and former head of the city police union, notes that names of officers who use deadly force are not "being redacted from reports. They're just not being publicly announced the minute the bad guy hits the pavement. ... What needs to happen is that everyone needs to calm down to ensure a thorough and fair investigation is completed."
The problem is that city police don't release the outcomes of any internal investigation, regardless of how it turns out.
Police officers are given the legal authority to kill people in appropriate circumstances. There's a reason officers wear name tags and don't wear masks. Municipal peace officers should not be allowed to arrest, interview, stop, search, detain, shoot and kill people in secret.
Here is why it is important: In 1997, Baltimore Officer Charles M. Smothers II shot and killed a man armed with a knife outside Lexington Market.
At the time, Smothers was on probation for shooting at his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, and the revelation prompted a review of how he returned to the force with his gun and badge while still under the supervision of state prison officials, and while his own department was trying to fire him. Police then discovered that Smothers was not an anomaly - 35 other officers had similar circumstances and were promptly re-suspended.
The city's top prosecutor ruled the market shooting justified, but the city fired Smothers for violating domestic violence guidelines and paid the family of the man he killed $500,000.
Would we have known any of this if Smothers' name was never released?
From now on, it's a matter of trust.
