“Displaying characteristics of an armed person” is one of the phrases we hear most often. Typically, it is used by prosecutors in bail reviews as they read or summarize a police report and describe what a cop alleges happened.

“Characteristics of an armed person” comes directly from Baltimore Police Department training materials that instruct officers on how to conduct stops and searches. It is intended to meet the standard of “reasonable articulable suspicion.” Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard meant to limit police by making arbitrary stops illegal. Instead of just stopping people at random, we are told that officers must have reasonable suspicion that a crime was, is, or is about to be committed. Without reasonable suspicion, theoretically, evidence from an illegal stop may be inadmissible. 

On first reading, it might seem like common sense. A cop stops someone only when there is some suspicion that is reasonable and specific enough to articulate. In reality, the language is a farce currently being used to legitimize the rebranding of stop-and-frisk, zero-tolerance, mass incarceration-style policing. 

When examining how the phrase “characteristics of an armed person” operates in the real world, the important question is: when does this standard limit police stops and searches? What is not reasonable suspicion? The characteristics we have heard mentioned in court include a wide variety of clearly harmless and innocent behaviors. 

These characteristics include: wearing a hoodie around your waist in the spring, wearing a black satchel, wearing all black, acting nervous, backing up when approached by police, turning your body away from police, leaning away from police, quickening your pace, walking with a backpack and holding it against your body, pinching your legs together, having an observable bulge, walking up to a car, touching another person’s hand, grabbing your waistband, holding your waistband while running, holding your waistband for more than five seconds, holding your waistband for a while and then later not holding your waistband, fleeing when an unmarked police car drives directly at you, being recognized by police, and widening your eyes when you see police.

These behaviors are not illegal, suspicious, or inherently indicative of anything. As we heard a defense attorney tell a judge about one of the above characteristics, “everyone could be stopped if that was reasonable suspicion.” And that is the point: these characteristics’ broad and vague nature allows police to justify any stop.

The Department of Justice’s 2016 report on the Baltimore Police Department went into detail on the many aspects of BPD’s harmful and often deadly practices. One section titled “BPD Uses Unreasonable Force Against Persons who Are Fleeing from Them and Present Little or No Threat of Harm” includes a subsection on foot chases (II.C.4.b.i.). This section is particularly relevant because the report itself was largely a response to the murder of Freddie Gray, which occurred after a chase that police said was justified because he ran after making eye contact with police.

The report states that in justifying chases, “officers frequently cite factors learned in BPD’s training on ‘Characteristics of an Armed Person’ such as ‘grabbing one’s waistband’ or ‘wearing loose clothing.’” The DOJ goes on to say that BPD’s training materials warn officers of “false positives” and tell them that “eighty percent of individuals who show characteristics of an armed person… will not be armed.” 

In a footnote, the DOJ clarifies that it is “highly unlikely that only eighty percent of individuals who are wearing loose or baggy clothing are unarmed.” They advise officers to rely on a “set of characteristics” rather than a single characteristic. Presumably, if your eyes widen because a cop with a gun is approaching, you may also back away, and you just might be wearing a hoodie or black satchel.

Whatever exceedingly small percentage of the time benign characteristics like wearing loose or baggy clothing align with a person being armed, it is absurd to believe they are cause for “reasonable” suspicion. But in Baltimore City, cops are arresting, prosecutors are prosecuting, and judges are holding people in cages based on an underlying assumption that it is reasonable. And it doesn’t stop there. Despite a consent decree and promises of reform, police are using “characteristics of an armed person” to get away with shooting and killing people.

In May, Officer Cedric Elleby chased and shot a 17-year-old in the back. The BPD said officers initially approached him because he “displayed characteristics of an armed person.” Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates refused to press charges against the officer but is prosecuting the victim.

On November 7, Baltimore Police officers William Healey, Brittany Routh, Justin Oliva, and Brandon Columbo chased, shot, and killed 27-year-old Hunter Jessup on Wilkens Avenue. In a press conference at the scene, Commissioner Richard Worley explained why the cops chased Jessup: “They saw something that made them believe he was armed.” 

Worley also praised his officers, saying they’d done a great job apprehending an armed individual.

Community members who spoke to the media in the immediate aftermath and the days that followed mentioned frustration with police harassment and violence. 

Both shootings were instigated by District Action Teams that are designed to replace the Gun Trace Task Force. And they are doing the same, terrorizing citizens and increasing arrests. Their stated goal is to get guns off the street. But these special units have no special powers to sniff out guns. Instead, they often simply patrol, drive around, and harass Black people until they initiate an interaction where they determine the person “displays a characteristic of an armed person.” 

Baltimore Courtwatch is made up of Baltimore citizens who watch court proceedings and report what they see in order to hold court actors accountable and end the injustice of the criminal legal system. Learn more about them at baltimorecourtwatch.org. 

The post Displaying Characteristics of a Carceral State appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

While some may feel that writing about Palestine is far from our mission at Baltimore Courtwatch, we recognize that speaking up about systematic violence and oppression is exactly what brought us to our work. We see the connections from Baltimore to Palestine and across the globe. We stand in solidarity with Palestinians because we recognize those connections.

At the time of this writing, bombs manufactured in the U.S. and provided to Israel have killed over 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza—at least 4,000 of whom are children. As more reporting and images come out of this region daily, an international movement to stop the Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Gaza has blossomed. While the White House and the majority of Congress continue to resist calls to push for a ceasefire and end U.S. financial and military support of Israeli atrocities, actions in the U.S. have seen unprecedented levels of participation.

