Despite Baltimore Police Department policies that call for officers to de-escalate in behavioral health emergencies, police forced entry through two different doors and shouted commands at 70-year-old Pytorcarcha Brooks before fatally shooting her on June 25, newly released body-worn camera footage shows.

Police initially sought to leave the scene, stating that Brooks clearly didn’t want to be bothered and it’s not within police policy to remove someone experiencing a mental health crisis from their home when they don’t appear to be a danger to themself or others.

“Mom’s okay,” Officer Stephen Colbert said to a family member on the phone. “She’s okay, well, as far as moving around and being able to open and close the door. She just don’t want to be bothered by nobody, it looks like.”

The footage shows that Baltimore police spent about thirty minutes debating how to approach Brooks, then kicked down her door and confronted her with tasers before shooting her when she approached an officer with a knife in her hand.

The incident is one of three police-involved deaths in the span of eight days in June that appeared to involve people experiencing mental health crises and raised questions about Baltimore’s crisis response system. 

The officers who responded to Brooks’ house did not call for the Baltimore Police Department’s Crisis Response Team, which pairs police with mental health clinicians. The department’s only Crisis Response Team was also handling another call at the time. 

Only one officer at the scene had received Crisis Intervention Team training, Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said at Wednesday’s press conference.

BPD’s crisis intervention policy calls for the officer with CIT training to “take the lead” on the scene of a behavioral health incident, but Rashad Horsey, the officer Worley said had the training, did not lead or even enter Brooks’ house, the videos show. 

The footage shows the officers who responded to the 2700 block of Mosher Street knew Brooks was experiencing a mental health crisis. They spent close to a half hour standing in the alley behind Brooks’ house, debating how to approach the situation, and having emergency personnel from the fire department attempt to speak with Brooks. 

After Brooks first refused them entry, Colbert suggested that they leave.

“We opened the door, she closed the door, looks good to me,” he said. The officers also told Brooks’ family member that he would need to file an emergency petition to have her hospitalized against her will.

A responding EMT indicated during the conversation that the fire department has different policies for dealing with behavioral health crises, but the department did not immediately respond to questions about how their policies differ. 

After knocking on the front door several times, officers attempted to enter through the back door with a key provided by a family member, but Brooks pushed the door shut from the inside. A medic tried to ask Brooks basic questions through the door, like the year and how many quarters make a dollar, to assess her mental state. The responders could not hear answers through the door.

“I’m trying to be nice here,” the medic said through the door. “If you don’t answer my questions I’m going to have to take you out of here.” 

The medic told the officers, “If she’s not answering questions, they have to take her appropriately, per our rules.”

When officers tried to force the back door open, they encountered pushback and then saw Brooks stick her arm out with a knife in her hand. She immediately slammed the door shut again.

The officers then decided to go back to the front of the house and enter that way. Worley said at the July 9 press conference that the officers needed to intervene when Brooks couldn’t answer the medic’s questions, and because there was concern about the extreme heat that day.

“I’m going hot with a taser,” one officer said, just before they forced entry.

An officer kicked down the front door, and then another officer kicked an inner door open and entered the house. Brooks was inside, holding a knife. The officers shouted several commands, including “drop the knife,” “get on the ground,” and “get back,” according to the video.

One officer proceeded forward into the house and tased Brooks when she did not drop the knife, causing her to fall backwards onto a couch. Brooks stood up again and approached the officer, who had moved further into her home. The officer then tripped on a piece of furniture, falling to the ground. Brooks swung the knife in his direction and another officer fired three shots. Brooks can be seen slumping to the ground. She was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which investigates fatal police shootings, previously identified two of the officers involved as Colbert, who has worked in the police department for eight years, and Officer Stephen Galewski, who has worked in the department for three years. Colbert appears to have fired the shots, according to the video. Police Commissioner Richard Worley said the involved officer has been placed on administrative leave, per department policy.

Worley said the department has “come a long way” in handling mental health crises, “but this video, clearly, and other videos, not just here but throughout the country, has shown that we’ve got a long way to go dealing with behavioral crisis.”

“Police officers are police officers,” he said. “We give them the training that we can give them to deal with this, but behavioral health is a medical issue that we have to address, and people that aren’t police officers have to help us address this.”

Worley said previously that police had received about 20 calls for behavioral health issues at the house this year. The city launched a Behavioral Health 9-1-1 Diversion Pilot Program in 2021 with the aim of avoiding police involvement in mental health crises and diverting those calls to clinicians.

The police department is auditing the earlier calls it received to see what happened in each incident, Deputy Police Commissioner Brian Nadeau said at the press conference.

On the day of the shooting, police received two calls about the residence: one from a social worker who checked on Brooks and received no answer, and another from a family member who said Brooks attempted to stab him with a knife. Police responded at about 1:35 p.m. and spoke with the family member, who provided the key to the back door. 

Baltimore Beat previously reported that a family member sought to take over Brooks’ medical and financial decisions through guardianship less than a month before the shooting, but was hindered when a judge denied his request to waive the $165 filing fee.

David Jaros, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, said it is important to examine the entire crisis response system, not just the final moments before the fatal shooting.

“These repeated events are a reminder that we have to consider the whole response to the problem if we want to make reforms to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening,” he said.

The post Baltimore police escalated mental health emergency before killing 70-year-old Pytorcarcha Brooks, bodycam footage shows appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Less than a month before Baltimore police fatally shot a 70-year-old West Baltimore woman who was experiencing a mental health crisis, one of her family members began the legal process to take over her medical and financial decisions — only to be stymied when the court denied his request to waive a filing fee.

Court records show that the woman, Pytorcarcha Brooks, was the subject of a guardianship proceeding that began on May 30 in Baltimore City Circuit Court. The case never proceeded any further, however, after a judge declined to waive a $165 fee required to file the petition for guardianship.

Guardianship is the legal process where a judge appoints a person to make decisions for an adult who cannot care for themselves because of an illness or disability. It is commonly used for elderly relatives and adults with disabilities, and can allow another person to make medical or financial decisions for the adult, depending on what type of guardianship petition is filed.

Baltimore police went to Brooks’ home in the 2700 block of Mosher Street early Wednesday afternoon in response to a 911 call for a welfare check and a second call for a woman “attempting to stab the caller” at the house, according to a preliminary investigation by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office’s Independent Investigations Division, which probes fatal police shootings.

Officers entered the home and encountered Brooks, who was holding a knife and appeared to be suffering from a mental health crisis, the office said. Officers repeatedly instructed Brooks to drop the knife and deployed a taser when she did not comply. When one officer tripped and fell to the ground as he tried to retreat, Brooks allegedly advanced toward him with the knife, prompting a second officer to shoot her, according to the preliminary investigation.

Brooks was pronounced dead soon after, and an officer who was injured during the incident received treatment at a local hospital and was released, the AG’s office said.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said this week that police had received about 20 calls for behavioral health issues at the house this year.

The man who filed the guardianship case shared the same address as Brooks, according to court records, and is identified as a relative in a 2018 obituary for Brooks’ brother. The Beat is not naming the man to protect his privacy.

Publicly available court records show the man intended to seek guardianship over Brooks’ person and property. When granted, guardianship of the person generally means that the adult has been deemed incompetent to make the basic decisions of daily living, said Ferrier Stillman, a family law attorney in Baltimore.

“In most instances, guardianship of the person refers to someone needing decision-making over health care because (the adult is) not competent to do so,” Stillman said. The person who is the subject of a guardianship petition gets appointed a lawyer during the process.

Guardianship of the property comes into play when an adult is found incompetent to handle their finances. A failure to pay rent case filed against Brooks earlier this year suggests that she was also struggling financially — the property management company of the Mosher Street home wrote in court papers that Brooks had failed to pay about $1,900 in rent as of mid-March.

