Baltimore City police officers are jumping ship and joining the Maryland Transportation Authority Police.
“We have an unusual number of people leaving,” said Paul Blair, the head of the Baltimore city police union, who said nine sergeants are expected to retire this year. He said officers are frustrated with being forced to participate in an arrest-quota system that the administration says does not exist.
“Part of the exodus is the arrest policy. No matter what you do, they always want more arrests, and officers are frankly tired of it,” Blair said.
The MTAP has been a huge attraction for city police officers, said MTAP spokesman Cpl. Jonathan Green. In fact, the entire fall lateral class, training for officers transferring from other agencies, is made up of former city police officers, he said.
“We have 21 former city police officers out of the total 23,” he said. “It?s safe to say it?s a lot from one agency.”
But Matt Jablow, spokesman for Baltimore Police, said that retirements are down over last year.
“Last year in September, we had 17 officers retiring, this year 15. We have not seen an unusually high number of retirements recently,” said Jablow, pointing to similarly low numbers in August compared to last year.
But Blair said that it?s not just how many, but who is retiring that concerns him. With six sergeants retiring in September, two in October and one scheduled to leave in November, Blair said the drain on good supervisors will affect the quality of policing.
“If you lose that kind of experience, who are to be your new leaders and train the new kids coming into the department?” he said.
City Council Member Ken Harris, who has called for hearings on the city?s arrest policies, said, “We can?t afford to lose good officers. One key thing, we need to exit poll to find out why these officers are leaving the agency.”
