We wish we did not have to sound like a scratched CD. But the Baltimore City Police Department makes itself nearly impossible not to write about it. Once again, one of its own faces legal scrutiny.
To the list of charges being investigated against officers, which includes potential identity fraud, falsifying papers leading to a search warrant and lying, excessive force must be added.
A video obtained by The Examiner?s Stephen Janis shows an officer punching a handcuffed 53-year old man in the face and then throwing him on the sidewalk. The state?s attorney?s office is reviewing the video.
We know plenty of good officers put their lives in danger daily to protect Baltimore citizens. But the stream of negative news emanating from the department makes it easy to suspect systemic corruption within the force even if it does not exist. The police ? and the city ? can ill afford such a mindset. It?s not far fetched to imagine that the tension bred by such suspicions could erupt into violent riots.
When four police officers were acquitted in California state court in 1992 of using excessive force in stopping black motorist Rodney King, riots broke out in Los Angeles.
The looting and burning ended with 55 dead, about 2,400 injured and $1 billion in property damage.
Author and theologian C.S. Lewis wondered, “whether the great evil of our civil life is not the fact that there seems now no medium between hopeless submission and full-dress revolution” in “Reflections on the Psalms.”
Baltimore is not Los Angeles. But how many more times can the police arrest someone for stealing his own car and then sell it, as The Examiner has documented, or arrest its citizens at rates higher than New York, Philadelphia and Washington while still maintaining the highest murder rate for large cities before people respond? Maybe never.
But hoping for complacency in the face of injustice is at the very least terrible public policy.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm?s continued silence about charges against officers and the department means mistrust of the police can only grow.
We know he cannot discuss ongoing investigations. But he can and must assure the public that the BCPD expects officers to act to the highest ethical standard and that the police department will not tolerate those who do not. We?re waiting.
