The Baltimore Police began to lay out some of their plans to improve community policing during a Wednesday city council hearing on the Brooklyn Day mass shooting. That shooting killed 18 year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez and 20 year-old Kylis Fagbemi while also injuring 28 others in early July.
Deputy Commissioner Eric Melancon and acting Commissioner Richard Worley laid out plans to improve community policing in the wake of the shooting. They were met with skepticism from a handful of council members.
One plan would have neighborhood officers essentially create guidebooks about their communities to ensure continuity between leadership changes.
Melancon explained that it would be a “living document” that Neighborhood Coordination Officers would update with information about annual parties and neighborhood events.
But Councilmember Kristerfer Burnett, who represents District Eight, wondered if BPD had the necessary relationships to carry out that action. “Even if they are a neighborhood services officer, people don't necessarily trust the police with this information,” he noted.
A key finding in the after-action report prepared by the police department Compliance Bureau and released by the City of Baltimore last month was that police relied too much on social media intelligence and established formal communications, like neighborhood associations or tenant councils, to learn about Brooklyn Day. Burnett observed that BPD isn’t the only department that struggles to garner relationships beyond formal channels. He said that problem goes “across the government.”
That after-action report blamed a lack of community policing for a large part of officers being unprepared for the Brooklyn Day party that ended in gunfire.
Community policing is a major plank of the federal consent decree between the Department of Justice and the police department — a recent report found the agency was lagging behind in its goals in that area.
“I do think that this is a huge blow to the citizens and their integrity associated with what the consent decree has produced to the city of Baltimore to date,” said President Nick Mosby.
Mosby followed a line of questioning he began at the last hearing: equity. He has repeatedly expressed doubt that a call for service in Canton or Fells Point would be met with the same lack of response as the ones in Brooklyn in early July. He didn’t feel those questions were completely addressed in the department’s after-action report.
“We can go over the recommendations about more police officers, about working with the sheriff, about working with other agencies, about more protocols, about more operation,” he said. “But it’s just noise until we change the culture associated with interactions of the Baltimore Police Department and the citizens of Baltimore.”
Dana Moore, the city’s chief equity officer, agreed.
“There needs to be a move away from getting to know the community you’re policing and getting to know the community you’re protecting,” she said.
If confirmed, acting Commissioner Rich Worley says community policing is priority number one.