On November 4, massive marches occurred in cities throughout the world, calling for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Palestine. This included Washington, D.C., where hundreds of thousands gathered for the largest protest in U.S. history in support of Palestinian liberation.

In Baltimore, actions have included marches, a public recitation of the mourner’s kaddish, and a sit-in at Rep. Kweisi Mfume’s congressional office. The November 1 sit-in was undertaken to demand Mfume co-sponsor a U.S. House resolution urging President Biden to call for de-escalation and an immediate ceasefire. A march that began at Penn Station went to Mfume’s office to rally in support of the sit-in.

While highlighting the horrific and urgent current conditions in Gaza, speakers made connections between the oppressive settler-colonial violence of the Israeli military and the Baltimore Police Department. For years, BPD’s oppressive policing tactics and consistent brutality have led to even mainstream commentators describing BPD as an occupying army. There are obvious and important differences between the Israeli military and Baltimore Police, but the connections are real and critical to understanding the solidarity displayed by Baltimoreans in the last month. 

While the military relationship between the U.S. and Israel goes back decades, the specific practice of exchanges between the Israel Defense Forces and local police departments in the U.S. began largely after 9/11. Baltimore Police have been involved in several trips to share with and learn from Israeli security forces, going back to at least 2002. After the 2016 Department of Justice report on Baltimore Police, Amnesty International’s specialist on Israel noted the training U.S. police forces have received from Israeli security forces on “crowd control, use of force, and surveillance.” Al-Jazeera also reported on the U.S.-Israeli exchanges in the midst of the national uprising of 2020 following the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

Scrutiny on these partnerships has grown over the last decade. In 2017, Jewish Voice for Peace launched a campaign called “Deadly Exchange” highlighting these interactions between U.S.-based police and Israeli security forces and calling for them to end. JVP’s 2019 report details the types of collaboration and departments involved. 

Critically, the campaign specifically rejects any antisemitic insinuation that Israeli training produces oppressive U.S. policing. Rather, it recognizes that U.S. policing has its own history of anti-Black oppression that pre-dates Israel by centuries and focuses on how oppressive institutions of control and violence have taken these exchanges as an opportunity to provide each other with tactics and strategies to further their own goals. 

In JVP’s words, “What we do claim is that these U.S.-Israeli police exchanges serve to reinforce, circulate, and promote the discriminatory and brutal policing practices that already exist in both countries, including practices of mass surveillance, deadly force, the use of military technology, and racial profiling.”

Durham, North Carolina, became the first U.S. city to ban the exchanges in 2018.

Not only has Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott not called for an end to these exchanges, he has not acknowledged the escalating destruction of Gaza at all. 

In Baltimore, we see the mass surveillance connection in the familiar flashing blue lights of CitiWatch cameras. Baltimore-Palestine Solidarity (BPS) has highlighted this in a campaign to connect Israeli apartheid with Baltimore segregation. BPS notes that former mayor Martin O’Malley’s mass incarceration “zero-tolerance” program included contracting Israeli defense companies to provide CitiWatch cameras throughout Baltimore. The cameras were developed for and first utilized on the Israeli apartheid wall to surveil Palestinians. Now, these cameras are ubiquitous in the Black Butterfly. BPS says the use of these cameras “allowed the criminalization of Blackness to be modernized.” 

After receiving assurances from his staff that Mfume (who was not present) had been informed of and heard their demand, sit-in participants left his office and addressed the rally of supporters. The action ended with a vow to come back and a return march to Penn Station. Mfume later released a statement that he does not support the ceasefire resolution.

Baltimore Courtwatch is made up of Baltimore citizens who watch court proceedings and report what they see in order to hold court actors accountable and end the injustice of the criminal legal system. Learn more about them at baltimorecourtwatch.org. 

The post Baltimore to Palestine appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

The summer of 2023 saw the return of a youth curfew, crackdowns on dirt bikes, attacks on young squeegee workers and politicians calling for more power to arrest, detain, charge and ultimately cage Baltimore’s youth. The crackdown and demonization of youth is known to primarily harm Black youth Data from the State of Maryland shows that from 2013 and 2022, 80.5 percent of children charged as adults in Maryland were Black. 

In the last several months, elected officials across the state and across party lines have made public calls to reduce the rights of children specifically. Much of the focus of the attacks has been a 2022 law – the Child Interrogation Protection Act (CIPA) – passed by the Maryland General Assembly to protect the rights of children. 

The law was backed by organizations including ACLU Maryland and the Maryland Youth Justice Coalition as a way to protect children from interrogations by police without a full understanding of their rights. It includes provisions that parents or guardians are notified when a child is arrested, that attorneys are consulted before the child is interrogated for the first time and that Miranda rights are given in age-appropriate language. 

“Studies show that children waive their Miranda rights at a rate of 90 percent and make false confessions at a higher rate than adults,” ACLU Maryland noted in its 2022 General Assembly report.

Since the law went into effect, the attack on children’s rights has come from county executives, local prosecutors, state delegates and more. In July, shortly after the Brooklyn Homes mass shooting, 10 prosecutors across the state, including Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates and Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger, attacked CIPA and the Juvenile Justice Act of 2022. Since then, the list of politicians making public statements against CIPA includes Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott (D), Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski (D), Howard County Executive Calvin Ball (D) and Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly (R). 

