August 9, 2016
By Peter Hermann, Lynh Bui and Matt Zapotosky
The Baltimore Police Department (click here) has engaged in years of racially discriminatory policing that targeted black residents, illegally detaining and searching people and using excessive force, the Justice Department concludes in a report released Tuesday.
In a scathing review that includes the historical backdrop of Baltimore’s racially divided past, civil rights investigators declare that a “legacy of zero tolerance enforcement” that started in 1999 and officially ended a decade ago “continues to drive” the policing strategy of the city.
The federal investigators found that officers are poorly trained and that the department has fostered a culture in which complaints against police are often ignored. Most of the unconstitutional stops occurred in predominantly poor black neighborhoods, the report says, and some people were stopped simply because police perceived them as disrespectful....
