Police Misconduct

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton and federal lawmakers kowtow to political pressure and ignore the plight of Americans victimized by police racism and abuse of power, civil rights activists said in a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday.The comments came during the first in a series of Congressional Black Caucus hearings planned across the nation."This administration has tried to out-Republican the Republicans on criminal justice issues," said Laura Murphy, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Giving Montgomery County's new police chief a honeymoon, a county agency has concluded that it's best to wait before creating a civilian review committee to watch over his department.After a yearlong review, the county's Office of Legislative Oversight concluded there is no evidence of widespread police misconduct, but that minorities believe they are not treated fairly -- often because of the department's Byzantine method for reporting police misconduct.The office yesterday recommended to the Montgomery County Council that Charles Moose, who took over the 1,300- member department in August, ought to be given six months to overhaul the police complaint system and the internal affairs department.

Democratic mayoral nominee Martin O'Malley pledged yesterday "open, honest and public" investigations into police brutality and corruption if he is elected.O'Malley made the promise after again being questioned about his plans to implement a zero-tolerance policing strategy. If elected on Nov. 2, O'Malley has vowed to import the crime-fighting plan that has helped several U.S. cities, including New York and New Orleans, dramatically reduce violent crime.Critics, including O'Malley's Republican challenger, David F. Tufaro, worry that requiring officers to get out of their cars to enforce all violations will result in a rise of brutality complaints, particularly from minorities.

About 30 people turned out at a meeting last night to renew calls for a civilian review board in Baltimore to investigate allegations of police misconduct -- an idea proposed most recently last year after an officer fatally shot a knife-wielding man near Lexington Market."

SUPPORTERS OF House Bill 1172, which would reduce Maryland's police chiefs' power to clean up allegations of police misconduct, contend their proposal is about fairness to officers. But they can't make a case about fairness to the public, whom the police officers serve.This is a union-written and sponsored bill, supported by the Fraternal Order of Police, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and other labor groups. It would dismantle the current checks and balances in police discipline review.

The list reads like a page torn from a police blotter: rape, assault, bank robbery, stalking, child abuse, child pornography, helping a notorious drug dealer. But the accused are Baltimore police officers.Like the steady parade of miscreants, thugs and scoundrels they go after, the men and women city taxpayers hire to guard their lives and protect their property have become criminal suspects themselves.Since September, at least a dozen have been criminally charged and their cases publicized, but there are many other officers accused of beating their wives, stealing money from drug dealers and pilfering advance copies of their own promotional exams.

Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke distanced himself yesterday from the state police investigation and raid of The Block, but Gov. William Donald Schaefer defended the operation and ridiculed a Sun article that included reports of troopers' misconduct.Mr. Schmoke criticized the Jan. 14 raid carried out by nearly a third of the state police force."It's a combination of the size and the way in which it was conducted and the results," Mayor Schmoke, a former prosecutor, said in an interview. "It was a different kind of operation and one that I've said in many different forums that should not be repeated."

Spurred by complaints of worsening street-level police corruption, Baltimore Councilman Martin O'Malley called last night for a thorough review of the department's internal investigation procedures to determine if they need to be revamped.Mr. O'Malley charged that federal authorities have refused to participate in joint investigations with city police because they fear that their targets will be tipped off. He also speculated that last year's departmental reorganization weakened the unit that investigates police misconduct.

CONVICTED cop killer Samuel Veney, who was returned to a Maryland prison Monday, walked away the same weekend two Los Angeles police officers were found guilty of violating Rodney King's civil rights. That was a coincidence, but both Sam Veney and Rodney King were involved in cases where police misconduct became at least as notorious as the misdeeds of either man.Before his brutal beating, King had led police and highway patrolmen on a high-speed car chase. He was quite drunk at the time.

Who says television doesn't take its cue from real life? The trial of four Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King and the trial in Miami of William Lozano, whose shooting of a black motorist in 1989 set off three days of rioting, have found their analog in a new crop of TV dramas that portray the police less as guardians of the public order than as good guys gone bad.Last Tuesday, for example, CBS aired "With Hostile Intent," a...

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy announced this week that veteran prosecutors Donald Giblin and Doug Ludwig are being promoted to lead the homicide and police misconduct divisions, respectively. Giblin, who has been a prosecutor for 34 years, took leadership of the homicide division after its longtime leader, Mark P. Cohen, died of cancer last month. Giblin had been his deputy. Giblin said that one of his priorities will be two of his own cases: the killing of former City Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr., which he is prosecuting with Assistant State's Attorney Cynthia Banks; and the prosecution of Officer Tommy Sanders III in the shooting of an unarmed man in a Northeast Baltimore shopping center.

