“This team needs to get off the stage and into our communities,” one citizen says, interrupting the first public meeting on Tuesday Nov. 28 with the five-member team appointed to monitor the Consent Decree enacted by the Department of Justice following their scathing report on the Baltimore Police Department. “We don’t understand how you can make an assessment and write a report unless you’re out in the streets talking to people in real time.”

The woman’s sentiment was echoed by almost everyone in the audience at Frederick Douglass High School on Tuesday night.

“You’ve got to be on the scene in real time…if you have to roll up out of bed in work-out gear. Then come. We’ll be there,” said Lawrence Brown, a professor of Public Health at Morgan State University. Brown said that the team should be on the ground, with Facebook and Twitter so that when an incident arises, citizens can log-in, insteading of suiting up and going out.

“What happened with Harlem Park?” Brown asked. “If you’re an arm of the court you should be on the ground monitoring in real time.”

The police lockdown of the Harlem Park neighborhood where Det. Sean Suiter was murdered dominated the conversation.

“We are asking for legal protection from our police department,” a 21-year teaching veteran said, adding that the monitoring team needs to act before another community is “held hostage.”

Only one member of the monitoring team, Shantay Guy of the Baltimore Community Mediation Center, actually did go to the Harlem Park neighborhood while it was under police occupation—but citizens insisted that they wanted the lawyers on the team, like Kenneth Thompson, the head Monitor, to be there.

“We the people want to hear from the professional about how we the people can deal with the police,” one woman said. “I didn’t go to law school. They did.”

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The highest-ranking officer who was charged in the in-custody death of Freddie Gray in 2015 was cleared of all charges by a departmental trial board last week. That result is not surprising since one of the three law enforcement officers on the administrative trial board is a controversial captain with a reputation for violating the civil rights of protesters during the protests following Gray’s death.

None of the officers criminally charged for Gray’s death were convicted. Lt. Brian Rice, the officer who first initiated a foot chase with the 25-year-old African-American man, was found not guilty of several charges, including involuntary manslaughter, on July 18, 2016.

Two days before the verdict was rendered by Judge Barry Williams, a group of activists held a protest at the city’s Artscape festival. The protest, billed as Afromation, was shut down when city police engaged in a mass arrest of people near where the protest had moved to an already-shut-down freeway ramp. The activists have filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department, Commissioner Kevin Davis, and Captain Charles Thompson.

“The protest was designed to draw attention to a series of incidents involving the unlawful use of police force against African-Americans,” the lawsuit reads.

Thompson, about whom activists have long complained, is one of three members of the panel who judged Rice in the administrative trial, where he was charged with 10 offenses. If Rice had been found guilty on any of them, he could have lost his job. But, activists point out, an officer like Thompson, who could also potentially face charges himself, has a vested interest in keeping the stakes low—and clearing Rice of all wrongdoing.

“Thompson’s presence on the trial board makes it clear that there is no intention to hold anyone accountable for the murder of Freddie Gray,” the Baltimore Bloc, an activist group involved in the lawsuit, wrote in a statement. “Thompson’s history of violence and corruption is well known, as his is particular hostility to people who seek to hold other violent officers accountable. He has physically assaulted and otherwise violated the rights not only of protestors but of citizens merely attempting to observe police in the aftermath of the shooting of an unarmed citizen. His inclusion on the board is an insult to Freddie Gray’s memory and to the citizens of Baltimore.”

The Baltimore Police Department says it had no role in choosing Thompson for the three-member panel.

“The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) requires members of the Administrative Hearing Board (AHB) to be selected randomly,” spokesperson T.J. Smith wrote in an emailed statement. “This is accomplished by a computer randomizer. The names of individuals are selected by a computer program; then, the respondent officer is given the opportunity to makes ‘strikes’ in accordance with the CBA. The department is not permitted to make ‘strikes’ and does not have discretion in the selection process.”

After they were arrested, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were allegedly “left in the cramped vans at the Northern District Police Station for between 6 and 10 hours” in 90-degree heat, according to the suit. One prisoner passed out. All charges against the protesters were later dropped.

The suit alleges that the officers, including Thompson, falsely imprisoned activists without grounds to stop or detain them, and that they did not give activists enough time to disperse after instructing them to do so.