A judge granted a request to evict Brooks on April 10, court records show, but it appears the case never proceeded further. It is not clear why.

The guardianship records are even less clear because they are not accessible to the public. But from the docket that is available on Maryland case search, it is possible to determine that the man who initiated the guardianship case filed a “Request for Prepayment Waiver” on May 30. The filing fee for guardianship cases is $165. A judge can waive that fee, but the person requesting the waiver is required to provide information about their finances to determine if they qualify.

The case docket shows a judge denied the fee waiver in Brooks’ case on June 3, four days after the request was filed. The man did not file any additional papers in Brooks’ case after that, according to the docket.

The post Before BPD killed a 70-year-old woman in crisis, a relative who sought court intervention was hindered by fees appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Baltimore police fired 38 shots in an exchange of gunfire with Bilal “BJ” Abdullah, a well-known arabber who can be seen in newly-released body-worn camera footage pointing a firearm and appearing to shoot at officers, police department leaders said at a press conference.

The video shown Monday at Baltimore police headquarters included footage from multiple officers’ body cameras and was edited to obscure the faces of bystanders. In all, it lasted nearly seven minutes and showed a chaotic scene that ended with a distressed and agitated crowd surrounding Abdullah’s motionless body on the sidewalk and shouting at police.

Nearby community members knew what happened almost immediately after shots rang out: “That’s BJ!” one person can be heard shouting. Another screams “No!” repeatedly, sliding to the ground.

Police Commissioner Richard Worley said the department released the video as soon as possible because of concerns about public criticism of the shooting, which sparked outrage among people who knew Abdullah and prompted a 300-person march last week.

“I recognize that emotions are high at the loss of a cherished member of the community, and it’s deeply felt,” Worley said. 

Worley said that police had a “reasonable and articulable suspicion” that justified stopping Abdullah on the evening of June 17 because they had received information that Abdullah was armed and brandished a weapon while making threatening comments. It is not clear exactly where that information came from, though the department said there is private video showing an earlier incident. Abdullah was prohibited from possessing a firearm because of prior criminal convictions, court records show.

The body-worn camera footage starts on Laurens Street in Upton as a detective in an orange shirt and black police vest approaches Abdullah and begins following him.

Abdullah, visibly annoyed and appearing to question the officer following him, walks away from the detective, passing behind a marked Baltimore Police Department vehicle and heading toward the Upton Metro Station. Abdullah pulls his brown crossbody bag around to the front of his body as the detective trails behind him, and then both men break into a run, with the detective chasing Abdullah.

In the chaotic footage that follows, the detective pushes Abdullah to the ground and a shot is fired — likely by Abdullah, Worley said, because the officers on the scene still had their guns holstered, according to the footage. Abdullah, who has fallen to the ground, can be seen pointing a Colt .380 at two other officers who approached from the intersection of Laurens Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Shots ring out — 41 in all, according to police, including three shots believed to have been fired by Abdullah and 38 by police officers — and the anguished screams from nearby community members begin almost immediately.

Three people then approach Abdullah’s body on the sidewalk, ignoring commands from police officers to back up. One man, who initially ran toward Abdullah and shouted to him before backing up when Abdullah and police exchanged gunfire, cried “BJ!” over and over again as he walked around Abdullah’s body. He is later heard on the footage saying “this is my brother, yo,” as he cradles Abdullah’s head. The crowd continues to grow and officers back away as a community member screams “Put that gun down!” Blood can be seen pooling beneath Abdullah’s motionless frame.

Worley said at the press conference that the officers handled the crowd well and praised their actions: “I think the officers did an exceptional job,” he said. “Our officers were put in a very difficult situation.” It took three to four minutes for officers to begin rendering aid to Abdullah, Worley said, because the crowd blocked their access. Members of the crowd can be seen checking on Abdullah almost immediately after the shooting, telling an officer “you the one that shot him.”

One officer was struck in the foot during the gunfire and has been released from the hospital. Deputy Commissioner Brian Nadeau said police believe the officer may have been struck by a bullet ricochet, but that ballistic evidence has not come back yet. Two of the officers who fired shots were in plainclothes but wearing police vests, officials said, and one was in uniform.

The three officers who fired shots during the exchange — Detective Devin Yancy, Detective Omar Rodriguez, and Officer Ashley Negron — have been assigned to administrative duties per department protocol.

At an unrelated press event Monday, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said he understands the “pain and trauma that our residents and the community are feeling right now,” according to media reports.

“I’m going to be very clear, we cannot and will not allow individuals to carry and use illegal guns against police officers or anybody else in Baltimore without there being repercussions,” he said.

Aaron Maybin, the chair of Baltimore’s Civilian Review Board, called the footage “deeply disturbing” in a statement posted on Instagram. An audio delay makes it impossible to hear in the video how the officer who approached Abdullah identified himself or if he communicated why Abdullah was being stopped, Maybin said.

The officers’ failure to immediately render aid is also concerning, Maybin continued. “The suggestion that community members prevented care is misleading,” he said. “The scene remained calm enough in the early moments after the shooting to attempt lifesaving measures. The lack of urgency shown only heightened tensions on the ground.”

“While the investigation continues, this footage raises serious questions about tactics, training, and proportionality, particularly in a dense urban setting where bystanders were present,” Maybin said.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office’s Independent Investigations Division is probing the shooting. The office has investigated all life-threatening police shootings in Maryland since 2021, when state lawmakers created the IID as part of a package of police reform bills.

David Jaros, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, said that nothing in the body-worn camera videos suggests the police acted improperly. There are still unanswered questions about what happened, Jaros said, including whether Abdullah was experiencing a mental health crisis. Worley said Monday that police had no information about Abdullah’s mental health.

Jaros said he would also like to see the evidence that police believed Abdullah to be armed when they arrived on the scene. That tip did not come through dispatch, Worley said, but other department officials said there is independent video showing Abdullah making threatening statements and showing a firearm.

The post Baltimore Police release bodycam footage of Bilal “BJ” Abdullah shooting appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Hundreds of people marched through west Baltimore Friday evening to remember Bilal “BJ” Abdullah, a beloved arabber who was fatally shot by Baltimore police on Tuesday. The crowd, a mix of children, teenagers on scooters, dirtbike riders, elders, and men on horseback, reflected just how widely Abdullah was loved and respected. 

As the march proceeded down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Upton Metro Station, where the shooting took place, more people joined in. Families peered out their doorways to take videos and chant along with the crowd, who shouted “Justice for BJ,” and “no justice, no peace!”

Abdullah’s sister, Najla Abdullah, told the marchers that the sunny weather was a sign: “There’s no rain today because my brother was welcomed into those heavenly gates,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Justice for the fruit man!”

The march was an outpouring of love for Abdullah, who spent much of his life selling produce from a colorful horse-drawn wagon in neighborhoods where fresh food is often hard to come by. Tony Mack, a fellow arabber who worked with Abdullah, said the killing was a “travesty.”

“A good arabber. A good guy,” he said of Abdullah. Mack’s horse, Michelle, led the march Friday with a bright red feather plume on her head and bells on her harness in typical arabber fashion.

Members of the Baltimore Police Department were a constant presence around the march. Police vehicles drove ahead and behind the crowd to block off the street to traffic and then hung around while members of Abdullah’s family addressed the group at the end of the march. At one point, it appeared that nine police vehicles were sitting in the street on either side of the protest. 

When Abdullah’s mother spoke to the crowd, her voice was drowned out at one point by a Baltimore Police Department “Foxtrot” helicopter, which circled overhead several times.

“I want everybody to remember that he didn’t deserve what happened to him,” said Abdullah’s mother, Joy Alston.

“Something they can’t take away from me is his love, his spirit, and what he did throughout the community,” she said, “and I want everybody to remember that.”