The consistent theme of the criticism is that the law prevents police and prosecutors from holding “out-of-control” youth accountable. Bates has specifically referred to this law as hampering the investigation of the Brooklyn Homes mass shooting. While the talking point of youth crime and violence on an uncontrolled spiral may feel correct for many who are bombarded by both traditional and social media hyper-fixating on youth crime, this myth withers in the face of reality. 

In September, the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services released a report that showed youth crime is unambiguously declining – not rising. Further, in attacking a bill designed to protect the rights of children, these politicians are ignoring reports that police are not actually following the law and respecting those rights. The Baltimore Sun reported that police are not contacting the attorneys of arrested children to explain their Miranda rights. How can the law prevent police and prosecutors from doing anything if it is being ignored? 

At Baltimore Courtwatch, we have been particularly disgusted by the way our legal system treats children. Our report covering data from 2021-22 showed that children were treated more punitively and more harshly than adults – not more leniently. In that period, we observed 570 bail review hearings involving children charged as adults. Much of that is due to a Maryland law that requires charging children as adults in certain cases, a law that youth advocates have been fighting to change with the Youth Equity and Safety (YES) Act.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, we observed prosecutors argue to hold children in adult jails six percentage points more often than actual adults (86.3 percent versus 77.3 percent). In the same period, judges ordered children held in adult jails 13 percentage points more often than adults (64.7 percent versus 51.7 percent). 

In other words, Baltimore City Circuit Court judges held children in the most restrictive possible conditions significantly more often than they imposed those conditions on adults. In fact, judges chose the least restrictive possible option for children only 1.2 percent of the time. The number for adults was 4.1 percent. We will not release 2023 data before early 2024 to allow for an accumulation of enough data. In the meantime, we can say there is not an obvious or overwhelming shift from the previous years of observations.

Blaming children for the problems adults have caused is convenient for politicians due to the massive power imbalance. Baltimore City’s youth are over-policed, under-invested in and have the least access to power. They have no right to vote or to choose the budget. They have not created any of the conditions they are forced to survive. For example, Baltimore’s youth did not choose to fund school police over HVAC. 

It is inconceivable that a teenager has too much power in this city and that the mayor, city council, State’s Attorney, and Baltimore Police Department have too little. Adults in this city must accept that we have failed to create a world within which children are safe and can flourish.

The post Why blame children for adults’ mistakes?  appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

The Baltimore City Circuit Court website refers to jury trials as “the foundation of the American judicial system.” As such, the history of jury duty in this country is, unsurprisingly, a history of the systematic exclusion of and harm to Black people, women, indigenous people, and other marginalized communities. Currently, jury pools are selected from voter registration rolls. Nominal victories to expand the right to serve on juries are systematically undermined by white supremacy. The game is rigged, and white supremacy will always win. 

In Maryland, the barriers to fair and representative jury pools are firmly and deeply entrenched. Maryland is one of 12 states where Black people make up more than 50% of the incarcerated population. In fact, a 2021 report by The Sentencing Project, an organization that advocates for legal system policy reforms with a racial justice lens, found that in Maryland, 71% of incarcerated people are Black – the highest rate in the country. Black people make up just 29% of the total population. State Senator Jill P. Carter (D) has led efforts over the last few years to address some of these systemic issues. These include raising jury pay and reinstating people with a criminal conviction to the jury pool. 

Like most reform efforts, it’s useful to consider what a victory would truly mean. Surely it’s better, but what good is a more representative jury that still enforces the laws produced and maintained by white supremacy? Enter the concept of jury nullification. 

Jury nullification is a concept that is hundreds of years old. It has been used by jurors who refuse to find people guilty in cases involving escaped enslaved people, union busting, war resisters, alcohol and cannabis prohibition, and other unjust laws. In the last several decades, prison-industrial complex abolitionists have advocated for people of conscience to use this power in all cases. 

Beyond criminal courts is a digital resource hub collaboratively created by abolitionist organizations working to dismantle the entire prison industrial complex. Their jury nullification toolkit describes it as “a concrete, practical way that jurors can assert their values and express their moral disagreement with unjust laws and punishment, by refusing to convict someone who is being charged with a crime.”

Many people react to a jury summons by asking, “How do I get out of this?” For people who are disgusted by courthouses and the administration of laws in this system, it can feel like participating in that oppressive system. Public defenders and defense attorneys often privately complain that many people who are skeptical of police and the criminal justice system will intentionally work to have themselves removed. The effect is that juries are even further from a representative and just process.

Jury nullification is an opportunity to use your power as an individual to intervene and preserve one person’s freedom. It is a rejection of punitive justice, a recognition of the harm being caused by the prosecution, and a refusal to turn your back on the person being prosecuted. Courts recognize that this is a denial of and threat to their legitimacy. 

Judges and prosecutors actively discourage or prevent nullification from even being discussed. Federal courts have ruled that defense attorneys cannot mention jury nullification to jurors, judges can remove jurors who indicate they will nullify, and judges can instruct jurors that they would be breaking their oath if they nullify. Public interest attorney Jordan Paul describes it as the “erosion of the right to jury nullification.” 

In unconnected 2015 cases, two Coloradans and a Michigander were charged with jury tampering for passing out pamphlets with information on jury nullification outside a courthouse. Both cases were fought all the way to the highest courts in their states. Both won their appeal, with many, including the ACLU, defending their First Amendment right to discuss jury nullification. 

In 2020, the Supreme Court of Maryland recognized the threat to the system and ruled that jurors have the “inherent ability” but not the “authority” to engage in jury nullification. But they recognized that juries have the power to nullify and that jury nullification occurs. 