Thompson’s antagonism toward the activist community is long-standing. He has been involved in the arrests of activists on dubious grounds at least since the earliest protests following Gray’s death. He has also threatened numerous journalists, including me, Brandon Soderberg, and Reginald Thomas II.

The Afromation suit alleges that Thompson has told plaintiff Christopher Comeau that he “fucking hates” him and told Comeau he was “going to fucking sue your ass if you blow my ear drums out” with a bullhorn.

Thompson arrested Comeau two weeks after the suit was filed as Comeau filmed the arrest of another activist in City Hall. “No one unassociated with BPD has accused me of doing anything beyond filming at the time of that arrest,” Comeau said, although Thompson alleges that he was assaulted by Comeau, whose Nov. 16 trial was postponed because Thompson was still serving on the trial board.

“The irony is not lost on me that, at the same time I head to court . . . [to] face four charges, including second degree assault, the officer who has illegally arrested me and my friends on multiple occasions will be judging whether or not Brian Rice made an illegal arrest,” Comeau said.

In her criminal cases against officers Garrett Miller and Edward Nero, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby pressed the novel legal theory that making an arrest without meeting the legal standard of probable cause is assault. Nero was found not guilty when Miller testified that he was the one who arrested Gray. Charges against Miller were dropped after Rice was found not guilty and so the theory was never tested.

It did not even come up in the administrative proceedings, where the three-member panel was provided opportunities to ask questions of the witnesses.

“Did you think that any use of force occurred?” Thompson asked Miller at one point.

“No, sir,” Miller responded, satisfying Thompson.

But if Miller’s case had gone forward, it is possible that Thompson himself would be facing criminal charges, as well as a civil suit, over the Afromation mass arrest.

Brian Rice had faced administrative leave before April 12, 2017, when he called in an order to chase Freddie Gray. Documents obtained by the Guardian in 2015 showed that an ex-girlfriend claimed that Rice threatened to kill her when she tried to leave a house they had once shared. She filed a restraining order and said he kept an AK-47 assault rifle in the house.

In 2012, Rice reportedly threatened to kill both himself and the partner of one of Rice’s exes. “I witnessed Brian Rice remove a black semiautomatic handgun from the trunk of his vehicle,” the man wrote, adding that Rice sent “harassing and sexually explicit text messages” and “caused me to become distraught and fear my life was about to end.”

The man added that Rice encouraged his children to use a gun to shoot photographs of their mother and her new partner.

After this alleged confrontation, Rice’s guns were confiscated and he was temporarily relieved of duty.

But he was back in office by April 2015 and in charge of other officers. If there were a more robust trial board or disciplinary system that did not rely on officers like Thompson, perhaps he would not have been on the street when Gray was killed.

Visit therealnews.com for independent local, national, and international journalisms that examines the underlying causes of chronic problems and searches for effective solutions.

The post Controversial cop on the disciplinary board of Brian Rice, the highest-ranking officer charged in the Freddie Gray case, nearly assured the outcome appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

The Target at Mondawmin Mall, which will close on Feb. 3, 2018, is not like most other Target stores, according to West Baltimore residents and shoppers from all over the city. Councilperson Leon Pinkett of the seventh district, where the Target is located, totally agrees.

“I jokingly told someone that even as a councilperson, I don’t need a satellite office because all I have to do is go to that Target,” he said.

There he can meet his constituents and get a sense of the mood and tenor of not only his district but the entire city. Along with it being the rare one-stop shop in a part of the city mostly full of dollar stores, convenience stores, and scrappy small businesses you go to for one specific thing and one specific thing only, the Mondawmin Target is an inexplicable big box chain store contorted into a community space in a notoriously divested area lacking community spaces.

“I’ve only been to some of the other Targets but that particular store presented one of the most diverse Targets I’ve ever been in—a mix of individuals from all walks of life and from all over the city,” Pinkett said.

News of the closure was a surprise to “everyone in the community and to elected officials,” Pinkett said. “What has been related to me is that it was declining sales over a several year period without detail. What does that mean? The store was not profitable or just that it was not meeting the targets they set for a store?”

“I believe they’re really moving Target because it’s in a black community. This is just how they’re doing it,” Target shopper Brian Singleton told The Real News Network’s Eddie Conway last week.

