MD State Police leader offers little insight into breakup of internal affairs division

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Despite state legislators’ probing during a virtual meeting Tuesday, the head of the Maryland State Police revealed little about why he broke up the agency’s internal affairs division earlier this month.

The investigators that formerly comprised the division, which investigates allegations and complaints of misconduct against state troopers, were reassigned to barracks across the state roughly two weeks ago.

The division previously comprised nine investigators assigned by region, according to the MSP’s website.

“It may seem extreme to some, but after some internal concerns came to our attention, we thought it best to start over completely,” MSP Secretary Col. Roland Butler said during Tuesday’s meeting.

Butler said Tuesday that complaints from members of the public and from officers within the MSP contributed to his decision, though he didn’t cite any specific incidents. The MSP, like other state agencies, generally declines to offer specific information about personnel matters.

The personnel shakeup comes as the MSP has been under renewed scrutiny for its hiring and employment practices.

In September, the state approved a $2.75 million settlement between the MSP and the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve claims of discriminatory hiring practices.

Current and former troopers have alleged in a separate class-action lawsuit that officers of color faced harsher discipline and were promoted less often than their white peers, among other claims of employment discrimination.

And a recent Baltimore Sun report revealed that in 2019 a trooper who potentially compromised a human trafficking and prostitution investigation at a West Ocean City spa after engaging in a sex act during an undercover sting received a demotion in rank and an unpaid, 30-day suspension. Other troopers have reportedly been fired for far less, an attorney stated in the report.

Butler said during Tuesday’s meeting that the report was “truly damning and quite frankly embarrassing,” but that person who oversaw the case is no longer with the department. He cited ongoing litigation in declining to offer more insight.

The internal affairs division now has a captain and a lieutenant commanding it, and investigators from other parts of the MSP — including from criminal intelligence, criminal investigations and patrol — have been temporarily assigned to help process complaints, the secretary said. Two civilian employees that were working for the division remained there, too.

The secretary’s answers for taking such a drastic step, though, didn’t appear to satisfy the top legislator on the joint committee on fair practices and state personnel oversight, Democratic Sen. Clarence Lam.

“I don’t know if I got a full understanding of the justification,” Lam said in a phone interview following the meeting. “The jury’s out on whether that was the right move or not.”

Lam said that there may be a perfectly good reason for why Butler reassigned the investigators, but “it’s important to be able to justify what led to that.”

It’s typically been difficult for legislators to get specifics when seeking accountability from the MSP, the senator said.

He’s also less inclined to extend the latitude he may afford to other agencies considering past concerns about discrimination and racist incidents within the department.

Lam said that current and former state troopers who’ve contacted his office still have a perception that MSP leaders had pushed out troopers for discriminatory reasons, and he asked Butler during the meeting whether the agency has the ability to reassess decisions made under the recently removed leaders.

Butler said the department is currently reexamining cases for which the prior division leaders were responsible.

“I am committed to doing what’s right,” Butler said. “It may not always be palatable at the onset, but I think as we gain momentum and we move forward and people see what the end result is, people will certainly understand why we took the course of action that we did.”