So the "Justice" department is going to tell black folks in Baltimore what they already know...
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stringer bell
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/justice-department-to-release-blistering-report-of-racial-bias-by-baltimore-police.html?_r=0&mtrref=undefined&gwh=A1A2E1900C7CC41349F70AB796FFC538&gwt=pay
Sounds like systematic racism to me.. Yet none one will be held accountable as usual...
Justice Department to Release Blistering Report of Racial Bias by Baltimore Police
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Wednesday will release a blistering critique of racial discrimination by Baltimore’s police department, the latest example of the Obama administration’s aggressive push for police reforms in cities where young African-American men have died at the hands of law enforcement.
The long-awaited report, coming more than a year after Baltimore erupted into riots over the police-involved death of a 25-year-old black man, Freddie Gray, is sharply critical of city policies that encourage officers to charge people with minor crimes to inflate police statistics.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, found that African-American residents were often stopped or arrested without legal justification.
To show how officers disproportionately stopped black pedestrians, the report cited the example of a black man in his mid-fifties who was stopped 30 times in less than four years. None of the stops led to a citation or criminal charge. Black residents, the report said, accounted for 95 percent of the 410 individuals stopped at least 10 times.
Eighty-two percent of the traffic stops were black drivers, the report said, who account for 60 percent of the driving-age population in the city.
Racial disparities were also apparent in criminal charges filed, the report said, particularly for discretionary offenses like trespassing, disorderly conduct or failure to obey.
Two weeks ago, Maryland prosecutors dropped charges against the last of six police officers charged in the April 2015 death of Mr. Gray, who sustained a fatal spinal cord injury while in custody. Thus did Baltimore join a growing list of communities where police-involved deaths sparked outrage, and even riots, yet no one was held accountable in court.
Now accountability may come in a more far-reaching form. As part of the Justice Department’s investigation, the federal government, as it has repeatedly under President Obama, is expected to demand changes in training and practices of the Baltimore Police Department, and insist on oversight by a federal judge and an independent monitor.
“I don’t think at this point, it’s about justice for Freddie Gray anymore,” said Ray Kelly, a director of the No Boundaries Coalition, a West Baltimore group that provided its own report on police abuses to the Justice Department. He added, “Now its about justice for our community, for our people.”
Baltimore is among nearly two dozen cities that the Obama administration has investigated after they were accused of widespread unconstitutional policing. Using its broad latitude to enforce civil rights laws, the Justice Department has demanded wholesale change in how cities conduct policing. In several cities, including Seattle; Cleveland; and Ferguson, Mo., those investigations began in the aftermath of a high-profile death that sparked protests and in some cases riots.
Sounds like systematic racism to me.. Yet none one will be held accountable as usual...
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/09/baltimore-police-department-justice-department-investigation-findings'Two Baltimores': DoJ investigation into police finds vast racial disparity
The Baltimore police department regularly conducted unlawful stops and used excessive force on residents of the city, federal officials found in a civil rights probe.
The damning findings by the US justice department (DOJ), set to be officially announced Wednesday, identify a “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional conduct in the city.
The justice department launched its investigation into the city’s policing a month after Freddie Gray’s death last year. Gray, a 25-year-old African American man, died a week after he was arrested from a spinal injury sustained while he was held in the back of a police van. The city erupted in weeks of unrest, including numerous mass demonstrations against police brutality and a day of rioting.
The report found a vast racial disparity in enforcement, especially in stops, searches, and discretionary misdemeanor arrests. African Americans, for instance, account for 91% of “failure to obey” and trespassing charges, and over 80% of charges such as making a false statement to an officer or disorderly conduct, even though they account for roughly 60% of the population. African Americans were arrested for the possession of drugs more than five times as frequently as their white counterparts, although drug use, the report notes, is roughly the same.
