Baltimore police sent expired misconduct cases to city civilian oversight body, meaning officer discipline was impossible

Darcy Costello

The Baltimore Sun

August 7, 2024

The Baltimore Police Department has sent at least eight and perhaps as many as 20 expired misconduct cases to the civilian oversight body that renders disciplinary decisions, records obtained by The Baltimore Sun show.

That means those officers, investigated for misconduct involving members of the public, could not be disciplined by the city. State law sets the deadline for disciplinary action in those cases at one year and one day past the date of the initial complaint.

An internal city document obtained by The Baltimore Sun through a Maryland Public Information Act request lists 20 cases that the Office of Equity and Civil Rights says it received past expiration. The city office supports the Administrative Charging Committee and other police oversight bodies through its police accountability division.

Fifteen of those 20 were received on a single day in mid-April, the document shows, and the majority of those 15 were more than 100 days past the deadline for administrative charges.

Baltimore Police, in response, provided its own spreadsheet of the 20 cases, which in almost all instances listed different dates for when the investigations were sent to the Administrative Charging Committee and sometimes different expiration timelines. The department offered no explanation for why its information differed from the city’s.

According to BPD’s information,eight cases were sent to the charging committee past the deadline.

Police spokeswoman Lindsey Eldridge cited a previous department statement in response to a review by the consent decree monitoring team that found the quality of misconduct investigations was “markedly” improving, even though they are still taking too long. (BPD has been operating under a federal consent decree since 2017 after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found a pattern of unconstitutional policing.)

“We have vastly improved the quality of these investigations and acknowledge that there is more work to be done, and these changes take time,” the statement said.

Neither document contains details about the types of misconduct cases, the recommended discipline or what caused the delays. Cases sent to the charging committee involve members of the public but could vary widely from uses of force to harassment to abusive language.

The city Office of Equity and Civil Rights document shows one case was expired by one day when it was received by the staff supporting the Administrative Charging Committee, while others were expired by up to 278 days.

The Sun previously reported concerns that members of the civilian body had about Baltimore Police regularly turning over cases too close to deadlines, forcing them to hastily schedule meetings and squeeze hours of body camera footage into their free time. Members also raised concerns about how the tight turnarounds hinder their ability to fully vet police investigations or request further materials.

The city subsequentlysaid it is taking steps to remedy the issue by attempting to streamline the process.

Under a plan implemented earlier this year, the Baltimore Police Department is sharing case materials for investigations within 30 days of expiration, even if police haven’t completed their probe; is sharing a spreadsheet that lists cases 30, 60 and 90 days from expiration; and is making a staff member available for questions at charging committee meetings, including about officers’ disciplinary histories.

Ray Kelly, a community policing advocate and member of the Administrative Charging Committee, estimated this week that on top of the expired cases, BPD sent at least 50 others within a week of their expiration dates so far this year. The persistent issue, he said, risks compromising community trust and legitimacy.

“We don’t have these mechanisms because our police department was great. It’s because they were the worst,” said Kelly, who is also the executive director of the Citizens Policing Project. “We have to put everything into rebuilding that trust, before we can move forward with actual collaboration.”

David Rocah, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland, said the group had predicted the strict one-year statute of limitations would have this result and warned against including it in the police reform law passed in 2021. He called it a “travesty” that misconduct cases are being disposed of in this way.

“These cases should be determined on the merits,” Rocah said. “There should be substantive investigation and conclusion about whether the misconduct occurred, not administrative dismissals because we couldn’t do it in time.”

Kelly brought the Baltimore committee’s concerns to the statewide Police Training and Standards Commission that governs police certification and training, seeking statewide standards for when investigations are completed and sent to charging committees.

At the commission’s July 10 meeting, it voted to craft a survey to send to charging committees and law enforcement agencies across Maryland to gauge how widespread the issue of delayed investigative files is, or whether it’s isolated to a few jurisdictions.

The commission members, who include police leaders, prosecutors and others, expressed alarm at Kelly’s description of cases being delivered days before their expiration, or even after the expiration date.

Kelly, who also sits on the commission, said the city’s charging committee received a folder of expired cases from Baltimore Police.

“The cases that expired are truly concerning to me and I think every chief in this room,” said Maryland State Police Superintendent Roland Butler, who chairs the Police Training and Standards Commission. “You don’t want people falling through the cracks and evading this kind of [administrative] action.”

Some members argued that if Baltimore was the only jurisdiction facing the issue, it would be unfair to create statewide regulations around when cases are sent to charging committees. Butler and others urged the importance of gathering data to understand whether it was a localized issue.

“I hear what you’re saying. Because it’s not in your shop, it’s not in my shop, it doesn’t mean that as a body we shouldn’t put our heads together and address it,” Butler said to one sheriff balking at a statewide solution to what could be a local concern.

Zenita Hurley, a representative from the state Office of the Attorney General, suggested at the July meeting that the commission require agencies to inform the commission of the number of cases that were turned over close to expiration and to explain why they had taken so long.

“Right now, we don’t quite know how many cases are being delayed because there’s a criminal investigation or because there was a conflict in the investigating agency or because they’re overwhelmed because of low staff,” Hurley said. “But if we collect the data and require that the agency both give us the numbers and explain any outliers … then we could use that information to develop recommendations.”

Rocah agreed that understanding the reasons why cases took so long is important. He said the law needs to be reformed in the next session; he supports creating an exception for the expiration deadline for cases with parallel criminal investigations and potentially for those where a civil lawsuit has been filed. He also said the expiration deadline should not apply for the 30-day window for consideration by the charging committees.

The public wants “timely investigations,” Rocah said, but that requires the police department to adequately staff its investigative unit to handle the volume.

“If they’re not, then that police department simply cannot say that it is taking misconduct seriously,” Rocah said. “If you don’t staff the unit that investigates misconduct adequately to conduct the investigation within the time allowed by law, then that by definition means you don’t take it seriously. Period, end of discussion.”

Separate from the state law that sets the year-and-a-day deadline, Baltimore Police are required under the city’s policing consent decree with the federal government to complete investigations within 90 days. The department also is not meeting that mark.

Deputy Commissioner Brian Nadeau, who oversees the Public Integrity Bureau that investigates misconduct, said last month that it takes 136 days on average to complete an investigation.

Nadeau previously said the Public Integrity Bureauhandled 1,475 cases last year, roughly half of which involved members of the public and fell under the Administrative Charging Committee’s purview. He also said staffing shortages are hindering efforts to speed investigations, despite hiring civilian investigators and adding a second captain to help speed commanders’ review.

While the consent decree monitoring team’s recent report found improvement in the investigation, it also warned that the investigations needed to be completed more quickly.

Kelly believes there should be best practices that Maryland requires all police agencies to achieve, in the form of a deadline for when investigations are completed and shared with charging committees.

As it stands, the law requires charging committees to adjudicate cases within 30 days of receiving a completed police investigation, but there is no timeline for when police must provide it.

The whole process, Kelly said, is “controlled completely at the discretion of the police department.”

“If they give us the investigation two or three weeks before it expires, we don’t really have an opportunity to do a real microscopic review of the investigation or request more information,” Kelly said. “We definitely can’t subpoena anybody with a month left before expiration. That process is completely at the behest of the police department.”