MD Legislature Abolishes Special Bill Of Rights Just For Cops

They're not getting defunded, we'd just like them to stop killing civilians, please and thank you.

(image via Getty)

“Maryland is leading the country in transforming our broken policing system. I am proud to lead the House in overriding each of the governor’s police reform vetoes,” tweeted Maryland’s House Speaker Adrienne Jones on Saturday after the legislature overrode Governor Larry Hogan’s veto of multiple bills to overhaul policing in the state.

“Now, for the first time in our nation’s history, the rights of officers will not be held above the rights of individuals, and policing in Maryland will be transparent and citizen-centered.”

The Maryland Police Accountability Act of 2021 revokes the state’s Law Enforcement Bill of Rights and codifies a system to hold police accountable for misconduct while imposing multiple new restrictions on use of force. In addition to limiting no knock warrants and mandating body-worn cameras, the law imposes an obligation on officers both to intervene to stop a colleague from using excessive force and to report such illegal activity to superiors after the fact.

The bill further makes police misconduct charges public records, even those that were not sustained, and increases the role of civilian boards in adjudicating those charges.

In vetoing the bill, Governor Hogan accused legislators of caving to a “political agenda” and claimed that only serving no knock warrants between 8am and 7pm “endangers police officers, occupants, and bystanders.” Similarly he argued that publishing police misconduct allegations would “place the officers’ safety at risk, erode officers’ relationships with the residents of our most vulnerable communities, and deter witness participation in the prosecution of violent crimes.”

Although he failed to say exactly how publicly acknowledging which cops have the most excessive force complaints against them would “deter” witnesses from coming forward to testify. It’s not as if Black residents of the state don’t know which cops are harassing them — the issue is making it visible to White people, too, in the way that cell phone cameras made George Floyd’s killing “real” to White America.

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George Floyd’s killing did not spark the same kind of unrest here in Maryland as it did in other parts of the country, perhaps because we’re still processing the violence after Freddie Gray’s death at the hands of Baltimore City police. Six years ago today officers threw Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, in the back of the police van for the “rough ride” that severed his spine, killing him a week later.

And while the Baltimore Uprising was traumatic for all Maryland residents, it was certainly less traumatic than generations of Black citizens being systematically harassed or worse by law enforcement. There’s a reason Freddie Gray ran from the cops that day even though he was doing nothing wrong.

“I want to make it out alive, too,” said Del. C.T. Wilson, a Black Democrat.

“When I look into that officer’s eyes, they’re not looking at me like I’m another human being,” Wilson said. “At best, I’m a threat. At worst, I’m an animal. That is unacceptable.”

In the intervening six years, Baltimore City’s police force agreed to implement a series of reforms under a consent decree by the Obama Justice Department — a decree Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to void. And Baltimore City’s Gun Trace Task Force imploded under a spectacular corruption scandal sparked when a Harford County cop went to put a tracking device on a suspect’s car, only to discover another, unregistered device already there. Because City cops were tracking drug dealers’ cars so they could break into their homes and rob them at leisure. Yes, literally.

So, yeah, we need police reform here. And not just in the City, either. Just a week ago, an off-duty Capitol cop fatally shot two suspects in Montgomery County as they fled in a stolen car.

“They were shot in the back,” Del. David Moon said.

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“Guess what color they were? They were Black. . . . You cannot tell me that we don’t need this legislation. Literally as we were debating this, this happened. It’s unacceptable, this culture of violence.”

Similarly, Anton Black, a 19-year-old college student, was killed in 2018 as he was being restrained by three Caroline County police officers. The county fought for months to keep body cam footage of the incident from the family, and later it emerged that one of the officers had racked up dozens of use-of-force complaints as a police officer in Delaware.

It’s not a few bad apples, and Maryland’s supermajority legislature wasted no time in breezing past Hogan’s veto on Saturday. They also abolished life sentences for juveniles and returned local control of the police force to Baltimore City for the first time in 160 years.

It’s a start.

Maryland enacts landmark police overhaul, first state to repeal police bill of rights [WaPo]
Maryland legislators pass landmark police reform package into law, overriding Gov. Hogan’s vetoes [Baltimore Sun]


Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.