Justice department officials found that residents believe there are “two Baltimores” including “one wealthy and largely white, the second impoverished and predominantly black”, the report reads. “Community members living in the City’s wealthier and largely white neighborhoods told us that officers tend to be respectful and responsive to their needs, while many individuals living in the City’s largely African-American communities informed us that officers tend to be disrespectful and do not respond promptly to their calls for service. Members of these largely African-American communities often felt they were subjected to unjustified stops, searches, and arrests, as well as excessive force.”
The report documented extensive evidence of these perceived racial disparities. It found that over a five year period, African Americans accounted for 95% of people stopped by police more than ten times. One African American man, according to the report, was stopped 30 times in less than 4 years. “Despite these repeated intrusions, none of the 30 stops resulted in a citation or criminal charge,” the report states.
This finding falls into a nationwide debate about unfair traffic stops of African Americans after the deaths of Sandra Bland in Texas last year, and Philando Castile in a Minnesota traffic stop last month. Although Castile had been stopped 46 times, only six of those were for offenses that an officer could have seen before stopping the car.
The report traced these police practices back to the “zero tolerance” policies of the late 1990s, which “led to repeated violations of the constitutional and statutory rights, further eroding the community’s trust in the police”.
Although the report notes that the Baltimore police department has made progress, it is clear that the “legacy of zero tolerance enforcement continues to drive its policing in certain Baltimore neighborhoods and leads to unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests”.
The report concludes that “BPD’s systemic constitutional and statutory violations are rooted in structural failures”.
In finding that the department violated rights guaranteed by the constitution, the DOJ’s conclusions were similar to those in their report on the Ferguson, Missouri, police department which began following the death of Michael Brown. That investigation resulted in a consent decree agreement between the Department of Justice and the city of Ferguson that laid out a series of mandated reforms.
In Baltimore the DOJ says it is already working with the city to “forge a court-enforceable agreement to develop enduring remedies to the constitutional and statutory violations we found.”
“Our goal is to work with the community, public officials and law enforcement alike to create a stronger, better Baltimore,” attorney general Loretta Lynch said last May, announcing the investigation. “The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has conducted dozens of these pattern or practice investigations, and we have seen from our work in jurisdictions across the country that communities that have gone through this process are experiencing improved policing practices and increased trust between the police and the community.”
Investigators for the DOJ look at “whether the police department has engaged in a pattern or practice of stops, searches, or arrests that violate the Fourth Amendment; use of excessive force; discriminatory policing; violation of the constitutional rights of criminal suspects; or violation of First Amendment rights,” according to DOJ guidelines.
In addition to interviewing members of the police department and other law enforcement stakeholders, DOJ investigators sought testimony of community members, taking statements from advocacy groups such as the No Boundaries Coalition in the Sandtown neighborhood where Freddie Gray was killed, Health Care for the Homeless, and Power Inside, a group that works with at risk women. Investigators were also often seen at protests over police issues, especially surrounding the anniversary of Gray’s death.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked for the justice department review last year in the wake of Gray’s death. After a series of violent months in the city and a scathing “after action” report that condemned police handling of the riots that followed Gray’s death, Rawlings-Blake fired then-police commissioner Anthony Batts, and replaced him with Kevin Davis.
Neither Davis nor Rawlings-Blake have publicly commented on the report.
Six officers were also charged in Gray’s death. But after a mistrial and three acquittals, prosecutors dropped the remaining charges. -
Gtfoh with this bs. ? already know these cops are making $$$ off arresting black ppl. We wanna see cops go to jail for killing us. The Justice Dept is full of ? . They did this same thing in Ferguson. Tryna give ? a olive branch because they know the system keep ? us over
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blackamerica wrote: »Gtfoh with this bs. ? already know these cops are making $$$ off arresting black ppl. We wanna see cops go to jail for killing us. The Justice Dept is full of ? . They did this same thing in Ferguson. Tryna give ? a olive branch because they know the system keep ? us over
cops arent gettin paid for arresting ? ..
the courts are..
let that marinate. -
BOSSExcellence wrote: »blackamerica wrote: »Gtfoh with this bs. ? already know these cops are making $$$ off arresting black ppl. We wanna see cops go to jail for killing us. The Justice Dept is full of ? . They did this same thing in Ferguson. Tryna give ? a olive branch because they know the system keep ? us over
cops arent gettin paid for arresting ? ..
the courts are..
let that marinate.
