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M AY 2 0 1 7 J U N
Meet the Candidates continued from page 15
NEW APPROACH TO
EARLY INTERVENTION
Rather, BPD has an Early Intervention System in
name only; indeed, BPD Commanders admitted to
us that the Department’s Early Intervention System
is effectively nonfunctional. he system has several key
deficiencies. First, BPD sets thresholds of activity
that trigger “alerts” to supervisors about potentially
problematic conduct that are too high. Because of
these high thresholds, BPD supervisors often are not
made aware of troubling behavioral patterns until
after officers commit egregious misconduct. Second,
even where alerts are triggered, we found that BPD
supervisors do not consistently take appropriate ac-
tion to counsel the officer, consider additional train-
ing or otherwise intervene in a way that will correct
the behavior before an adverse event occurs.”
The BPD is the eighth largest police depart-
ment in the country. Like most large police de-
partments, the BPD has faced challenges with re-
gard to police misconduct. The in-custody death
of Freddie Gray was the catalyst for civil unrest
in Baltimore, which resulted in dozens of Police
Officers being injured and numerous businesses
being damaged and destroyed as a result of the
violence. Six Baltimore Police Officers were ar-
rested but exonerated for the in-custody death
of Freddie Gray. After an “After Action Report”
with regard to the civil unrest was released by the
police department’s Fraternal Order of Police ,
Baltimore’s Police Commissioner, Anthony Batts ,
was fired by Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake .
Newly-appointed Police Commissioner,
Kevin Davis, identified the deficiencies within
the BPD’s Early Intervention System long before
In August of 2016, the Department
of Justice (DOJ), Civil Rights Divi-
sion, issued a report on their inves-
tigation into the Baltimore Police
Department, hereinafter referred
to as BPD. The report focused on
several areas of the police depart-
ment, and the Justice Department
summarized the investigation by
indicating BPD engaged in a “pat-
tern and practice driven by systemic
deficiencies in BPD’s policies, train-
ing, supervision and accountability
structures that fail to equip officers
with the tools they need to police ef-
fectively and within the bounds of
the federal law.”
Vernon Herron Within the DOJ’s report, the Civil
Rights Division’s investigators indi-
cated that BPD’s Early Intervention Program
was not effective. The report indicated, “The
BPD does not use an effective Early Intervention
System to detect officers who may benefit from ad-
ditional training or guidance to ensure that they
do not commit constitutional and statutory viola-
tions.” The DOJ’s report attributed the ineffec-
tive Early Intervention System as a nexus that
may have contributed to Police Officer’s miscon-
duct and the failure to identify when Officers
needed additional training. Also of concern, the
report indicated, “Related to BPD’s failure to su-
pervise its officers and collect data on their activi-
ties, the Department lacks an adequate Early Inter-
vention System, or EIS, to identify officers based on
patterns in their enforcement activities, complaints
and other criteria. An effective Early Intervention
System allows Sergeants, Lieutenants and Com-
manders to proactively supervise the officers under
their command and to continually assess officers’
risk of engaging in problematic behavior. The EIS is
a forward-looking tool that helps supervisors inter-
rupt negative patterns before they manifest as mis-
conduct or unconstitutional activity. Likewise, Ear-
ly Intervention Systems help supervisors recognize
positive patterns that should be encouraged. BPD’s
EIS does not achieve these goals. Despite BPD’s
longstanding notice of concerns about its policing
activities and problems with its internal account-
ability systems, the Department has failed to imple-
ment an adequate EIS or other system for track-
ing or auditing information about officer conduct.
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