Many members of the crowd called for accountability for the Baltimore police officers who shot Abdullah. The Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which investigates police shootings, identified the officers involved as Detective Devin Yancy, Detective Omar Rodriguez, and Officer Ashley Negron.

The Attorney General’s office said Wednesday that a preliminary investigation showed Baltimore Police officers encountered a man wearing a crossbody bag in the area of Pennsylvania Avenue and Laurens Street at about 7:15 p.m. Tuesday evening. The officers attempted to speak to the man from their unmarked cruiser, according to the Attorney General’s Office, and then one officer approached the man on foot.

The man began walking away and shifted his bag from the back of his body to the front as an officer followed, the AG’s office said. As the officer grabbed the man, “a firearm was discharged,” the office said, and the police officers took cover. Two other officers had exited their vehicles to assist, the office said. The preliminary investigation said the man pointed a firearm at the officers, and the three officers “exchanged gunfire” with the man, striking him.

“A firearm was recovered from the man and secured by an officer,” the office said in its press release. One officer was shot in the foot and received medical treatment.

A crowd of people gathered near the scene after the shooting, distressed by Abdullah’s death. Police Commissioner Richard Worley blamed the community for blocking medical aid to Abdullah after the shooting, saying Tuesday that “the crowd actually interfered with our ability to give the victim aid.”

New reporting from the Beat has raised questions about that narrative. Alston says police physically restrained her and injured her shoulder when she tried to get to her wounded son Tuesday evening; officers also threatened to arrest Alston’s daughter when she told the police to back off.

Several marchers questioned the amount of force that police used and the length of time it took to get Abdullah medical care.

“The police officer arrived at the hospital before the victim,” said A. Zigler, who rode a horse named Smoke that BJ used to ride at Friday’s march. Like Abdullah, Zigler also grew up around horses in the stable.

“This is my brother,” Zigler said. “What’s right is what’s right and what’s wrong is what’s wrong, and that’s what I’m standing on.”

At the end of the march, the crowd gathered around Abdullah’s family and offered Muslim and Christian prayers. Aaron Maybin, the chair of Baltimore’s Civilian Review Board, said that the love shown for Abdullah through Friday’s march demonstrated the kind of person he was.

“This right here is the sum of this man’s life,” he said, gesturing to the crowd.

The post ‘The Sum of This Man’s Life’: People protest the police shooting of arabber Bilal Abdullah appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Bail reform continues to stump Maryland’s top legal decision-makers, who declined to take up the issue at a May 22 committee meeting. That’s despite reporting that showed the state’s 2017 effort to reform the cash bail system backfired as judges began holding more people in jail without bail instead.

The Maryland Judiciary’s rules committee suggested that a solution will need to come from lawmakers, rather than through additional changes to judicial rules. The discussion came not long after Baltimore Beat reported that the number of people being held in jail pretrial has actually gone up since Maryland tried to reform the cash bail system.

“I don’t want people to come away from this meeting and suggest that we’re done thinking about how to get bail right,” said Judge Douglas Nazarian, the vice chair of the rules committee. “I think at the moment, we’re struggling to think about where to take it.”

The 2017 bail reform changes were designed to stop judges from holding people in jail pretrial simply because they were too poor to pay cash bail, a practice that was widespread and likely unconstitutional, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office said at the time. But as the Beat reported in November, the reform effort fell flat as judges stopped using cash bail and instead began holding more people without any bail at all.

The result, seven years after bail reform, is that more people are now sitting in jail while they await trial, both in Baltimore and across the state — which is the opposite of what criminal justice reformers hoped for when the rule changes passed.

The May 22 meeting showed the continued reluctance of Maryland’s political and judicial leaders to address or even acknowledge bail reform’s failures. Some of the state’s top legal leaders recently called for a series of criminal justice reforms to address racial inequalities in the legal system, including reducing pretrial detention, but the issue has gained little traction among lawmakers.

The committee, which proposes changes to the rules that govern Maryland’s judges that are then considered by the state Supreme Court, did not address any possible adjustments to the pretrial system during its brief informational discussion.

“We created a neutral rule that was supposed to address the situation,” Nazarian told the committee. “We can argue about what the data are, about how well it’s addressing it or not.”

Reform advocates say that bail data shows judges have simply switched from holding people in jail on unconstitutionally high cash bail to holding people in jail with no bail, and now justify their decisions under the 2017 rules by claiming that these defendants pose a flight risk or a danger to the community.

Some judges, however, have suggested the true cause is a rise in serious crime since bail reform was enacted, though the Judiciary has not provided data to support this. State data shows that the violent crime rate in Maryland was lower in 2023, the most recent year data was available, than it was when bail reform was enacted.

The rules committee’s decision to take no new action ignores previous recommendations by its own subcommittee dedicated to identifying ways that the judicial rules perpetuate systemic racism. In 2022, that subcommittee wrote that the 2017 bail reform changes “have not reduced pretrial detention and that, worse still, the brunt of this problem will continue to fall disproportionately on the poorest defendants and defendants from historically disadvantaged communities.”

“The subcommittee urges the decisionmakers to continue to focus on this problem and not to treat the (rule changes) as final or definitive or having solved the problems.”

Debra Gardner, the legal director of the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center, said after the May 22 meeting that the subcommittee was “very clear that the rules committee should not consider the bail reform rules changes to have solved the problem and be the end of the story. And yet that certainly seems to be the message that was sent today.”

A different subcommittee that examines rules related to criminal cases held one meeting on the issue in July 2023, then took no additional action, according to written comments Gardner submitted ahead of the May 22 meeting. The criminal rules subcommittee met about the topic again in April, after the Beat reported on state government’s repeated failures to address bail reform. 

Subcommittee meetings are not open to the public, but according to Gardner’s written comments, the criminal rules subcommittee “simply revisited the question debated at its July 2023 meeting and decided to propose that the Rules Committee take no action on this issue so vital to equal justice under the law.” Interested parties who had previously participated in bail reform discussions were not given notice of the meeting, Gardner wrote.

The solution to bail reform isn’t an enigma — Illinois has found success after lawmakers there abolished cash bail in 2021 and specified which offenses are eligible for pretrial detention, which led to the jail populations falling.

Here, lawmakers have done little to address pretrial incarceration or to beef up pretrial services statewide. In the past, the rules committee has pointed to the lack of robust, consistent pretrial services in every county, which could make judges hesitant to release defendants without adequate supervision, as a key hurdle for bail reform.

“We’ve seen examples where the prioritization of pretrial services availability can really make a difference, but we don’t have the common political will to take that across the state at the moment,” Nazarian said.

Gardner called the rules committee’s inaction “disheartening.”

“People who care about pretrial justice are left to figure out how to keep pushing and who to keep pushing to have any attention to such an incredibly racialized, disparate impact within the criminal legal system,” she said.

The post Judiciary committee declines to address Maryland’s stalled bail reform effort appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

An independent audit of Maryland’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner found three dozen deaths in police custody that should have been ruled homicides during the nearly 20-year tenure of Dr. David Fowler — including the high-profile deaths of Tyrone West and Anton Black in police custody.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office plans to review with each jurisidiction’s state’s attorney’s office all of the cases that reviewers say should have been identified as homicides, though the report’s findings do not automatically mean there will be criminal charges or that police will face discipline.

The first-in-the-nation audit report also found that deaths involving Black people and those involving law enforcement restraint were less likely to be ruled homicides compared to other cases, and that “excited delirium” was cited as the cause of death in nearly half of the reviewed cases. The term “excited delirium” has been widely discredited as a medical diagnosis because of its roots in racism and frequent use to justify deaths in police custody. A quarter of the cases examined took place in Baltimore.