Indirectly they are.
Their jobs depend on it.
Only difference is they're just not getting paid as much. -
BOSSExcellence wrote: »blackamerica wrote: »Gtfoh with this bs. ? already know these cops are making $$$ off arresting black ppl. We wanna see cops go to jail for killing us. The Justice Dept is full of ? . They did this same thing in Ferguson. Tryna give ? a olive branch because they know the system keep ? us over
cops arent gettin paid for arresting ? ..
the courts are..
let that marinate.
Indirectly they are.
Their jobs depend on it.
Only difference is they're just not getting paid as much.
30k and the city is makin MILLIONS ON tens of MILLIONS..
nah bruh.. they gettin PimPd.. -
So cops out here getting commission like some sales people? Nah bruh, they getting peanuts bruh. They're just happy to have a gun and a little power
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The AG's boss, Obama, already gave law enforcement officials his "full-throated support." #NoHomo
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This report is co-signed by Captain Obvious, attending the annual pig-fest.
Welcome to the racial profile black people party Baltimore.
Join all our other pig departments from inner city neighborhoods. We are parallel parked in the "deviled" egg section.
Come fest on "chocolate" city revenue cake brought to you by tickets & fines from minority populations.
The Blackberry's, brought to you by Korryn Gaines is "to die for." You know they say, "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice."
Our red wine tasting is sponsored by the city of Ferguson, Missouri. The wine is a deep red color, similar to that of Michael Brown. The city was exceptionally quick in the clean up, due to years of surplus budgets stemming from fines & miscellaneous court costs from our esteemed African American citizens.
They love voting in "sexy" national elections, but stay home during boring local elections.
And finally, don't leave before you indulge in our sprinkled brownies, bought an paid for by Philando Castile. We obtained residual income from him over the course of 13 years & 49 traffic stops. DWB (Driving While Black) has been a huge financial windfall for our budget-strapped municipalities. No worries.
We just make up the difference from black guys like Philando Castile....... -
BOSSExcellence wrote: »BOSSExcellence wrote: »blackamerica wrote: »Gtfoh with this bs. ? already know these cops are making $$$ off arresting black ppl. We wanna see cops go to jail for killing us. The Justice Dept is full of ? . They did this same thing in Ferguson. Tryna give ? a olive branch because they know the system keep ? us over
cops arent gettin paid for arresting ? ..
the courts are..
let that marinate.
Indirectly they are.
Their jobs depend on it.
Only difference is they're just not getting paid as much.
30k and the city is makin MILLIONS ON tens of MILLIONS..
nah bruh.. they gettin PimPd..
They also getting pimped by the mayor to issue citations and tickets so the monthly / yearly crime stats look good when he/she runs for reelection
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prisons making money off of cops arresting black men. we know this.
pharm companies are making money off of the organs of black people. the question is.. when are folks gonna get fed up enough to start making changes? -
- A woman with a broken headlight was publicly strip-searched.
- A black officer with a reputation for speaking out over misconduct was harassed by a supervisor, who placed signs warning him to “stay in your lane” and “mind your own business” on his desk.
- An officer decided not to report a colleague for planting drugs because he feared retaliation.
- An officer harassed a mother and her son outside their home, ultimately arresting the juvenile for “loitering.”
- Officers had been accused more than 60 times of using the word “n****r,” but the Baltimore Police Department didn’t classify the language as a racial slur.
- An officer used a Taser on a man who was yelling and swearing. In his report, the officer said the man’s “weapon” was his “mouth.”
