{"id":6080,"date":"2017-01-27T10:18:30","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T15:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=6080"},"modified":"2017-03-19T21:42:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-20T01:42:22","slug":"a-most-telling-consent-decree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=6080","title":{"rendered":"A Most Telling Consent Decree"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A Most Telling Consent Decree<\/h2>\n

Published in the Daily Record January 27, 2017<\/p>\n

At this writing, we don\u2019t know whether the proposed consent decree between the City of Baltimore and the U.S. Department of Justice<\/a> will ever be approved and go into force. But its 215 pages are worth a read, if for nothing more than insight into the kinds of things that have gone on between minorities and police in Baltimore and probably across our country.<\/p>\n

What It Presupposes<\/h3>\n

Sometimes it\u2019s not so much what a document says as what it presupposes that is most telling.<\/p>\n

The decree disclaims liability, of course, and proceeds to be very inexplicit about the crisis in Baltimore\u2019s policing that set the stage for it. But it ordains a huge training effort, promises to rewrite major portions of a departmental website, commits to generating a large number of periodic reports, agrees to buy tons of equipment, restructures its officer discipline program, and installs a court-appointed monitor, none of them things you would do unless there was something \u2013 actually a lot of somethings \u2013 to fix.<\/p>\n

Buried in passing phrases of the document are some pretty direct indications of what those somethings are.<\/p>\n

Field Interviews<\/h3>\n

Example: \u201cOfficers conducting a Field Interview shall do the following: a. Introduce themselves by name and rank as soon as reasonable and practicable\u2026\u201d[1] No need for that unless it doesn\u2019t always happen. And what would it be like to have an unidentified cop asking you questions? If you\u2019re reading this paper, it may not have happened to you, but you know the answer.<\/p>\n

Or: \u201cOfficers engaged in \u2026 a Field Interview may not use a person\u2019s failure to stop, failure to answer questions, decision to end the encounter, or attempt or decision to walk away to establish reasonable suspicion to justify an Investigatory Stop or Detention, Search, Citation, or Arrest of the person.\u201d[2] Imagine how powerless the subject of a \u201cField Interview\u201d must feel when he knows that just walking away may get him arrested.<\/p>\n

How about this? \u201cBPD will ensure that officers understand that there is no routine or automatic \u2018officer safety\u2019 justification for a Frisk or Pat Down during an Investigatory Stop.\u201d[3] That is not to say there may not be circumstances that justify it, as the Decree spells out. But no boilerplate presumptions that justify frisking someone. Again, why would anyone insist upon this, unless it were a problem? And it\u2019s not hard to guess what kind of problem it is.<\/p>\n

Frisks<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s a beaut: \u201cBPD officers shall not conduct Frisks or searches of LGBT individuals for the purpose of viewing or assigning gender based on the person\u2019s anatomy or genitalia.\u201d[4] Who would even have thought this went on? But provisions like this must have a context: they don\u2019t come out of thin air.<\/p>\n

And what reason could there be for a provision like this?: \u201cBPD will ensure that officers issue a Citation or make a custodial Arrest only where they have probable cause to believe a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a criminal infraction or citable offense.\u201d[5] In my neighborhood, that principle probably goes without saying 99.9% of the time. A few blocks away, though, it could be another story, partly because of Quality of Life Offenses (all caps in the original). These include things like gambling, disorderly conduct, and that perennial favorite: failure to obey an officer. The decree would require a senior officer to sign off before the arrest, and that officer is supposed to check both for the discretion of the act (arrest as opposed to warning or citation) and for probable cause. You don\u2019t build checks and balances into the system unless it\u2019s producing arrests without cause or exhibiting some other abuse of discretion.<\/p>\n

Demographics<\/h3>\n

Police will now also need to document the demographics of each stop and each frisk.[6] As this column has noted before<\/a>, similar statistics maintained by the New York PD revealed marked patterns of stop and frisk aimed at minorities \u2013 and also that frisks of white folks were more likely to turn up contraband than frisks of citizens of color, suggesting that police were underpolicing the (slightly) more contraband-carrying class, i.e. white people. It\u2019s not hard to guess that the Justice Department thinks similar demographics would turn up here.<\/p>\n

I could quote lots more. But the point is, the document suggests a world in which the police interact with parts of the public in an impolite, intimidating, and discriminatory fashion, enforcing the law with highly discretionary and unpredictable rigor, more intent upon exerting control than being fair, and predictably behaving far worse in racial and sexual minority communities than in white ones.<\/p>\n

I do wonder whether the apparent hostility of the new administration to attempts to use DOJ consent agreements to ameliorate urban policing problems<\/a> will ultimately lead to the decree\u2019s withdrawal or, if approved, lack of enforcement. I also wonder whether, assuming it goes into force, the enormous cost compliance with this agreement would impose upon the City in staffing, training, and reporting<\/a> would be tolerable. Drastic understaffing in the Baltimore police<\/a> would also create its own problems even if the money were there.<\/p>\n

Rough Rides<\/h3>\n

To choose but a single example, taken straight from the Freddie Gray debacle: there are, as one might expect, multiple provisions specifically forbidding \u201crough rides,\u201d the practice of letting unsecured suspects slide around inside paddy wagons being deliberately driven erratically.[7] There are companion provisions requiring cameras in the backs of the wagons,[8] and requiring medical monitoring and the providing of medical attention to transported arrestees as needed.[9] But the retrofits to wagons take money and time; the problem the Freddie Gray defendants complained of (how an officer secures a suspect without exposing a gun to its possible seizure) is not addressed; and the exigencies of driving a wagon directly to a lockup or a hospital amidst moment-by-moment fresh demands for its presence elsewhere have not been solved.<\/p>\n

Urgency<\/h3>\n

Whatever comes of the decree, though, the half-articulated realities glimpsed in it underline the urgency for a real response.<\/p>\n

_________________<\/p>\n

[1] \u00b6 34.<\/p>\n

[2] \u00b6 36.<\/p>\n

[3] \u00b6 47.<\/p>\n

[4] \u00b6 53.<\/p>\n

[5] \u00b6 60.<\/p>\n

[6] \u00b6 88.<\/p>\n

[7] \u00b6 223, 226-28, 231.<\/p>\n

[8] \u00b6 224.<\/p>\n

[9] \u00b6 233.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this writing, we don\u2019t know whether the proposed consent decree between the City of Baltimore and the U.S. Department of Justice will ever be approved and go into force. But its 215 pages are worth a read. Sometimes it\u2019s not so much what a document says as what it presupposes that is most telling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigpicture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6080"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6153,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080\/revisions\/6153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}