“Marylanders deserve a justice system built on transparency, accountability, and equity. This audit’s findings pave the way for meaningful reform in how medical examiners approach death investigations and propose changes that could address systemic inequities that have persisted for too long,” Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a news release. 

The audit began in 2021 after Fowler testified for the defense during the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and said that the death of George Floyd should have been classified as having an “undetermined” cause. Video of Floyd’s arrest showed Chauvin pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, and Chauvin was ultimately convicted of murder.

More than 450 medical experts signed a letter to then-Attorney General Brian Frosh calling for an independent review of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s practices during Fowler’s tenure leading the office from 2003 until 2019.

The audit team selected 87 cases to review out of more than 1,300 in-custody deaths investigated by OCME during that period and hired 12 independent forensic pathologists to examine the cases. Three reviewers were assigned to independently review each case and make their own determinations of the manner of death. In 36 cases, all three reviewers agreed the death should have been ruled a homicide. In another five cases, two out of the three reviewers found the manner of death should have been homicide.

The audit report recommended that the OCME stop using “excited delirium” as a diagnosis, improve documentation for deaths in custody, create standardized procedures for investigating restraint-related deaths and implement external peer review. It also recommends that law enforcement require the use of body cameras in all restraint situations, provide better training on the dangers of improper restraint techniques and include mental health professionals in crisis responses.

Gov. Wes Moore on Thursday also announced several executive actions in response to the audit results, including granting the Attorney General’s Office the authority to review the 36 cases where reviewers unanimously agreed a death should have been ruled a homicide. Moore also established a task force on in-custody restraint-related death investigations. 

The Attorney General’s Office also launched an OCME audit hotline for families who believe their deceased loved one’s case may have been covered under the audit. You can email OCMEAuditHotline@oag.state.md.us or call 833-282-0961 to reach the hotline.

At a press conference announcing the audit results Thursday, Moore said the pain that families of the deceased are feeling is “very real,” and that some spent years “screaming for this type of analysis” only to be met with silence. Tawanda Jones, the sister of Tyrone West, has spent every Wednesday since West’s death calling for accountability for her brother’s death and all victims of police brutality. 

Jones raised concerns about the medical examiner’s office beginning in 2013 when the office ruled her brother’s death “undetermined.” She could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

The audit also examined the death of Anton Black, an Eastern Shore teenager who died in 2018 after being chased and pinned down by police officers. His death was originally ruled an accident, but the new audit found it should have been classified as a homicide. Black’s death helped inspire major police reform legislation in Maryland, including “Anton’s Law,” which made police disciplinary records available to the public for the first time.

“We still have a lot to process for this report, and I’m not sure if that processing of what this report unveils will ever be fully settled,” Moore said. “But I know this is the start of the conversation.

The post Tyrone West’s death among 36 Maryland cases that should have been ruled homicides, audit finds appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse and violence against children.

When Maryland lawmakers passed the Child Victims Act in 2023, they hoped it would help unmask sexual predators who never faced justice.

By removing the statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse claims, the thinking went, adult survivors would at last be able to name the people who hurt them — and the institutions accused of protecting the abusers — in lawsuits.

The law was more effective than anyone imagined. Two years later, the state of Maryland is facing thousands of claims from people who say they were sexually abused at state-run juvenile detention facilities, some as recently as 2022.

“Never did I think that the number of claimants would be what they were,” Delegate C.T. Wilson, a sexual abuse survivor who spent close to a decade fighting to pass the Child Victims Act, said at a legislative hearing in March. “How could you predict that amount of malfeasance and institutional neglect?”

As many as 6,000 people have sued or are in the process of filing lawsuits against the state over alleged sexual abuse in juvenile detention centers, according to an attorney who is leading the litigation. Many are expected to file in the coming weeks because lawmakers recently walked back parts of the Child Victims Act, limiting the amount of money survivors can win if they sue after May 31.

The claims against the state dwarf the number of victims identified when the Maryland Attorney General’s Office investigated the Archdiocese of Baltimore (more than 600 children) and the number of people who filed claims against the Boy Scouts of America in Maryland (more than 1,000). 

With the scope of the allegations starting to come into focus, survivors and advocates want to know whether Maryland will launch an investigation into the history of child sexual abuse in its own facilities.

The leader of the Maryland chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, David Lorenz, said he was blindsided by the number of abuse claims against the state.

“There should be a huge investigation into why this happened,” Lorenz said. “We’ve got a problem, and we’d better figure out what the root cause of this is. There was apparently a total lack of accountability going on there.”

Kevin Pullen, a 41-year-old Baltimore resident who plans to sue over sexual abuse he says he experienced as a teen at the Charles H. Hickey, Jr. School in Baltimore County, said it was shocking to learn so many other people had similar experiences.

“I wasn’t all alone,” Pullen said in an interview with Baltimore Beat. “I did not know I wasn’t the only one going through this type of thing.”

Taken together, the lawsuits present a stunning account of systematic, violent abuse that spanned decades and harmed thousands of children whose care was entrusted to the state, in some cases because they had been abused at home or had no other place to live.

The children — some teenagers, others as young as 7 years old — could not escape the sexual abuse, which pervaded nearly every aspect of life in juvenile detention, according to the lawsuits. Laundry attendants, kitchen aides, counselors, coaches, and even wardens are accused of participating in the abuse, which sometimes dovetailed with official punishments. 

At the now-closed Thomas J.S. Waxter Children’s Center in Prince George’s County, children were often subjected to humiliating strip searches and cell lockdowns that gave staff unmonitored access to nude and vulnerable children, the lawsuits allege.

Over and over, survivors report hearing versions of the same phrase: “No one will believe you.” Abusers reminded victims that they were seen as troubled juvenile delinquents who would not receive sympathy or the benefit of the doubt.

Staff members used their authority — and the backing of a punitive criminal justice system — to threaten the children with longer terms in detention, solitary confinement (where children were sometimes kept naked with only a blanket and a mattress), and the loss of phone time or family visitation if they said anything about the abuse, the lawsuits claim.

One woman alleges that a guard threatened to kill her and said other facility staff would assume her death was a suicide. One man said he was placed in lockdown for two weeks after reporting abuse in 2001.

To force compliance, state employees threatened to have their victims transferred to “worse” juvenile detention centers or to adult facilities, to kill the victims’ families, or to let other detained children attack the victims, according to the lawsuits. They bribed children with cigarettes, candy, and other privileges to keep them quiet.

Staffers routinely beat the boys and girls in their care and used handcuffs, pillows, and their larger adult bodies to restrain children during rapes, forced touching, and other forms of abuse, which sometimes happened dozens or hundreds of times over the course of a stay in detention, the lawsuits claim.

Some children contracted sexually transmitted infections from their abusers and had to receive medical treatment. Others say they were provided medication that made them “drowsy” before being sexually assaulted. Many allege that they were abused at more than one state juvenile detention center or by multiple staff members.

Most of the survivors report experiencing long-term mental health and social problems as a result of the abuse.

Pullen said he was abused repeatedly by the same officer at the Hickey School, where he lived for 18 months in the late 1990s. The abuse began with groping, then escalated to forced oral sex and penetration, he said. Pullen was 14 when he went to the school.

Pullen said the officer gave him extra privileges, like letting him pick out a film to watch on movie nights, and also threatened to keep him in detention longer.

“I was terrified,” Pullen said. “I didn’t know who I could talk to about this.”

As he became more fearful and uncomfortable, Pullen acted out in order to be transferred to a new unit away from the abuser. His stay at the school, which was meant to rehabilitate him after his arrest for stealing cars, instead put him on a different path when he got back home.

“I was still angry inside that I let that happen to me,” he said. He spent time in and out of prison as a young man.

