Amid calls nationwide to “defund the police,” the federal judge overseeing the Baltimore Police consent decree said Thursday that “such reform options may exist in other cities, but not here.”
U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar doubled down on his support for the city to continue with its yearslong reform efforts, which require increased funding and hiring more police officers, despite the recent push to shift police funding to other areas or restructure policing to incorporate more social services.
Bredar said Baltimore leaders in 2017 chose the path of the federally enforced decree, and the city has a legal obligation to complete those reforms. Baltimore entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department in April 2017 after a DOJ patterns and practice investigation found Baltimore police officers routinely violated residents’ civil rights. The investigation was prompted by the arrest and death of Freddie Gray in 2015, whose death sparked unrest and calls for police reforming in Baltimore.
“A specific path has already been chosen here,” Bredar said. “The court will require that the city travel down that path until it reaches the destination of ‘substantial compliance.’ Until the city comes into compliance, the decree will be the template for how police reform is accomplished here.”
Bredar said the consent decree provides stability, despite the turnover in city leadership and police commissioners, and increases in crime.
“There are not new plans made, attempted, and scrapped every year. There are not sudden, wholesale modifications of policing strategy in response to a particular outrage or crime spike, or even as the result of an election and the installation of new political leaders,” he said. “There is just the Decree and its unchanging language and directives.”
Bredar did express support for the need to quickly address how officers are called to respond to individuals experiencing mental health crises. Advocates say more funding should be prioritized for community resources over police.
He mentioned the recent incident in which officers shot Ricky Walker Jr., who was experiencing a behavioral crisis, in Northeast Baltimore earlier this month.
Bredar said that while the officers were patient with Walker, the shooting is an example of how mental health-related incidents should not fall exclusively to police officers.
Officers will continue to be called when an individual poses a “grave danger” that requires force, he said. But Walker’s case demonstrates the gaps in the system that must be addressed.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, Disability Rights Maryland, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law issued a letter on Wednesday, calling for expedited reforms on how police respond to such incidents in response to Walker’s shooting.
“Mr. Walker’s shooting is yet another example of multiple failures in Baltimore’s public health and safety systems,” the joint letter said. “The (Baltimore Police) is all too often Baltimore City’s de facto behavioral health crisis response service. This is inappropriate and must stop.”
They blamed the city’s behavioral health system’s inability to “engage individuals like Mr. Walker in supportive community-based services and failure to provide ‘24/7' crisis response services.”
Thursday’s consent decree hearing was held virtually, though Bredar and several city leaders, including police Commissioner Michael Harrison, attended in person, wearing face masks and sitting at trial tables behind new clear shields.
April’s scheduled hearing was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has also forced delays in officer training on newly reformed policies, forced timeline delays, and stretched police resources.
The pandemic has “presented considerable challenges,” said U.S. Justice Department lawyer Cynthia Coe, “but the parties are continuing to work collaboratively.”
