Criminal Justice

The Maryland General Assembly returns to Annapolis Wednesday for its annual 90-day legislative session, and it will be unlike any session the state has seen before. The COVID-19 pandemic will shape not just how the laws are made, but is expected to be a focal point of the policies written. 

Law enforcement officials and some of the police’s most fervent critics agreed during a four-hour state Senate hearing Thursday that the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights needs to be changed. They disagreed, however,  on the scope of the change.

The controversial Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights, or LEOBR, governs police internal investigations and discipline. Critics say it gives too much protection to police who violate rules or even the law. 

We begin today with former Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, who served as the city’s top cop from 2015-2018, in the direct aftermath of the unrest that followed the death and funeral of Freddie Gray, through the negotiation of a consent decree with the Department of Justice, and the transition in City Hall from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake to Mayor Catherine Pugh. 

Davis is now the Director of the Consulting Services Division of GardaWorld, an international security company.  He also teaches part-time at American University and Catholic University.

Mr. Davis recently wrote an opinion piece published in The Baltimore Sun that pushes back against the idea of defunding the police, and which offers a suggestion for a national approach to police reform, including creating a cabinet-level position of national secretary of police. 

Maryland hasn’t dealt with some 34 thousand residents who are still waiting to be processed for unemployment insurance. Baltimore County’s School Board cuts back a planned pay raise for teachers. Plus, a conversation with Wes Moore about racial inequity, police reform, and what the rest of the country might learn from Baltimore’s experience.

Streets around the world remain filled with protesters demanding that police be “defunded.” Today on Midday, a police perspective on the intensifying calls to defund and reform the nation's police departments.

Tom is joined by Officer Seth Templeton, a beat cop in Baltimore County who wrote an open letter in the Baltimore Sun to a protester, hoping to bridge the gap between demonstrators and law enforcement;  Chief Melvin Russell, who served in the Baltimore City Police Department for 40 years; and Matthew Horace, a 28-year veteran of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and author of The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement. 

As the country approaches the end of a second week of protests over police abuse of black Americans, state and local leaders in Maryland are calling for reforms, including changes to state laws governing police. Many of the proposed changes have been attempted before unsuccessfully, but some lawmakers say this time is different.

On Election Day, remote ballot issues force thousands to show up at the polls in Baltimore. Plus, civil unrest rages in other cities, but Baltimore is being held up as an example of powerful, peaceful protest. The head of West Baltimore’s No Boundaries Coalition talks about lessons learned in the wake of Freddie Gray and the hard work ahead.

Happy Memorial Day, and welcome to Midday.

The poet Langston Hughes asked “What happens to a dream deferred?” “Maybe it just sags like a heavy load,” he observed. “Or does it explode?” Five years ago, Baltimore did explode in a paroxysm of violence that has come to be known as “The Uprising.”

Today on this encore edition of Midday, we reflect on The Uprising with six people whose roots are in West Baltimore, who work with those who were most significantly affected in 2015 and who have been part of the positive change that the community has experienced, even as it continues to confront long standing challenges. This show originally aired on April 27, 2020.

On this special edition of Midday, six reflections on the April 27, 2015 Uprising, and how the community at the epicenter of that unrest - Sandtown-Winchester - has fared since a 25-year old black man named Freddie Gray died from injuries he sustained while in police custody.  At the heart of the protests and the rioting that erupted after Gray's funeral: anger and frustration with a system steeped in racism, inequity and apathy; and a police force that operated with seeming impunity...

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Five years after Freddie Gray died in police custody, we trace the impact of the Baltimore Uprising on young activists and organizers. Young people were at the center of the Uprising, demanding that those in power address injustice, police misconduct and more. Organizing Black's Michaela Duchess Brown, who grew up a few blocks from Gray, had already been organizing for eight years in 2015. She says the Uprising sparked a change in youth activism in the city. Plus, Jamie Grace Alexander, a black student activist formerly with the Baltimore Transgender Alliance, and Lana Weidgenant, of the climate justice group Zero Hour, tell us what the Uprising meant to them.

Two police officers assigned to a U.S. Marshals task force were shot in Northeast Baltimore on Wednesday, officials confirmed.

City police said the officers, one from Baltimore City and one from Baltimore County, are part of a fugitive task force attached to the U.S. Marshals office. They were among a group of officers trying to serve an arrest warrant on a man wanted in a Pennsylvania case about noon in the 5900 Block of Radecke Avenue.

The suspect opened fire, was shot and pronounced dead at the scene, police said.