Now, Pullen keeps to himself and doesn’t open up to many people, he said. He never told anyone about the abuse because was worried people would look at him differently. But then he heard a commercial about survivors coming forward to file lawsuits over abuse at juvenile detention centers, and decided to tell his story.

His lawsuit will be filed in the coming weeks, along with those of many survivors who are trying to meet a new May 31 deadline for claims under the Child Victims Act. After that date, survivors will be able to win less than half the monetary damages they are eligible for now.

“I’m finally getting this burden off my back,” Pullen said. “It’s helping me regain my power back as far as control of my life.”

The lawsuits allege more broadly that the state of Maryland failed to protect the children from abuse by hiring unqualified staff and doing too little to investigate abuse complaints. They also claim the state had plenty of notice that its juvenile detention centers were dangerous: across several decades, state and federal agencies, lawsuits, and media reports have raised serious concerns about the treatment of children at these facilities.

A 2010 survey from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that more than a third of young men at Garrett County’s Backbone Mountain Youth Center reported experiencing sexual victimization, among the highest rates found in the study.

Todd Mathews, an attorney who has helped lead settlement negotiations with the state, said the claims stretch from the 1960s to the 2020s, peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Between 85% and 90% of the Department of Juvenile Services claimants are people of color, Mathews said, which reflects the populations that have historically been sent to juvenile detention centers. To this day, Black children make up 77% of all detained youth in Maryland, though they account for only 30% of the state’s youth population.

Many of the people Mathews represents were placed in juvenile detention for relatively minor, childish crimes, like taking a family car for a joyride, he said. Others ran away from home or foster care because they were being abused there, according to the lawsuits.

Mathews said it is telling that Maryland has not taken steps to investigate the scope of the abuse in its juvenile detention centers.

“I think that the state was mindful of their obligations in doing their Catholic Church investigation, and for human nature reasons, maybe, weren’t willing to admit they had a big problem in their own system,” he said. “Now that they do know, [it has been] a year-plus, and they haven’t taken any action to conduct a survey or report near the length of the Catholic Church.”

In a statement, the Department of Juvenile Services said that “the safety of young people in our care and the wider community is our main concern.”

“DJS cannot comment about pending or active litigation beyond noting that the allegations related to the pending litigation date back decades, with no evidence of recent widespread child abuse in DJS facilities,” the statement continued.

The department does publish regular audits and annual reports under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a 2003 federal law that set standards aimed at ending sexual abuse in correctional institutions.

The most recent annual report from DJS found that both allegations and substantiated claims of sexual abuse and harassment at its facilities have fallen in the past six years.

Mathews said an investigation would protect children in the future and also shed light on how abuse on this scale was able to happen in the past.

“I absolutely believe DJS is doing everything they can to prevent this,” he said. “However, we absolutely still have a system that is seeing this abuse occur, because we have clients where it’s happened in the last three years.”

“I do think it is warranted for there to be an examination, not only of where the system failed decades ago, but where it still needs improvement.”

In an email, a spokesperson for the Maryland Attorney General’s Office said the office “neither confirms nor denies the existence of an investigation” unless required by law.

The AG’s office has said little about the lawsuits, which is typical while litigation is pending. In a document seeking assistant counsel to help handle the flood of cases, the office said more than 1,500 plaintiffs had filed claims as part of 38 lawsuits involving juvenile detention facilities, and that it expected as many as 4,000 people to bring claims against the state.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys now estimate that number will be even higher. The vast majority of the claimants have filed using pseudonyms, like “John Doe,” to protect their identities.

The juvenile detention cases differ from the investigation into the Archdiocese of Baltimore because the Maryland Attorney General’s Office represents state agencies in court. The Department of Juvenile Services is the AG’s client, creating a conflict. But lawyers said an investigation would be useful, even if it were conducted by an independent agency or outside firm.

“It would be helpful, especially [for] criminal prosecution, if somebody could aggregate all the stories,” said Thomas Yost, an attorney whose law firm is representing Pullen. If the lawsuits don’t settle, attorneys will eventually be able to receive documents, depositions, and other materials from the state as they make their case, but that’s different from a broader systemic investigation.

State leaders said little about the sprawling scandal during the recent legislative session, focusing instead on a bill to limit Maryland’s financial liability from these lawsuits amid a budget crisis.

Lawmakers worried that the state could face several billion dollars in liability from the DJS claims. Los Angeles County recently reached a record $4 billion settlement with nearly 7,000 plaintiffs who said they were abused in juvenile detention centers and foster care.

The new Maryland legislation slashed the amount of money that abuse survivors can win in court by more than half, from $890,000 to $400,000 in lawsuits against public institutions, if they file under the Child Victims Act after May 31. For private institutions, like the Catholic church, the cap is being reduced from $1.5 million to $700,000.

The bill also clarified that survivors can only receive up to that cap once, regardless of how many times they were abused — an addition that plaintiffs’ attorneys say is likely unconstitutional — and limited the amount of fees that attorneys can receive in these cases.

The bill inspired heated debate and backlash from survivors and their attorneys, but ultimately passed during the final days of the session. Gov. Wes Moore signed the bill into law over the objection of plaintiffs’ lawyers.

In an emailed statement, Moore’s office said the governor “acknowledges the trauma survivors of child sexual assault have endured and the difficult and unprecedented circumstances surrounding this legislation.”

“The general assembly has carefully crafted legislation that will continue to allow the survivors to seek justice,” the statement continued.

The office did not respond to a question about whether an investigation into the DJS claims is warranted.

Yost said that lawmakers knew the state would likely face some lawsuits over abuse at juvenile detention centers, but did not realize the extent of the problem when they first passed the Child Victims Act. 

Instead of dealing with the problem, Yost said, legislators chose to change the law and limit the amount of money survivors can receive. And because of the new May 31 deadline, survivors who haven’t already filed their claims will have to rush to court in the next few weeks.

“The real tragedy here is that you did a lot more damage than you imagined you did, right?” Yost said. “Do something about that instead of withdrawing compensation from the people that you promised it to.”

The post Thousands of people say they were sexually abused in Maryland juvenile detention centers. Is anyone investigating? appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

A new report from some of Maryland’s top legal advocates and officials calls for sweeping changes to reduce the racial disparities that exist at every level of the state’s criminal justice system.

The disparities are widespread: Black Marylanders make up less than a third of the state’s population but account for more than half of all arrests, more than half of the jail population, and 71% of the prison and parole populations.

The report from the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative calls for a far-reaching approach that acknowledges the historic precursors to today’s legal system — beginning with enslavement and followed by racist laws and practices that denied equal rights to Black Marylanders — and recognizes ongoing inequality in education, health care and economic opportunities.

The 111-page report itself is the result of an unusual partnership. The MEJC was created through a collaboration between the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which prosecutes some crimes and defends the state correctional system in lawsuits brought by prisoners, among other duties; and the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, which provides legal representation for defendants who cannot afford lawyers across the entire state. Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue and Attorney General Anthony Brown are both the first Black people to hold their respective jobs.

“We all have a part to play in dismantling unfair systems of justice and building a more just state,” the pair wrote in a letter introducing the report. “The release of this report is only the beginning of this ongoing effort.”

Several of the proposals outlined in the report were introduced as legislation before the Maryland General Assembly during the legislative session, but lawmakers largely rejected them.

The full report includes 18 recommendations ranging from expanding access to mental health care to improving GED rates among incarcerated youth. Baltimore Beat examined three of the recommendations:

ENDING NON-SAFETY-RELATED TRAFFIC STOPS

Black Marylanders make up 31.6% of the state’s population but accounted for 43% of all traffic stops by police in 2023. The disparities are even steeper in some jurisdictions, like Baltimore, where 60% of the city’s population is Black but 79.5% of traffic stops by the Baltimore Police Department involve a Black driver.