While you may be removed for stating your intentions to nullify, the truth is that an individual always has the power to act on their conscience to stop injustice, and no one can force you to discuss why you made your decision on a jury. You can commit to not convict a person based on your own reasoning and try to convince your fellow jury members to take the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” seriously.

At a moment of rising fascism, jurors across the country will be asked to decide cases involving abortion, drag show bans, resistance to police training facilities and many other attacks on marginalized people. If you are called to serve on a jury in Baltimore, in addition to the above examples, you may be asked to decide on a case where police planted evidence. Or where a teenager was targeted and arrested for “displaying the characteristics of an armed person.” Or where a man was shot by police and subsequently charged – as five sets of juries did in the case of Keith Davis Jr. All of these cases will be inextricably tied to the Baltimore Police Department with its anti-Black past and present. 

We encourage you to research jury nullification for yourself and consider showing up for jury duty to exercise your power to keep a human out of a cage. It is a small way to show up for others. Each jury holds someone’s freedom in their hands, and every guilty verdict we allow empowers and emboldens this system.

Baltimore Courtwatch is made up of Baltimore citizens who watch court proceedings and report what they see in order to hold court actors accountable and end the injustice of the criminal legal system. Learn more about them at baltimorecourtwatch.org. 

The post Jury Nullification: Your Power To Choose appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Baltimore Courtwatch started doing this work because the courtrooms that exist in the popular imagination and the rights that we are told we have do not in any meaningful way exist in real life. The bail review process is one of the places where this is most stark and most jarring.

One example of this is the presumption of innocence. People imagine a justice-minded judge or defense attorney protecting a person who may appear guilty at first glance. They might think that the accused will be allowed time, space, and evidence to prove that they didn’t do the thing they are accused of. The reality is that guilt is often assumed above and beyond all reasonable doubt.

The legal standard in bail reviews is that the allegations or charges must be viewed in a light most favorable to the state. Judges will often reject or cut off any discussion of why the facts may show a person is innocent. That includes violations of constitutional rights or police tactics that are illegal. The reason is that, in their words, “that is a trial matter.” Meaning that the bail hearing is not for determining innocence or guilt but for setting bail. The result is that in these hearings, the police report or “statement of probable cause” is presumed true.

This is especially infuriating because bail reviews happen before the trial. That means that the person has not had their day in court and is legally innocent. In fact, the charges may still be dropped and often are. In the reality of Baltimore City courtrooms, a person who has not been found guilty of anything can be held for months (in some cases, we have observed, more than a year) based solely on the fact that they are presumed guilty in these hearings.

In one recent case, Judge Christopher L. Panos heard a person being held in a cage ask to be allowed home detention so he could help care for his three children, including a newborn. The defense attorney explained that his partner prematurely gave birth after his arrest, and her postpartum depression was severe enough that she was nearly hospitalized. This father waited for the opportunity to explain all the difficulties facing his family and begged to be allowed on electronic monitoring lockdown at home. Panos responded that he was “very aware” of the “horrific unintended consequences” of “your criminal activity” before ordering him held without bond. To be clear, this person has not been found guilty of any of the charges he was being held under.

You may wonder if this is an outlier judge or circumstance. After observing more than 6,000 hearings, we can assure you it is not. Judges are humans and can find paths to justify the outcome they want. This reality of a presumption of guilt often appears in cases involving young people. 

In some cases, we have heard young people appear with a mountain of community support. Parents, extended family, teachers, coaches, and other community members will appear or write letters giving support and promising to be even more involved moving forward. Judges will then lament that a young person whose case is before them with that much support would still do wrong. It is taken as evidence that they are beyond help. However, when a young person appears with little or no support and a history of trauma is presented by the defense, judges will often explain that the lack of support makes them a larger threat to public safety. 

We hear, often from the same judge in the same docket, both of these arguments regularly. Both assume the accused must have done something wrong to be in this position. As usual for Baltimore’s youth, the system holds them guilty of simply existing. 

This presumption of guilt reveals itself in other ways as well. Recently, we heard a case involving a person being caged with several serious medical conditions. This is common. It is also common that their medical condition worsens significantly while being caged. In this case, the person’s conditions included diabetes, and they had not been receiving the proper medical care. Judge Kendra Y. Ausby, while discussing her thoughts prior to ruling on the bail review, admonished this person. She acknowledged the seriousness of the health issues and said he should have taken his “fragile health” into account before being arrested. Again, a case of a defendant being presumed guilty.

Panos, Ausby, and all the other circuit court judges would likely take issue with our inability to grasp all the legal concepts involved or the minutiae of how they play out in various court proceedings. And that is exactly our point. The popular imagination version of our justice system collapses under this reality. Our judges, prosecutors, and other elected officials present a false picture of a legal system built on common sense fair standards that protect the accused. They then shake away the cognitive dissonance in a flurry of legal jargon that justifies their role in the horrors of caging humans.

The reality is that even after a damning Department of Justice report and resulting consent decree, even after the Gun Trace Task Force scandal, even after studies consistently show the ways white supremacy shapes our legal system – a Black teenager is assumed guilty based on the words of a Baltimore City Police Department officer alone. The presumption of innocence is only for the system.

Baltimore Courtwatch is made up of Baltimore citizens who watch court proceedings and report what they see in order to hold court actors accountable and end the injustice of the criminal legal system. Learn more about them at baltimorecourtwatch.org. 