It was a painful moment for Baltimore's chief narcotics prosecutor when he recently dismissed drug-dealing charges against three men and said in court that they were not guilty. Assistant State's Attorney Antonio Gioia later said the case was tainted by dishonest police work by two veteran police officers, who he believes lied in court documents to justify the arrests, and at least two others. Concerned that the Baltimore Police Department was slow to act, Gioia and his team of prosecutors launched their own investigation into Detective Deryl Turner and Sgt. Allen Adkins.

Baltimore prosecutors have dropped dozens of criminal cases after a defense attorney discovered that the officer who helped arrest his client had once been suspended for trying to handle a domestic violence call in which he was the suspect. Detective Charles Hagee pleaded guilty in August 2006 to two administrative charges of conduct unbecoming a police officer. In October 2004, court documents allege, he responded to a woman's 911 call, even though he knew he was the subject of her complaint, and then attempted to misdirect other officers into chasing a fake suspect.

Murders in Southeast Baltimore are down; so, too, are serious shootings. That's progress the police can't claim citywide. Officials attribute the significant declines in Southeast homicides (47 percent) and nonfatal shootings (29 percent) over last year to the hard work of officers, including a special unit patrolling the toughest areas there. But now that same unit is under investigation, raising anew concerns about police misconduct. The latest accusations suggest the six officers and sergeant who were assigned to the Police Department's Special Enforcement Teams stretched the truth or falsified information to make arrests in drug and gun cases.

The one defendant in a high-profile police moonlighting investigation was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday as federal prosecutors offered a new account of the case, saying it involved a substantial management failure at Staples Inc. but not police misconduct. Backing off assertions that more than 39 off-duty Baltimore-area police officers were paid for security work they never performed, prosecutors said in revised court papers that a $348,101 loss to the office supply store chain was the result of sloppy record-keeping and overpayment to officers.

A chief prosecutor has been named for the new police corruption unit in the city state's attorney's office, closing another chapter in a bitter feud between city law enforcement agencies and the mayor. The appointment of A. Thomas Krehely Jr., a former prosecutor with the state agency that investigates public officials, comes after Mayor Martin O'Malley and Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris sharply criticized State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy and her office's handling of police misconduct cases this past winter.

Settling a nasty fight with city police and the mayor, Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy signed off yesterday on the creation of a unit to prosecute police misconduct. The new five-member unit, the Police Misconduct/Ethics Division, will be put in place within the next few weeks. Calls for its formation arose this winter during a dispute between Jessamy and Mayor Martin O'Malley and Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris over Jessamy's decision to drop corruption charges against an officer accused of planting drugs on an innocent man. "This is a positive step in the right direction," O'Malley said at a news conference in City Hall.

Baltimore's aggressive crime-fighting strategy -- imported from New York amid community fears of police misconduct -- has not provoked an increased number of public complaints. While the number of people stopped and questioned by officers has risen sharply in the past year, complaints of excessive force reported to the Police Department dropped slightly, from 407 in 1999 to 390 in 2000. Discourtesy complaints decreased during the same time, from 225 to 196. "Despite all the rhetoric and fears that this would be an aggressive, out-of-control Police Department, that turned out to be far from the truth," said Baltimore Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris, who ran the day-to-day operations of the New York Police Department until he was hired by Baltimore last year.

The prosecutor who handles police misconduct cases apologized yesterday to her boss, State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, for attacking police on a radio show using a pseudonym, an incident that prompted Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris to call for the lawyer's removal from those duties. Assistant State's Attorney Elizabeth A. Ritter said she was "very sorry and regrets making comments" using her middle name, Ann, in a telephone call to "The Marc Steiner Show" on WJHU, according to a statement released by Jessamy.

Baltimore's police commissioner called yesterday for the removal of the official responsible for prosecuting police misconduct, expressing outrage after she called a radio show under a pseudonym to attack his agency. Assistant State's Attorney Elizabeth A. Ritter also came under fire from police and from defense attorneys for failing to turn over evidence in a high-profile corruption case against Officer Brian L. Sewell, who was charged with planting drugs on an innocent man. "I find it outrageous and ironic and somewhat amusing that the lead prosecutor for police misconduct and integrity disguises her identity to humiliate the Police Department," Commissioner Edward T. Norris said.