- The Baltimore Police Department’s “us-versus-them” mentality led officers to treat the city like a war zone. “You’ve got to be the baddest ? out there,” one officer said, explaining his approach to policing.
- In emails between a prosecutor and a police officer, the prosecutor called a woman who said she’d been sexually assaulted a “conniving little ? ,” and the officer replied “Lmao! I feel the same.”
- Baltimore officers themselves described stopping people without evidence of wrongdoing and detaining them.
- Officers tried to discredit victims of sexual assault and put the blame on them.
- During a DOJ ride-along, a sergeant told an officer to “make something up” to justify a bogus stop.
- A single officer received 125 complaints in just a few years.
- A commander instructed a sergeant to tell her officers to “lock up all the black hoodies” in her district.
- A form for trespass arrests already had “black male” filled out.
- A white officer allegedly threatened a black teen days after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who killed black teenager Trayvon Martin, by saying he should “Put a hoodie on and come to my neighborhood.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/baltimore-police-doj-report_us_57ab4624e4b0db3be07c7e8a?section=& - A woman with a broken headlight was publicly strip-searched.
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It could all be so simple if it was just accountability .... Man any other job you do or say those things you getting quickly fired
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This wasn't done for blacks. In my opinion, it was done for those whites that choose to live in a bubble and claim that the world is colorblind. I believe it's moving things in a positive direction, albeit very slowly. Again, don't complain. Vote these muthafuckas out. This is a city issue in Baltimore and other major cities. Talk with your votes. Calling them racist and demanding they be fired won't change a thing
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I always laugh when white people post online about how black people are arrested more because there's more crime in black communities. Like no ? Sherlock, they'll find more crime amongst blacks if they're the only ones being targeted and stopped! There have been so many studies that show blacks and whites do drugs at similar percentages, who's getting stopped with a nickel bag of weed tho?
Whites are more likely to commit violent crimes like ? and murder, especially the serial kind, but once again who's being targeted? Not them. It says in the document that cops were more likely to find contraband on whites than blacks and that's because these white people feel safe walking around with drugs on them cuz they know they won't be stopped
And for the longest and still these white people swear up and down this ? doesn't happen/ hasn't happened! Because they don't experience it, it must not be true smh. People need to realize what systematic racism really means, it means that racism is alive and well in every facet of American life and rule of law. Look at anything in America, and you will find racism, be it the educational system, medical system, criminal system, financial, environmental, infrastructure, you name it, it's some ? going on, cuz that ? is SYSTEMIC
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I always laugh when white people post online about how black people are arrested more because there's more crime in black communities. Like no ? Sherlock, they'll find more crime amongst blacks if they're the only ones being targeted and stopped! There have been so many studies that show blacks and whites do drugs at similar percentages, who's getting stopped with a nickel bag of weed tho?
Whites are more likely to commit violent crimes like ? and murder, especially the serial kind, but once again who's being targeted? Not them. It says in the document that cops were more likely to find contraband on whites than blacks and that's because these white people feel safe walking around with drugs on them cuz they know they won't be stopped
And for the longest and still these white people swear up and down this ? doesn't happen/ hasn't happened! Because they don't experience it, it must not be true smh. People need to realize what systematic racism really means, it means that racism is alive and well in every facet of American life and rule of law. Look at anything in America, and you will find racism, be it the educational system, medical system, criminal system, financial, environmental, infrastructure, you name it, it's some ? going on, cuz that ? is SYSTEMIC
Quoted and goated for greatness! White people don't consider all that racist though. They've lived in a world where we've always been inferior in their minds educationally, monetarily, health wise, etc. This ? is regular life to them. And they have the benefit of turning a blind eye to it. -
Looks like the system's working perfectly
Mind you - Baltimore majority black population, with black mayors and recently black police chiefs.