The MEJC report suggests cutting down on those numbers by ending “non-safety-related” traffic stops, a term that refers to low-risk violations like expired registration tags or a single broken tail light. Another common term for these stops is “pretextual stops.” Though some traffic stops for non-safety reasons are based on legitimate violations, police officers also sometimes use common offenses as a reason to justify stopping a driver or searching their car.

The MEJC proposal calls for reclassifying non-safety-related violations as secondary offenses that would not be enough, on their own, to justify a traffic stop. Police would need to see a more serious violation in order to pull someone over, and lower-level issues could be handled through automated enforcement systems or tickets sent through the mail.

Officers would still be able to pull people over for speeding, reckless driving and other dangerous behaviors, and supporters of these proposals say that ending non-safety-related stops would allow police to focus their attention on more serious offenses.

Philadelphia introduced a similar proposal through its Driving Equality Act, which was enacted in 2022. The act bars Philadelphia police officers from pulling over drivers for a single broken headlight or taillight, items hanging from the rearview mirror, expired or missing registration stickers, and a few other minor violations.

In the year after Driving Equality was enacted, traffic stops in Philadelphia fell by almost 7%, but racial disparities persisted. Still, Philadelphia police stopped about 8,200 fewer Black drivers and nearly 900 fewer white drivers compared to before the law.

Paula Sen, an assistant defender in the Defender Association of Philadelphia’s police accountability unit, said the disparities are falling, just not as dramatically as some hoped when the law was enacted.

“We are talking about real, living, breathing human beings that are not being subjected to unnecessary police interactions,” she told the Beat. “That’s sort of an unquantifiable good.”

The law also appears to have had no effect on public safety, said Mike Mellon, an assistant defender who also works in the Defender Association’s police accountability unit. Like many cities, Philadelphia has seen a dramatic drop in homicides since the COVID-19 pandemic. The Driving Equality Act also survived a legal challenge from the Philadelphia police union. Mellon said the law is just one piece of criminal justice reform efforts.

“It’s a stepping stone to trying to figure out what the right answer is,” Mellon said. “This is one possible solution, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road.”

In Maryland, where Democrats hold a supermajority in the state legislature, lawmakers introduced bills this year that would have made some non-safety-related traffic violations secondary offenses. After receiving swift and vocal backlash from the law enforcement community, neither bill made it out of committee. Without a committee vote, the bill could not be considered by the full House or Senate.

LIMIT AUTO-CHARGING CHILDREN AS ADULTS

Like many states, Maryland automatically treats teenagers as adults in the legal system when they are accused of committing serious, violent crimes. Maryland also mandates that teens who are 16 or older be charged as adults when they are accused of certain firearms offenses, including misdemeanor firearm possession.

Criminal justice reform advocates have been trying to end the practice for more than a decade. Maryland automatically charges more children as adults than nearly any other state, WYPR reported, and those who do get automatically charged are overwhelmingly Black. Black teenagers make up more than 80% of the children charged as adults, according to state data.

Misdemeanor firearm possession is the most common charge for which teenagers are charged as adults, according to the data.

Carla Barrett, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies youth crime and justice, called it “stunning” that Maryland automatically prosecutes 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for gun-related misdemeanors.

“It’s illogical,” Barrett said. “If you look at the history of the juvenile justice system, the idea of moving youth into the adult court system was for the most serious cases, the most serious crimes.”

Juvenile courts traditionally bring greater focus on rehabilitation and offering young people who commit crimes access to services so they can become successful adults. That’s because there is broad scientific and legal consensus that children’s brains work differently than adults’ do, especially in stressful situations.

When teenagers are charged as adults in Maryland, they can still be transferred back to juvenile court. An investigation by WYPR, however, found that judges used questionable reasoning to justify keeping kids in adult court, including their physical size, not having severe enough mental illness to warrant treatment in juvenile court, and having mental health needs that were too extensive to be treated in juvenile court.

A pair of bills introduced this year would have given juvenile courts jurisdiction over all but the most serious crimes. Both bills died in committee, despite having powerful backers and support from the Legislative Black Caucus.

REDUCE PRETRIAL DETENTION

The MEJC report also calls for changes to reduce pretrial detention, the time someone sits in jail after being accused of a crime and arrested but before they have a trial.

The first proposal would standardize the “civilian complaint” process, which allows any regular person to accuse someone else of a crime by filling out an application for a statement of charges. District Court commissioners, who do not have to be lawyers to hold their jobs, can then issue arrest warrants based on those applications. The application does not need to be reviewed by a police officer, prosecutor or judge before an arrest warrant is issued, and the person who is accused can be held in jail based on the allegations.

A pair of bills before the General Assembly this year would have changed the law so that a court commissioner could only issue a summons, not an arrest warrant, if a regular person filed an application for a statement of charges. Arrest warrants could still be issued based on applications from police officers or prosecutors. Neither bill made it out of committee.

The MEJC also proposed requiring prosecutors to turn over evidence within a “reasonable timeframe” so that people accused of crimes and their lawyers can prepare a defense more quickly and potentially ask for release if they feel the evidence is not strong enough. (One 2019 study found that the majority of Baltimore defendants who were jailed pretrial were never convicted of a crime, either because their charges were dropped or they were acquitted.)

The report does not offer broader recommendations about changing the way bail is set in Maryland. As the Beat reported previously, the pretrial jail population in Maryland has actually gone up since a 2017 bail reform effort designed to make the bail system fairer to poor people.

The statewide population of people being held in jail while they are awaiting prosecution — and while they remain legally innocent — has risen from 5,838 in 2017, the year the state judiciary implemented a rule change aimed at reducing the use of cash bail, to 6,701 at the beginning of this year.

The Beat previously found that while the use of cash bail has fallen significantly since the rule change, judges and court commissioners have increasingly turned to denying bail entirely, which makes it even more difficult for a person accused of a crime to win their release pretrial. Since 2017, the percentage of state jail populations that is made up of people being held pretrial has jumped, rising from 68.6% to 82.5%.

Bail and pretrial release remain a politically difficult issue in Maryland, and neither the judiciary nor state lawmakers have revisited bail reform since 2017, even in the face of evidence that the rule change has backfired.

“Pretrial confinement disproportionately affects Black people and contributes to ongoing inequalities,” the MEJC wrote. “Pretrial detention can lead to loss of employment, housing instability, and family disruption, exacerbating economic and social disparities.”

The post Maryland’s top legal leaders call for criminal justice reforms to reduce racial disparities appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

This story was produced in partnership with the Garrison Project, an independent, nonpartisan organization addressing the crisis of mass incarceration and policing.

On a foggy day in mid-December, a young Black man peers up from a grim-looking room at Baltimore’s Central Booking & Intake Center, tugging nervously at his hair.

He is speaking through a computer screen to Commissioner Kathleen Puckett, who is sitting in a cubicle at a district courthouse six miles south of the jail. Puckett, a smartly dressed Black woman with graying temples, will decide if the young man goes home tonight.

The man, 21, is accused of slapping a woman during a domestic dispute four days earlier. He insists he never slapped her. But on Dec. 10, police picked him up on an arrest warrant and brought him to Central Booking.

This remote court hearing, known as an initial appearance, appears friendly despite the circumstances. When Puckett asks for the man’s social, he responds, “Like Instagram?” before Puckett clarifies that she means his Social Security number. They both chuckle at the misunderstanding.

Despite the cordial back and forth between the judge and defendant, and some seemingly good facts on his side — the man does not live with the woman he is accused of slapping, and four days have apparently passed without incident since the alleged assault — the hearing ends like many others in Baltimore and across Maryland: Puckett orders that he remain in jail.

“At this time, you are being held without bond for victim safety,” Puckett says.

“I didn’t do nothing to nobody,” the man responds, his voice rising in frustration. “It’s crazy.”