The post Presumed Guilty appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

On July 17, 2023, Mayor Brandon Scott announced he was nominating Richard Worley as Baltimore City’s next police commissioner. If confirmed by the city council, Worley will replace Commissioner Michael Harrison, who in June announced he would be leaving the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) after more than four years in charge. 

Worley has spent 25 years as a member of the BPD. He began his career as a patrol cop in the Western District before moving up the ranks. He oversaw the Northeast District from 2012 to 2016 and has been in upper command since 2018.

A hearing on Worley’s nomination in the City Council’s Rules and Legislative Oversight Committee, previously scheduled for Aug. 15, was canceled to allow time for a series of meetings where Scott and Worley could hear from the public. It was rescheduled for Sept. 21 at 5:00 p.m. The Baltimore Banner also reported that Judge James K. Bredar — the judge overseeing the consent decree process — approved of Worley’s nomination during an Aug. 24 quarterly consent decree hearing. 

Following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into the city’s police department which found that they had engaged in “in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law.” That included: excessive force, unconstitutional stops, and retaliation. Baltimore entered into the consent decree, which is aimed at addressing those issues, in 2017. 

Since then, politicians have promised that they will be the one(s) to usher in a new era of public safety. However, this summer, with Scott touting curfews for teenagers, State’s Attorney Ivan Bates returning to broken windows policing and Worley’s nomination signals that local leaders are done even pretending to “reform” the mass incarceration machine.

The public relations junket for Worley follows the typical pattern for incoming commissioners since at least 2017. A coronation tour focuses on the hope of new leadership, with politicians  vowing to listen to community concerns, professing their care for those communities but giving few details about concrete changes they believe will create the safety all agree is needed. Little to no serious pushback or vetting for commissioners occurs, while the Baltimore City Council and media almost uniformly rubber stamp the nominee. 

This coronation is typically followed by the most frustrating dynamic in Baltimore politics. The promises made prior to assuming office are followed by an insistence that the most powerful officials are powerless to do what communities demand when they are in office — even if they already promised it.

Scott, for example, campaigned against allowing a Johns Hopkins University private police force. But since assuming office in December 2020, he has helped with plans for the private police force to move forward, while strongly implying that state law has tied his hands. In fact, the bill passed by the state legislature and signed by then-Gov. Larry Hogan in 2019 (prior to Scott’s campaign promises) allows but does not require a JHU private police force. Former police commissioner Harrison signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that has been challenged in the courts by local residents and is currently being appealed. Scott could publicly and forcefully speak out against the MOU and nominate a commissioner who would reject and withdraw from the MOU. He made the choice not to.

Can we expect the same from Worley? His history of refusing responsibility suggests yes.

We know Worley oversaw the Northeast District when Tyrone West was brutally beaten to death by his officers. The officers responsible for the initial stop and for beginning the violence — Nicholas David Chapman and Jorge Omar Bernandez-Ruiz — racked up complaints under Worley’s leadership. This includes the case of Abdul Salaam, who was pulled from his car and beaten by Chapman and Bernardez-Ruiz days before they killed Tyrone West. Chapman was found guilty of assault and false imprisonment, while Bernardez-Ruiz was found not guilty of assault and guilty of false imprisonment in March 2016.

When questioned about this in recent public meetings, Worley claimed to be powerless to review the case. During the recent Brooklyn Day shooting, Worley was acting commissioner. His initial response was that BPD and he were “unaware” of the popular event and any potential trouble. When it became apparent that the community alerted BPD to potential issues hours before the shooting, he countered that the department needs more technology and power to more oppressively surveil. 

The same leadership never wants for power when furthering mass incarceration is on the agenda. When business leaders demanded a larger police presence in Fells Point, there was no red tape or no shortage of patrol cops. When Bates wanted to create a new docket for low-level citations, no one was powerless to help enact that plan. When the Downtown Partnership demanded squeegee kids and unhoused community members be removed from downtown business intersections, there was no lack of power.

However, when thousands demand justice for Tyrone West, or that Johns Hopkins University be denied an armed private police force with immense and unaccountable power,  suddenly, powerful hands are tied and nothing can be done.

Beyond the case of Tyrone West, Worley was in leadership positions both when the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) operated with impunity and when it was recently reformed and renamed District Action Teams. GTTF was also the inspiration for the HBO limited series, “We Own This City.” 

As Worley’s nomination moves forward, we are left with a slew of questions. Is it credible to believe that someone who spent 25 years in a police department notorious for extreme violence and consistently violating the rights of Black Baltimoreans did not participate in or observe any of that violence? Why did he not whistleblow on any wrongdoing at all while scandals abounded? If he did, where are the Internal Affairs reports on it? 

According to him, what powers does he have, and what powers can the city council exercise under local control? Will he blame residents for not “cooperating” with police for his failures? And, most importantly, why should anyone believe policing can solve any of the problems of public safety when they have not for decades? 

And while the new commissioner strives to convince the public that he will oversee mild “reforms,” we know that even if they succeed by his measure, they fail to address public safety, police brutality, justice or any of the public’s true concerns. This continues to leave anyone who wants a true public safety agenda in the position of needing to look outside BPD and the current punitive justice system entirely. The call to defund and abolish BPD is not a fantasy, but the only realistic path to a liberatory future. 

The post Worley Nomination Signals End of any Pretense of ‘Reform’ appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

In the first six months of Ivan Bates’ administration, we observed 274 Baltimore City Circuit Court bail review hearings. For context, we are comparing that period to the first six months of 2022 under Mosby’s administration, when we observed 684 hearings. That difference in total hearings is largely due to judicial policy changes regarding bail review dockets and overall trend changes due to a shift in judicial COVID-19 policy. 