Man black politics is ? . -
Nah, we have to just start holding them more accountable. I don't give a ? how they feel about it. If u a black politician representing a predominately black city, you're obligated to represent us in legislation. If not, u got voted out. I make it a point to go to town halls and make my voice heard. It's usually me, my girl and maybe 20 other people, mostly older. Protesting through voting works better than a march. Those are facts
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Don't let these white folks tell u we get heavier police presence in our communities bc we do more crime.
That is false and have been proven to be false and always will be false.... We just get arrested more.
We get pulled over almost three times more on average yet commit less than half of traffic violations...
So the whole arrest reflect who commits crimes is a white lie -
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-freddie-gray-doj-20160811-story.htmlThe DOJ report doesn't say how Freddie Gray died, but it does explain why
The DOJ report doesn't say how Freddie Gray died, but it does explain why
Mayor, Police Commissioner respond to DOJ report
When Vanita Gupta, who heads the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, announced the findings of the 14-month frederal probe of the Baltimore Police Department, she made clear that it was not an investigation of Freddie Gray's death. That's true; it barely mentions him and certainly comes to no conclusions about the specific circumstances of his arrest and fatal injury. But in its searing critique of the department's practices, it explains everything that happened that morning.
'Daily measurables'
At 8:39 a.m. on April 12, 2015, four Baltimore police officers spotted Freddie Gray at the corner of West North Avenue and North Mount Street. It was no coincidence that the officers were there; they were part of a "daily narcotics initiative" as a result of a request from State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's office to a Western District commander to target that corner for "enhanced" attention. That translated into orders from the commander to officers — including Lt. Brian Rice, the highest ranking officer who faced charges after Gray's death — to produce "daily measurables."
The DOJ report explains exactly what that means. Federal investigators found a pervasive attitude among patrol officers and supervisors that their job was to produce statistics — stops, searches, arrests — and to clear corners. It was a vestige of the department's "zero tolerance" strategy of a decade ago that "prioritized attempts to suppress crime by regularly stopping and searching pedestrians and arresting them on any available charges, including discretionary misdemeanor offenses." Though recent police commissioners have tried to steer the department away from it, the DOJ found that many supervisors "continue to encourage officers to prioritize short-term suppression, including aggressive use of stops, frisks, and misdemeanor arrests." The federal investigators found a flyer posted in several districts making a joke about the Violent Crimes Impact Division, a specialized unit designed to address the most serious crimes. It showed what appears to be three officers leading a handcuffed, hoodie-wearing man down an alley toward a transport van with the words "VCID: Striking fear into loiters [sic] City-Wide."
Stop and frisk
We don't know what was going through Freddie Gray's mind when he saw the officers, but the context provided by the DOJ report gives a good guess. He would have had good reason to believe he would be stopped, frisked and perhaps arrested even though he was doing nothing more than walking home with friends after trying to get breakfast at a carry-out that was closed. The DOJ found that Baltimore police recorded more than 301,000 pedestrian stops during a four-year period, heavily concentrated in poor, black neighborhoods. The true number, the report says, was likely much higher, owing to shoddy record-keeping. Forty-four percent of the stops were in the Western and Central districts. Gray himself had been stopped twice in the same week in February, and the federal investigators found reason to conclude that he had likely been stopped many other times that were not recorded.
Gray wasn't carrying drugs or a gun. He had a knife clipped inside his pants, but in an ordinary, constitutional encounter with the police, they would have had no cause to discover it. The Baltimore police, however, "pat-down or frisk individuals as a matter of course, without identifying necessary grounds to believe that the person is armed and dangerous. And even where an initial frisk is justified, we found that officers often violate the Constitution by exceeding the frisk's permissible scope" — for example by conducting strip searches in full view of the street. Police often detain people to check for warrants or even take them to Central Booking for no discernible reason.