The man disappears from Puckett’s screen. 

Puckett doesn’t explain the reasons for her decision. She may have felt wary of releasing him because he was accused, though not convicted, of illegally possessing a firearm in 2023. (One study from 2019 found the majority of Baltimore defendants who were detained pretrial were never convicted of a crime, either because their case was dropped or they were acquitted.)

“Each case is different,” Puckett says during a break. “More than likely if I’m holding you, it’s for public safety.”

The next day, the man is released from jail after a district court judge reversed Puckett’s decision and freed him on $25,000 unsecured bond.

***

The 21-year-old’s predicament illustrates the rigidity of the pretrial system that has spread through Maryland’s judiciary since new bail rules were introduced in 2017. Though they were designed to relieve the burden of cash bail on the poorest Marylanders, the reforms drove pretrial jail populations up across the state as court officials instead held more people without bail.

The pretrial jail population is higher now than before bail reform, both in Baltimore — as Baltimore Beat and the Garrison Project reported in November — and statewide. Data from the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy shows the pretrial jail population in Maryland hit a low of 5,838 at the beginning of 2017, the year bail reform took effect, and then began increasing, reaching 6,890 at the beginning of 2024.

Pretrial defendants, who are considered legally innocent, make up the vast majority of the local jail population in Maryland today. In 18 of Maryland’s 24 local jurisdictions, the pretrial population is higher now than it was in 2019.

Debra Gardner, legal director of the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center, said it felt as though judges “went into the proverbial smoke-filled room” after bail reform took effect and decided to begin denying bail in cases where they previously would have issued cash bail.

In reality, judges and commissioners seem to have reached the same conclusions on their own. “It was just easier before to set a bail that was unconstitutionally high,” rather than release a defendant and risk public blowback if that person committed another crime, Gardner said. When that was no longer allowed under the 2017 bail reform, judges quickly realized they could hold defendants without bail instead.

“So, as if by magic, we had a tremendous bail reform that did not result in a reduction in the pretrial population — the goal of the reform — one iota,” Gardner said.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Unlike Maryland, Illinois has seen the intended results of bail reform: fewer people sitting in jail before trial.

In 2021, Illinois abolished cash bail and did so in a way designed to avoid increasing the jail population. The state’s Pretrial Fairness Act, which took effect in 2023, formalized a presumption in favor of releasing people charged with crimes and laid out which offenses are eligible for detention.

Sharlyn Grace, a senior policy advisor at the Cook County Public Defender’s Office in Chicago, said it was crucial to build clear limits on judges’ and prosecutors’ power into the Pretrial Fairness Act. Illinois law already favored release before the act passed, she said, but judges had adjusted their decisions to continue detaining people anyway.

“Procedural protections … can just become scripts that judges read before they make decisions that have the same outcome,” Grace said.

Maryland attorneys report something similar: since bail reform, judges and commissioners use similar language over and over again at bail hearings, citing “victim safety” or other permissible reasons before detaining someone.

With the Pretrial Fairness Act, lawmakers and reformers in Illinois got specific, codifying the presumption in favor of release and outlining precisely which charges could result in pretrial detention. Most misdemeanors are not eligible for detention, and in the case of more serious crimes, like violent felonies, defendants can be denied release only if prosecutors prove they pose a threat to the community based on the facts of the case.

Bail reform in Illinois also required cultural change among judges, Grace said. Well-meaning reforms can fail if they don’t force the legal system to behave differently than it has in the past, she said.

“Intentions are not enough,” she said.

Yet Maryland judges and lawmakers have not addressed bail again since 2017. One program created during the coronavirus pandemic to cover the cost of pretrial electronic monitoring for poor defendants faced a funding crunch last year but would continue under a new budget proposal from Gov. Wes Moore.

***

Former Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh, who pushed for the passage of bail reform through the judiciary’s rules committee, said it was always clear that more people would be denied bail when judges moved away from using cash bail.

“The mere increase in people being held without bail is not necessarily something that shows that the system is failing,” he said.

While Frosh called it “disturbing” that Baltimore’s pretrial jail population has increased, he also said there are a host of reasons for the shifts since bail reform was enacted in 2017. Not all counties have robust pretrial monitoring programs, which might make judges more reluctant to release defendants.

“You’re never going to have a system in which people who are released absolutely don’t commit any crimes. That’s not going to happen,” he said. “And you’re never going to have a system in which absolutely no one who deserves to be released is kept behind bars. You’re always going to have mistakes.”

He argued the reforms accomplished a lot by significantly reducing the use of cash bail. Prior to 2017, many defendants in Maryland sat in jail simply because they were poor.

Criminal justice reformers counter that prolonged pretrial detention because of a bail denial can be just as crushing — and that Maryland’s judges and lawmakers have not done enough to curb these denials in the years since bail reform.

The judiciary has been resistant to criticism of the bail reform effort. Colin Starger, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, co-authored a 2022 article in the Maryland Law Review that found a 2020 effort to reduce pretrial detention during the pandemic largely failed in Baltimore, and that Black defendants were more likely to be detained than white ones.

In early 2023, members of the judiciary were invited to a panel discussion on the findings; instead, a judiciary spokesperson sent a letter accusing the authors of presenting “a purposefully one-sided view of the evidence in each case observed.”

“The intent was never to make this about bad judges,” Starger said of the 2022 study. “It’s not about that. In order to correct a systemic problem that cuts across education, political enfranchisement, all the way through to the bail system, you need to have an awareness of that and you need to be able to think outside of your own area of focus.”

“It was disappointing that the (judiciary’s) letter didn’t recognize that’s really what we were trying to talk about,” he said.

***

In Maryland, attempts to fix the pretrial bail system have spanned decades. Since the 1990s, there have been at least 10 task forces, committees or reports examining pretrial procedures, according to a report from the National Center for State Courts. A dozen bills related to pretrial detention have failed to pass out of the General Assembly in that time.

Since the 2017 reform effort, there have been no additional rule changes related to bail, even after a rules subcommittee dedicated to rooting out bias and discrimination in the courts received multiple submissions about the rise in bail denials.

In its final report in 2022, the subcommittee acknowledged that the 2017 bail reform changes “have not reduced pretrial detention and that, worse still, the brunt of this problem will continue to fall disproportionately on the poorest defendants and defendants from historically disadvantaged communities. The subcommittee urges the decisionmakers to continue to focus on this problem and not to treat the (rule changes) as final or definitive or having solved the problems.”

The rules subcommittee received multiple recommendations for a system similar to the one in Illinois, which would create a presumption of release unless prosecutors could show a defendant posed a risk.

But the proposed adjustments have not happened, either in the judiciary or the General Assembly.

Sen. William C. Smith, a Montgomery County Democrat who chairs the Maryland Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee and sits on the judicial rules committee that approved the 2017 bail reform changes, said in an interview that a higher pretrial population was “the exact opposite of what we intended.”

Smith acknowledged that the issue of pretrial detention has not been at the top of lawmakers’ minds since the 2017 changes. After reviewing Baltimore Beat and the Garrison Project’s reporting, Smith said he plans to raise the issue with the judiciary’s rules committee and ask Maryland’s Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability to analyze what has gone wrong since bail reform.

“You have to diagnose exactly what’s happening first, before you can proffer any sort of rules change or legislation,” Smith said. “But obviously, it’s a trend that doesn’t make sense to me, and is not the intended consequence of our reforms.”

The post Bail remains a never-ending problem in Maryland. Is the state searching for a solution? appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

This story was produced in partnership with the Garrison Project, an independent, nonpartisan organization addressing the crisis of mass incarceration and policing.

Seven years after Maryland tried to reform the cash bail system because of its disproportionate impact on the state’s poorest residents, people who get arrested in Baltimore are being held in jail before trial at a higher rate than before the change.