We questioned whether Bates would continue Mosby’s practice of asking that defendants be kept in jail until trial in a great majority of bail review hearings. Overall, in the first six months of 2023, Bates’ office asked for the most restrictive condition of ‘held without bond’ (HWOB) 79.6 percent of the time. This is still the overwhelming majority, though less than 85.1 percent under Mosby during the compared time. The Bates administration also requested electronic home monitoring in 10.2 percent of hearings, slightly higher than Mosby’s 8.9 percent.

We also asked if Bates’ SAO would use a defendant’s previously dropped charges or charges that did not end in a conviction in their arguments for HWOB. Comparing the first six months of 2022 under Mosby to the first six months of 2023, Bates’ staff used dropped charges and charges that did not end in a conviction as supporting evidence for their request at pretty much the same rate as Mosby’s staff (Bates 9.1 percent vs. Mosby 9.2 percent). In 21 out of 25 such hearings, Bates’ office used that category of charges to argue for HWOB — or, in plain English, keeping someone in a cage until trial.

Another question we asked was whether Bates would deny that staff miss hearings on a regular basis. Of the 48 hearings with a missing prosecutor, 41 occurred after an assistant state’s attorney (ASA) filled in at the last minute for a colleague who had not shown up. The other seven hearings had no prosecutor show up at all. Those 48 hearings represent 17.5 percent of the total hearings we observed. While Bates’ office has staff missing hearings, they also insist that a defendant missing a court appearance (labeled ‘failure to appear,’ or ‘FTA’) is a reason to keep a person in a cage while awaiting trial. Judges similarly excuse prosecutorial truancy while harshly judging defendants for the same. FTAs often result in judges issuing bench warrants, and consequent arrests. 

We also wondered if Bates would allow his staff to request that children be kept in cages in adult facilities, as his predecessor did. We are horrified that this policy has continued under Bates. Of the 274 hearings we observed, 27 — about 10 percent — involved children being charged as an adult. One of those children was a 17-year-old chased and shot by a plainclothes Baltimore Police officer while running away. The officer, Cedric Elleby, who fired into the child’s back, was not charged by Bates.

Beyond charging children as adults, we criticized Mosby’s administration for requesting the harshest pre-trial status (HWOB) more often for children than they did for adults. While Bates’ SAO has requested HWOB for child defendants in 25 of 27 hearings, statistically, the small number of cases we’ve seen so far makes it too soon to compare percentages with Mosby’s office. However, we can say that there is no obvious difference or change from Mosby’s SAO seen in the data thus far. 

The harsh treatment of children by Bates’ SAO is aligned with the current hyperfocus on extreme punitive measures by city leadership. Bates’ first six months have also seen him support a youth curfew, advocate for longer sentences, denounce academics for using studies to contradict his policy proposal, direct police to use discredited ‘broken windows’ policing, and support a crackdown on squeegee workers. 

Reviewing his tenure, we must also commend Bates for following through by dropping charges against Keith Davis Jr. and releasing him after more than seven years and five trials. This decision does not mean that Bates is making strides in halting police violence. In the first days of his administration, Bates announced he would not press charges against Baltimore City Police Officer Connor Murray, who shot and killed Donnell Rochester in February 2022. In May, as mentioned above, Officer Cedric Elleby chased and shot a 17-year-old in the back as he ran away. Rather than charge Elleby, Bates quickly charged the teen. 

Bates has pursued charges against some officers during his tenure. In March, Bates announced that Officers Walter Wilson and Larry Worsley were indicted by a grand jury. Wilson is charged with misconduct in office and Worsley is accused of assaulting someone with a firearm, outside of a bar, while off duty. While details are sparse in each case, neither appears to confront systemic police violence. The standard seems to be that blatant corruption and off-duty violence will not be tolerated, but violence in support of the state will be protected.

This all confirms what we wrote in January and learned long before then. The whole system is guilty as hell. There are no good police, no good prosecutors, no good judges in a system built on, by, and for white supremacy. 

Baltimore Courtwatch is made up of Baltimore citizens who watch court proceedings and report what they see in order to hold court actors accountable and end the injustice of the criminal legal system. Learn more about them at baltimorecourtwatch.org. 

The post Ivan Bates’Six-Month Review  appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Throughout May, Baltimore Courtwatch volunteers observed 43 Baltimore City Circuit Court bail review hearings. These hearings were presided over by Judge Jennifer Schiffer, Judge Christopher Panos, and Judge Kendra Ausby. A bail review hearing occurs when the pretrial detention status of the defendant gets reexamined by the defense counsel, the prosecutors, pretrial services, and a judge. Ultimately, the judge decides if the detention status changes or stays the same. 

In 74.4% of those hearings, assistant state’s attorneys argued the judge should order the accused person to stay locked in a cage until their trial. Another 11.6% of the time, the ASAs argued the judge should order electronic home monitoring. In the end, 41.9% of hearings resulted in a judge ordering the person held without bond, and 32.6% resulted in a judge ordering electronic home monitoring. While we can learn from data, we started this project to look at the people behind those numbers. 

In one case, we heard about a person who was stopped by police for wearing multiple layers of clothing. Despite the obvious issues with stopping people for such trivial reasons, the process of a bail review prioritizes the charges and statement of probable cause even if the defense points out the police officer acted illegally. Here, when the defense attorney pointed out that the stop  was not proper, Ausby’s response was that, for bail reviews, the court relies on the result and not how the result was reached. The result of this bail review was this person was held without bond while awaiting trial. 