Discretionary arrests
Freddie Gray was no stranger to these facts. He had been arrested many times, almost exclusively for low-level drug charges. That's not surprising; the DOJ report found that despite similar levels of drug use, blacks in Baltimore were five times more likely to be arrested for drug possession than whites. Also typical of Baltimore, Gray's arrests rarely led to convictions. The DOJ found 11,000 instances when prosecutors or supervisors at Central Booking rejected charges by Baltimore police because they lacked probable cause. Gray also had a record of what the DOJ calls "discretionary arrests" for things like trespassing and, in one case possessing "gaming cards, dice" — crimes for which African-Americans are arrested at overwhelming rates. Blacks make up 63 percent of Baltimore residents but 91 percent of arrests for trespassing or failure to obey, the DOJ found.
(For those in the suburbs who can't get past Gray's criminal record, try this experiment: Sit on your front porch and play dice. See how long it takes you to get arrested. You may want to bring snacks.) -
Foot chases and use of force
So, when Freddie Gray made eye contact with one of the officers that morning, he ran, and the police chased him, evidently for no reason other than the fact that he was fleeing and in a high-crime area. That's no coincidence either. "When officers encounter civilians who flee from them, officers nearly always give chase, without weighing the severity of any suspected crime, whether the person poses a threat, and any alternative, safer means to affect a stop or seizure," the DOJ found.
The police report of Gray's arrest says he was taken into custody "without force or incident." But witnesses and cellphone video tell a different story. Those at the scene say he was forcibly taken to the ground, that an officer pinned a knee to his neck and that another bent his legs backward, "like he was a crab or a piece of origami," as one witness put it. And that's not uncommon either. The DOJ reports that Baltimore police foot chases frequently result in the use of force out of proportion to the needs of safety or the suspected criminal activity — and remember, in this case, they had no specific suspicion at all. Foot pursuits are high-adrenaline activities that frequently render officers unable to make sound judgments and prone to unconstitutional use of force, the report says.
For that reason, departments need clear policies and specific training on foot chases, but Baltimore police have neither, the DOJ found. According to the report, the department has been aware of the need for a policy since at least 2013 but has never adopted one. Until 2015, the department had no specific training on foot pursuits for new recruits at the police academy or refresher training for experienced officers.
Dangerous transport practices
The video of Gray's arrest shows officers dragging him into a police van. Video from a later stop shows him handcuffed and shackled and loaded face-down into the back. At no point was he seat belted. Those decisions — to put Gray in a defenseless and unrestrained posture in the back of the van — were likely the ones that led to his death. They were also standard operating procedure for the Baltimore police.
The DOJ report confirms that Baltimore police had for years routinely flouted a policy that detainees should be secured with seat belts in the back of vans, that commanders knew it and did little about it. The department conducted sporadic audits of seat belting practices in 2012, 2014 and 2015. "With each audit, BPD inspected one transport vehicle from each of the districts, one time," the report says, and though some of the audits showed improvement, their findings were contradicted both by reports from officers and detainees. "One officer who spoke to us described the transportation process before Freddie Gray's death as 'load and go,' often with little regard for seatbelts," the DOJ reported.
The vans themselves were dangerous — the way they were partitioned made it "possible for detainees being transported, if not properly secured, to strike their head on the divider or walls relatively easily; and there is virtually no padding to protect the person from injury." The vans lacked functional video cameras or any other means for the driver to observe the passengers, or even to hear them well, so it's altogether plausible that the officer transporting Gray would have had no way to know he was injured until he reached the Western District. A post-Freddie Gray retrofit of the vans still has substantial flaws that fail to address that problem.
The DOJ report may not provide any insight into how Freddie Gray died, but it says a lot about why. Every element of his encounter with police that morning reflected a pattern of practices by the Baltimore Police Department that was at best flawed and at worst unconstitutional. For those still wondering why the city agreed to a $6.4 million settlement with Gray's family before they even filed a lawsuit, there's your answer.
The DOJ report doesn't say how Freddie Gray died, but it does explain why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN28pKEVrOg