While the use of cash bail has dropped since the bail reform effort, nearly two-thirds of all initial appearances in Baltimore — the first hearing an arrested person has before a court official — now end in a bail denial, a rate that has surged by about 300% since the state judiciary changed the rules surrounding pretrial release in 2017.

The population at Baltimore’s main pretrial detention center has actually risen since 2017, even as arrests have declined during the same period. People who are held in jail before trial can wait months or longer before their case concludes, even though they are presumed innocent and criminal cases in Baltimore often end without a conviction.

The biggest shift since the rule change has come from court officers denying bail entirely, according to data provided by the state judiciary and analyzed by Baltimore Beat and The Garrison Project.

The data shows: 

• Since the bail reform rule change in 2017, the use of cash bail at initial appearances has fallen dramatically in Baltimore, from about 40% before the 2017 effort to under 5% in the first half of 2023, the most recent data provided by the state judiciary.

• Baltimore’s overall release rate — the proportion of people freed on unsecured bond or on their own recognizance at their initial appearances — rose at first after bail reform, but then fell back below pre-reform levels.

• In 2016, court officers in Baltimore held people without bail at their initial appearances less than 15% of the time, but bail denials quickly spiked after the rule change and have hovered around 60% since 2020.

• These are not brief stints in jail. More than 60% of defendants who have an initial appearance are still in custody five days later.

The 2017 bail reform effort was designed to reduce the crushing, unequal costs of cash bail and stop judges from holding people in jail pretrial simply because they could not afford to pay — a practice that was likely unconstitutional, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office said in 2016.

Yet the population at Baltimore’s main pretrial detention center has risen from under 700 people per day on average in 2017 to more than 900 in 2023. The facility’s health care system is under intense scrutiny, and at least four people have died in pretrial custody this year, including a man who was held on $3,500 cash bail after being accused of stealing snacks from a vending machine.

Christopher Dews, a lobbyist who represents Out for Justice, a nonprofit that supports formerly incarcerated people, said the difference after the 2017 rule change was clear when he worked on the Job Opportunity Task Force’s bail fund in Baltimore. The number of people eligible to be bailed out of jail dwindled and then reached zero, he said.

The result has frustrated reform advocates who considered the rule change a victory but have since watched it backfire.

“It is quite painful, the reality that whenever we have a massive policy win for equitable criminal justice reforms, it does seem as if the state finds non-legislative, non-policy ways to thwart those successes,” Dews said. “As advocates, we prepare to defend our wins, but you can only defend wins so much from the state that has to implement those same wins.”

The pretrial system became more black-and-white after the rule change, added Nicole Belle, who was a case manager for the Job Opportunity Task Force’s bail fund from 2021 until early 2023. People facing charges were either released or held without bail.

“There was no in between,” Belle said. 

The consequences of pretrial detention can be devastating, lawyers and advocates said, particularly since the people held there are legally innocent. Criminal defendants are presumed innocent until they have been proven guilty at a trial or pleaded guilty.

A 2019 study by the Baltimore Action Legal Team, an activist legal organization, found that the majority of Baltimore defendants who were incarcerated pretrial were never convicted of a crime, either because their charges were dropped or they were acquitted.

“An arrest is an allegation that disrupts the lives of individuals, families and communities by leading to job loss, financial consequences, family disruption and mental health stress,” said Melissa Rothstein, the Chief of External Affairs at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.

“We certainly haven’t seen the meaningful change that we had hoped for, that the rule was intending,” she said.

***

Here’s how bail gets set in Maryland: when a person is arrested, they have a hearing before a  District Court commissioner within 24 hours, known as an initial appearance. Commissioners are not judges and do not have to be lawyers to hold the job; they are appointed by the chief judge of the District Court of Maryland.

Commissioners can decide to hold an arrested person in jail without bail, release them, or set a cash bail. If the person can pay that amount, either themselves or through a bondsman, they can go free. If they can’t, they stay in jail. People denied bail remain in jail — they cannot pay to be released.

People who are not released at their initial appearance then get a bail review before a District Court judge the next time the court is sitting. That judge will decide whether to set bail, release the person or hold them without bail until they go to trial.

People held in pretrial detention can ask to have their bail reviewed again as their cases proceed, too.

Initial appearances take place at the Baltimore Central Booking & Intake Center, the city’s main pretrial detention center. Bail reviews, the secondary process for people who are held at their initial appearances, happen at the city’s district courts every day. A group of people who have been arrested appear remotely before a judge, popping up on a television screen wearing jail uniforms and handcuffs. Their faces are hard to make out on the screen, and they say very little.

A representative from pretrial services gives the judge a quick rundown on each person: their address, their employment status, charges and past convictions and whether they have ever failed to come to court previously. Pretrial services in Baltimore City recommends denying bail in the vast majority of cases. Between January 2023 and June 2024, the rate at which pretrial services recommended no bail never dropped lower than 75% and was sometimes as high as 85%, according to data provided by the agency.

A prosecutor also weighs in, sometimes offering more information about the underlying charges, followed by a defense attorney. Some people have private attorneys, but many are represented by public defenders at their bail reviews.

The proceedings rarely take more than 10 minutes. The judge usually gives a brief explanation for their decision before announcing whether the person remains in jail or goes home.

***

In an email, Judiciary spokesperson Terri Charles acknowledged that there has been “an increase in those preventively detained since the new rule was implemented.” There are several reasons for the shift, she said.

Charles said that the number of people being arrested has also fallen by about a third since the rule went into effect because of “legislative changes …changes in police procedures in the aftermath of Freddie Gray, COVID, the increase in the use of citations in lieu of arrest, and the decriminalization, and then legalization, of marijuana.”

That means people coming before commissioners often have more serious charges than in the past, she said.

Commissioners also don’t have discretion to set bail in some cases, like when a person who has previously been convicted of a violent crime is accused of committing another one. About a quarter of all people held without bail can’t be released because state law forbids commissioners from releasing them, Charles said. People experiencing mental health issues are often also held without bail while they await treatment at a state facility, she said.

The data used for this analysis has been provided to Maryland lawmakers annually since the 2017 bail reform effort. There are limits to the information: the data does not show what charges have been filed against the defendants or individual defendants’ history in the criminal justice system, nor does it provide race or other demographic details that could clarify the impact of the rule change on different populations.

Maryland’s bail reform effort began in 2016 when the Attorney General’s Office raised questions about the constitutionality of holding people in pretrial custody because they could not afford cash bail.

“You can’t imprison someone for poverty,” then-Attorney General Brian E. Frosh told The Baltimore Sun in 2016. “For one guy, $1,000 bail is no big deal. For somebody else, they might not have 100 bucks, much less $1,000.”

After extensive debate, the Maryland Supreme Court (then called the Maryland Court of Appeals) approved a rule change in early 2017 that was designed to “to promote the release of defendants on their own recognizance or, when necessary, unsecured bond.”

The goal of the new rule was to safeguard against defendants sitting in jail because they were too poor to pay their bail. Commissioners were instructed to impose financial conditions only if there was no other way to ensure the defendant showed up for court or to protect the community, victims or witnesses.

It didn’t take long for the state’s pretrial release data to show that more people were being held without bond after the 2017 rule change. Criminal justice reform advocates have repeatedly asked the state to address the issue, but neither lawmakers nor judges have taken it on.

“Everybody knows the rates of incarceration have basically stayed the same, and the people that used to be held on unaffordable bails are just being held without bond,” said Colin Starger, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

“But the overall will to change hasn’t become a priority,” he said. “It feels risky, and that’s not a risk that folks have been willing to take in the climate we have and the public safety situation we have.”

The post After bail reform effort, Baltimore residents are being held in jail at higher rates than before appeared first on Baltimore Beat.