Police say policy on shootings is distracting, offer to reconsider

The department's public affairs office instituted the policy with Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III's blessing. The unwritten policy evolved in recent weeks and eventually provided that all other information about an officer who shot someone - including whether he or she had been involved in a previous shooting - would be released.

But the department's efforts to conceal the officers' names sometimes caused it to withhold other information. In one instance, police redacted not only the name of an officer but also that of a suspect from documents in an effort to prevent reporters from gleaning the officer's name from other records. In another case, an officer's name was withheld while on the next day the department gave him a Citation of Valor for his efforts in a prior shooting.

In February, officials failed to disclose that Officer Traci McKissick had been involved in a struggle with not only 61-year-old Joseph Forrest, who was fatally shot in the incident, but also with a second man who was arrested for stepping on her hand as she reached for her gun. The existence of the second man could help explain why the encounter turned deadly, but disclosing his arrest would have allowed reporters to find court records that included McKissick's name.

Political pressure on the department intensified this week after The Baltimore Sun reported that none of the 23 threats against officers last year were related to police-involved shootings. Bealefeld had cited the statistic in a City Council hearing in defense of the policy.

City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake said she has a good relationship with Bealefeld but was not pleased with the way he conducted himself at that hearing.

"I was disappointed that they chose, in a hearing about a significant policy, to spin information," she said. "We expect straight talk."

City Councilman Bernard C. "Jack" Young, who chairs a public safety committee, said yesterday that Bealefeld had misled the public and called for him to resign. Others who initially supported the policy, such as Kraft, said they had changed their minds.

David Rocah, a staff attorney with the Maryland office of the American Civil Liberties Union, noted that officers wear name badges, and their identities are provided to suspects in court documents. The release of officers names after a shooting poses no more of a safety hazard than they face on the street every day, Rocah said.