Another shopper, Edward Craig, explained what Target meant to black shoppers in particular.

“This is the [Target] that we needed for the black people,” Craig said. “The one that’s out in the counties, not trying to be racist, but that’s for the white people.”

“This decision was not made lightly,” Target spokesperson Erin Conroy wrote over email about Target closing the Mondawmin location. “We have a rigorous process in place to evaluate the performance of every store on an annual basis, closing or relocating underperforming locations as needed. Stores that are closed as a result of that evaluation process have shown decreasing profitability over time. However, we don’t share any details beyond that in terms of how the process unfolds, as it’s internal to Target.”

Conroy said she could not answer further questions about general protocol for this “rigorous process.” The Beat also did not receive any clarification on whether or not a store is less apt or more apt to be closed if it’s near other stores (the Target in Canton opened in 2013, for example) or if Target, which touts its corporate wokeness, considers how specific closings might impact a specific community.

“I can tell you that Target has a legacy of giving back to the communities we serve, and Baltimore is no different.” Conroy said. “In Baltimore County, Target operates eight stores and employs more than 1800 people. Giving back to the communities we serve is part of Target’s DNA, and something we know our guests appreciate. In 2016, Target gave over $1.9 million in cash and product donations in the Baltimore area and our team members volunteered over 9,000 hours in the community.”

“People recognize that there are certain areas of the city where there’s a lack of fresh food—food deserts, but they don’t acknowledge the lack of retail opportunities in our communities as well,” Pinkett said, calling West Baltimore a “retail desert.” “And Target presented for the community in a retail desert a place to get the products they need in one stop.”

On Nov. 13, about 200 people from the community gathered for a public meeting about the Target closure at Baltimore City Community College. No Target representative was present at the meeting, residents noted. The forum focused on the ongoing rumor that it was theft (though Pinkett said that if this was the problem Target should have communicated this sooner) and the aftermath from the Baltimore Uprising (residents also noted that the Target was protected during April 27’s rioting) that led to the store closing.

Also mentioned: Target leaving so soon after getting financial help from the city. Target indirectly benefitted from a 2008 $15 million Tax Increment Financing (TIF) via noted mall and shopping center investor General Growth Properties (GGP) for improvements to Mondawmin Mall, improvements that arguably made it easier and cheaper for Target to open up there.

Meanwhile, employees of the Target will potentially lose their jobs and shoppers will have to schlep across the city to Canton to go to a Target in Baltimore City. According to Google Maps, to get from Mondawmin to the Target in Canton takes about a 25-minute drive or a 36-minute bus ride on the Navy Link, followed by a 12-minute walk from the closest stop (O’Donnell and Dean streets) to the store.

“One of the reasons that Target is such a critical asset is because in a city that is challenged with transportation, it provides a resource and an employer—we can debate about the wages but Target also employs 200 people in a community that desperately needs employment.” Pinkett said. “If there’s no transit accessible it’s a challenge to get [to another Target], employee or customer.”

Target spokesperson Conroy said over email that Target has offered employees the chance to relocate to another store.

“Our team is one of our greatest assets and all eligible Target store team members are being offered the option to transfer to other Target stores,” she said.

In what can only be described as a maddening—though telling—conversation, Conroy remained on the defensive, disinterested in Mondawmin Target’s specifics.

“For context, this year we are closing 12 stores on a base of more than 1800, and last year it was about 5. That’s in comparison to chains that are closing hundreds of underperforming locations,” she said.

At her weekly press conference on Nov. 15, Mayor Catherine Pugh said she reached out to Target and is intent on changing their minds.

“I know that the mayor has been intimately involved in reaching out to Target all way the up to the president [of Target], and I support that effort,” Pinkett said.

He is also focused on finding something else to replace that large retail space so that “it doesn’t go dark” in West Baltimore’s long-term growth.

“I want the community to know that West Baltimore is in a better place than it was 10 years ago. Do we wish that Target reconsiders? Absolutely,” he said. “But let’s work towards getting some retail or business to relocate. There’s a lot going on in West Baltimore. The future of West Baltimore is bright and whether Target wants to be a part of that future is up to them.”

Additional reporting by Eddie Conway of the Real News Network.

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