600+ pending Baltimore Police discipline cases could snag consent decree progress

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A federal judge said Thursday that his oversight of Baltimore Police’s consent decree with the Department of Justice could end within about two years — if the agency continues clearing out
“small but nettlesome remaining deficiencies” that remain.

But one challenge in particular could stand in the way of completion more than others, he said: a backlog of more than 700 officers waiting for a trial board to hear their disciplinary cases.

U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar, who has overseen departmental reforms under the consent decree for nearly a decade, mainly had praise for the agency during Thursday’s quarterly status hearing.

He terminated three more sections of the decree after finding the department and city in “sustained compliance,” bringing the share of the decree now in compliance or on track up to 83%. Bredar also said the parties should be looking toward full sustainment being complete by late 2027 and “the case closed within the next two years or so.”

But he remained challenged over how police would address the backlog of hundreds disciplinary cases, many of them for minor violations of departmental policies, that were awaited an administrative trial board. Although the city has made some progress as far as hearing more cases, it’s “still not enough” to address the mountain of violations, the judge said.

“I have identified this particular thorn in our side as being maybe the most painful one at the moment,” said Bredar, who has pushed for regular updates on the issue at the past several consent decree progress hearings but on Thursday seemed baffled by the figures cited by Olufemi Akanni, the department’s chief of public integrity.

Akanni told Bredar that 768 officers were involved in about 600 cases that were slated for administrative hearings.

“That’s a third of the sworn force,” Bredar responded, also recognizing that “all kinds of noise” interferes the clarity of the data.

Maryland overhauled the administrative trial board system and overall police disciplinary process as part of its 2021 package of police reform laws, which the department has blamed for troubles adjudicating hundreds of cases mostly stemming from low-level policy violations.

Any police officer accused of violating department policy can request that their case be heard by a trial board. A judge — either a retired trial court judge or a current or former administrative law judge — heads the board, which also consists of a civilian and a police officer.

Police departments across the state had to establish new training procedures for civilians and judges; such disputes were previously heard by boards of three law enforcement officers of the same rank as the accused.

Police Commissioner Richard Worley said outside the federal courthouse that the backlog is “a painful point for a lot of us” at the department.

Once an officer requests a trial board, the department is barred by the new rules from negotiating a resolution with the officer, prompting more delays, he said. With the Maryland General Assembly adjourned, a legislative fix is out of the question until at least next year, so officials are attempting to address the cases by working with the city’s legal side to staff up, Worley said.

Most of violations handled by the department’s Public Integrity Bureau are “minor training issues,” Deputy Commissioner Brian Nadeau said during the hearing. He added that when he started in 2019, internal affairs was handling “a ton of serious misconduct” that would now “get an indictment.”

The department’s consent decree, which followed a 2016 Justice Department investigation finding patterns of unconstitutional policing in the agency and a failing disciplinary system, requires the department to “use its best efforts” to ensure trial board hearings are conducted within 120 days of informing the involved officers of their discipline. The wait is still much longer than that. Most of the cases that scheduled to be heard this month are two or three years old, according to a hearing schedule.

Bredar said during the hearing that the police disciplinary system “has created odd motivations for some officers.”

“They calculate that it’s in their best interest to delay, delay, delay,” he said. He acknowledged that the process “has many participants, and many are responsible for it being where it is,” but that he would have “an extremely hard time” finding that the department has satisfied the consent decree’s requirements for handling misconduct while there are still “outstanding numbers like this.”

Akanni noted some signs of progress in addressing the backlog, though Bredar said it was only “very substantial progress as measured against a completely inadequate system.”

The agency has been working with the city solicitor’s office to recruit more attorneys for help, and cases are being heard more rapidly. The agency held 10 of the administrative hearings last month and had 14 scheduled for this month, Akanni said. Last year’s average was about two hearings per month.

This story has been updated.