Legislative panel eyes changes to police bill of rights

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A legislative panel is expected Monday to consider changes to a set of legal protections for police officers that could make the police department discipline process more public.

The 20-member Public Safety and Policing Work Group, led by Del. Curt Anderson, D-Baltimore City, and Sen. Catherine E. Pugh, D-Baltimore City, is scheduled to meet Monday to discuss changes to the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (LEOBR) that grants police officers special protections under the law. The legislative panel is tasked with making recommendations on how to improve law enforcement in Maryland.

“When you’re dealing with a police officer on the public dime, then taxpayers ought to have access to any discipline meted out by a police agency,” said Anderson, the co-chair of the work group.

The legislative panel was formed in May by House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. to look at public safety and policing practices in the wake of a legislation introduced earlier this year and the death of Freddie Gray, a west Baltimore man who died while in police custody. The work group is one of three taking up police and criminal justice-related issues before the General Assembly convenes in January. Other panels are  looking at body cameras or at how to lower the rates of incarceration in the state.

Supporters of the law say it is necessary to protect officers who often have to make life and death decisions in high stress situations. Critics say the law thwarts transparency and accountability.

More transparency

Included among the issues that Anderson said the panel will examine are making disciplinary procedures and outcomes more public, expanding the amount of time a citizen has to file a complaint against an officer or a lawsuit.

Anderson said the group will also look at changes that give officers 10 days before they have to make a statement related to suspects who died as the result of a police related incident and a 90-day requirement for people alleging police brutality to file a complaint — a deadline that a state court has ruled invalid.

“We’ve not come up with any direction we’re going to go, but there’s certainly room for change,” Anderson said. “There will be changes in the (Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights).”

Since its first meeting in June, the group has looked at issues including hiring practices, diversity within police departments and additional, periodic psychological evaluations of police officers. The panel is expected to make recommendations by the end of the year.

But such changes to the law are fraught with political challenges not the least of which will likely be stiff opposition from the Fraternal Order of Police, which maintains a strong lobbying presence in state government.

“We are very reasonable,” said Vince Canales, president of the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police. “We do get that there will be some discussion and maybe even some changes.”

Canales said officers rely on the law to protect their rights to due process.

“There’s been this concern that LEOBR is preventing officers from being prosecuted and it has nothing to do with criminal procedures at all,” Canales said. “There needs to be a lot of caution and care to protect officers who are making split decisions.”

Similar process 

And while he said he understands that some are skeptical of a process in which law enforcement agencies discipline their own officers,  in addition to criminal procedures, the process is not dissimilar to panels that oversee the behavior of judges, doctors, lawyer and even lawmakers.

Canales said most police disciplinary board hearings are already public processes, but that local governments and even the union do a poor job educating the public. He said the desire by lawmakers to make records that are often considered protected personnel records cannot be done selectively.

Del. John W.E. Cluster Jr., R-Baltimore County, who is also a retired Baltimore County police officer, said some lawmakers want to make the laws protecting officers a scapegoat for problems in one or two agencies.

“Every agency is not having a problem. It’s mainly in Baltimore City,” Cluster said. “We haven’t had a trial board in Baltimore County in two years. That means what we’re doing in Baltimore County is working, but we’re going to change a document that governs 22,000 police officers and change it because of a 1,000 people or one or two agencies that are a problem.”

Cluster said he understands there is already a move in the legislature to introduce legislation next year that would make more disciplinary records public, an issue he said a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge has said can’t be done for just one kind of public employee.

“If they want to change it, then it had better be changing it for all state employees and the legislature,” Cluster said. “If they bring that bill on the floor you can count on me to put that amendment in. What’s good for one is good for everybody.”