Attorneys for the plaintiffs in a civil rights lawsuit against the city alleging that black police officers were disciplined more harshly than their white counterparts filed briefs in federal court last week arguing that the department continues to shred documents key to their case.
The briefs, which ask federal Judge Paul Grimm to order the city to preserve various drafts of final reports, accuse the Baltimore Police Department of continuing to destroy documents that should be preserved.
“The draft investigative reports may well contain evidence establishing the department?s intent to discriminate against African-Americans,” Kristin Brown, attorney for the plaintiffs, wrote in a brief to the court arguing that Grimm should order the city to preserve drafts of internal investigation reports.
Hopson V. City of Baltimore, filed in 2004, alleges black officers are disciplined more harshly than white officers for similar violations. The disclosure last month by the city that confidential police command files from 2001 and 2002 were shredded ? allegedly because the department ran out of file folders ? has stalled the case.
Among the documents the plaintiffs attorneys said still were being shredded are “critical witness interviews and investigative drafts of the department?s Equal Opportunity Office, which investigates complaint of discrimination,” plaintiffs? attorneys argued in the brief.
But attorneys for the city countered in dissenting briefs that the preservation order includes too many documents and is burdensome to the department.
In an affidavit submitted to the court, Deputy Chief of Internal Investigations Maj. Joseph Smith III, stated that the 1,117 Internal Affairs investigations closed out by his agency in 2004 generated thousands of documents his department does not have adequate space to store safely.
“We have a limited number of closeted rooms in which documents may be stored securely,” Smith wrote in his affidavit.
Smith said it would be necessary to rent an extra room to store the documents. Judge Grimm has declined to allow the plaintiffs to depose of additional police department personnel involved in the shredding, or to order the city to stop shredding draft reports.
