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Meet the Candidates continued from page 15

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NEW APPROACH TO EARLY INTERVENTION

W ithin 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.

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

Vernon Herron

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.”

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