Speaking of clothing, we also heard a case involving an 18- year-old chased by police after they noticed a “hoodie was tied around his waist.” The officer chased him with a weapon drawn. This occurred roughly three weeks before Officer Cedric Elleby chased and shot a teen in the back. The same phrase (“characteristics of an armed person”) that was used by police to justify Elleby shooting a minor teenager was used by Assistant State’s Attorney Alison Rajk in this bail review hearing to justify the chase.

We also heard a trans woman facing eviction, and lamenting that the state was using old instances of not appearing for traffic court to hold her longer. At the time of the hearing, she had already been locked in a men’s prison for over a month.

Another hearing involved a person with a serious medical condition. This person had recently watched another incarcerated person with the same medical condition die in front of them. They were worried the same would happen to them due to inadequate medical care available in detention. Schiffer ordered this person held without bond before hearing any argument from the state and after only a brief argument from the defense.

Next, State’s Attorney Ivan Bates recently announced that his office will focus on low-level offenses like dirt bike riding. City leadership, including now-departed Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, insisted this policy change will not lead to mass incarceration. We hope that the case below will illustrate what the state’s attorney’s policy will actually entail based on how they currently handle such cases.

On May 23, the Baltimore Police Department announced that their dirt bike enforcement initiative throughout April had led to the arrest of 11 people and charges for 17 others. Our observers heard one of these cases as it worked through the system to a circuit court bail review hearing. This case involved a single father of a young child. Even after being held for over a month for a crime with a maximum sentence of 90 days, and despite body camera footage contradicting elements of the arresting officer’s account, Assistant State’s Attorney Ray Clark argued for this person to be held without bond. 

It must be emphasized that none of these people have yet had the opportunity to defend themselves in court from accusations by one of the most corrupt police departments in the country. And as Ausby alluded to in the first case, the manner of the arrests and any constitutional issues are irrelevant in these bail hearings. All these people were locked up for at least a few weeks, and many of them will still be sitting in cages this July Fourth. The prison-industrial complex is a window into America’s actual values: violence, cruelty, and hypocrisy. We insist that any talk of ‘freedom’ while caging human beings on stolen land is a farce. May we recommit ourselves to working towards ending that farce.

Baltimore Courtwatch is made up of Baltimore citizens who watch court proceedings and report what they see in order to hold court actors accountable and end the injustice of the criminal legal system. Learn more about them at baltimorecourtwatch.org. 

The post Freedom for Whom? appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

The impetus for building the compound is clearly linked to mass uprisings against police murders. Prior to the initial proposal of Cop City in 2017, uprisings throughout the country, including Baltimore, marked a growing mass movement against police brutality. These laid the groundwork for the unprecedented, nationwide uprising in the summer of 2020 following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Police across the country violently rioted against protestors, arresting thousands.

Since 2020, no serious measures have been put in place to address police violence by reducing their power. Instead, politicians have dedicated billions of dollars more for “training” and the further militarization of local police departments — often led by Democrats such as President Joe Biden and Mayor Brandon Scott. This spending has occurred as fascist attacks on transgender people, abortion access, Black people, immigrants, disabled people, and the push to install Christian theocracy have increased. 

Targeting scapegoats, such as Black and transgender people, is at the forefront of every fascist movement. However, none of this occurs without a fight. Activists are organizing and mobilizing on every front, with legal challenges, massive protests in the streets, and efforts to gain legislative victories like the Trans Health Equity Act in Maryland. 

In this context, training for urban combat against protesters is a declaration of war against dissent. Cop City has become the centerpiece of the state’s effort to violently enforce submission of the domestic population.

The Atlanta Police Department has escalated that war on dissent as the movement to Stop Cop City has grown to threaten its construction. Repression tactics have included the assassination of forest defender Tortuguita, the arrest of protesters simply leafleting information, mass arrest of attendees of a music festival in the Weelaunee Forest, charging people with terrorism, and the arrest of three organizers of the Atlanta Bail Fund. 

These fascist tactics should sound the alarm. The most recent, criminalizing bail funds, is a short step from criminalizing legal defense funds, immigrant support funds, abortion funds, mutual aid funds — any fundraising efforts that the state deems against their interest are at risk. Not only has the state intentionally abandoned its people and violated the land, but it is punishing anyone who attempts to care for those the state has harmed for defending the land from capitalist exploitation and further violence and deforestation.

As repression of dissent against Cop City has escalated, in Baltimore we have seen our own troubling, reactionary thrust towards further empowering police. Media sensationalization of crime — even as police admit crime is down — has been exploited by Baltimore’s political leadership. 

On May 26, Mayor Brandon Scott began to enforce a summer curfew targeting the scapegoat for citywide violence — Black teenagers. This will involve volunteers stationed in the Inner Harbor, Federal Hill, and Fells Point to confront and discourage youth gathering. That the youth are primarily being discouraged from gathering in the “white L” is surely a coincidence.

Also in May, Baltimore Police Officer Cedric Elleby chased and shot a teen in the back. Police said the teen was “displaying the characteristics of an armed person,” a phrase our observers hear daily on the bail review docket. Routinely prosecutors will use “characteristics of an armed person” to explain a cops’ reasoning for stopping, arresting, or shooting someone. It is also notable that this officer was a District Action Team member. Recent reporting in Baltimore Magazine has revealed the connection between DATs and the infamous, scandal-ridden Gun Trace Task Force. Within weeks, the State’s Attorney’s Office, under Ivan Bates, cleared the officer in this shooting and charged the teen as an adult, 

Then on June 1, the State’s Attorney’s Office announced the implementation of a “broken windows”-style policing strategy with their Uniform Criminal Citation docket. Police will focus on citing people for offenses such as anything related to dirt biking, loitering, hacking, panhandling, and failing to obey orders. While Bates said the focus is on issuing citations, anyone familiar with policing in Baltimore (or anywhere in the US for that matter) knows traffic stops, street stops, and other interactions for minor reasons often escalate in horrific ways. 

These steps show Scott and Bates have fully embraced “tough on crime” mass incarceration policies. While these are known to harm Black people most, marginalized people throughout Baltimore will be harmed. This attack must be met with pushback. Here we can look to the power and determination of the Stop Cop City movement for inspiration.

In the early morning of June 6, following roughly 14 hours of community testimony overwhelmingly in opposition to Cop City, the Atlanta City Council passed $67 million to fund construction. Still, Stop Cop City organizers repeat their mission: Cop City will never be built. The fight goes on as organizers plan a week of action for June 24-July 1 and on June 7 announced plans to bring Cop City to a referendum.  

We can echo this call in Baltimore: we will love and protect our neighbors and community. We must resist repression and fascism from the State’s Attorney’s Office and BPD. We will not leave anyone behind.

Baltimore Courtwatch is made up of Baltimore citizens who watch court proceedings and report what they see in order to hold court actors accountable and end the injustice of the criminal legal system. Learn more about them at https://baltimorecourtwatch.org/. 

The post Repression of #StopCopCity Rings Familiar in Baltimore appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Officials from MDPSCS released a statement that said that they cannot comment on pending lawsuits but that the Department of Justice audits “one-third of the state’s correctional facilities each year.”  

The audit MDPSCS referenced is meant to ensure compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which, according to a report from the ACLU, provides only minimal legal protection for trans people in prisons. While it may be true that these facilities meet state and federal standards, those standards don’t go far enough to keep prisoners safe. 

The most recent audit for the Baltimore City Central Booking and Intake Center in February 2023 reported that they found no violations of state or federal policies. This statement also reports there were three allegations and zero criminal sexual harassment investigations in  Central Booking in the past 12 months. This audit does not reflect what we hear weekly in bail reviews when defense attorneys describe the conditions and experiences their clients face in Central Booking. 

MDSPSCS’s statement also says that the department “is not aware of any facility that has ever received a corrective action for a transgender-related issue.” However, this appears to discount the 2015 decision of Brown v. Patuxent Institution. Administrative Law Judge Denise Oakes Shaffer concluded Patuxent Institution was in violation of federal law by “failing to have appropriate policy in place to address protection for transgender inmates.”

The proposed order in Brown v. Patuxent Institution told Patuxent to create and promote “comprehensive policies and institute mandatory training regarding transgender inmates” to be in compliance with federal law. By failing to establish appropriate policy regarding interactions between employees and transgender prisoners, including house determinations, Oakes concluded that the facility was in violation of PREA.

The department’s updated “Medical Intake” policy after the 2015 decision stated, “incomplete surgical gender reassignment requires that the patient be classified according to his or her birth sex for purposes of prison housing, regardless of how long they may have lived their life as a member of the opposite gender.” 

Gender is not a binary. Therefore, there is no “opposite” or “incomplete” gender. Medical procedures are not the sole qualifier to be trans; this policy intentionally rejects the multitudes of gender identities that come from social, cultural, racial, psychological, financial, and other factors. It also ignores the existence of intersex people and those with other chromosomal sex differences. A decision to undergo surgery belongs to a trans person alone. Many trans people do undergo surgery, and many do not. Restricting the rights of transgender people by including only those who have had a surgical procedure is active violence.

MDPSCS policy lists questions such as the age of recognition, state of transition, hormone treatment length, and evidence of transition, and yet still maintains that housing by gender is based on genitalia and surgery alone. None of these factors are the qualifiers of being trans: gender identity is known by a person themselves, not the medical steps they take.

This policy is known to create a huge threat to the safety of incarcerated trans people. According to the ACLU, “Any policy that mandates placement of transgender and intersex individuals based solely on a person’s genital characteristics or gender designation on state-issued identification presents a clear PREA violation.” MDPSCS’s solution to pervasive violence against trans people is to keep them in solitary confinement indefinitely — or, in the words of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, torture.

Multiple bills were introduced during the 2023 legislative session in Annapolis that attempt to address these issues. The bills tackled a variety of issues, including reporting based on gender orientation, protecting trans people in jails and prisons, and creating an ombudsman position to investigate complaints and report results to authorities. None of these bills made it out of committee due to the lack of political will of the Democratic supermajority to protect some of the most vulnerable and marginalized in our jails and prisons. 

Even with proposed reforms, there is little transparency or oversight of the prison system in Maryland. It appears current MDPSCS transgender policy may be in violation of federal law with no consequence. The PREA audit intended to catch these violations reports implausibly low numbers of sexual harassment and abuse. According to the ACLU, penalties for noncompliance are weak, and easily avoided by providing non-concrete “assurances” that they are working towards compliance.

Jails and prisons put trans lives in danger every single day. There is no possibility of safety and protection through incarceration and dehumanization. In order to keep trans people safe, we need to keep them out of jail and provide them with resources to thrive.

The post Safety for Trans People Cannot be Found In Cages appeared first on Baltimore Beat.