Ex-police commissioner Ed Norris blasted the Baltimore City Police Department for shredding court-protected documents in a federal civil rights case. Norris told The Examiner ? after federal Judge Paul Grimm ordered affidavits from three police employees who participated in the shredding ? that department policy forbids it.
“You don?t shred documents, period,” he said. “It?s outrageous.”
Grimm ordered the affidavits at a Wednesday hearing for the case, which alleges black officers were disciplined more harshly than white officers for similar violations of departmental policies.
He said the affidavit should include any knowledge the employees have of why the documents were shredded.
“They should say what they were told and who told them to do it,” Grimm said. “As well as if they overheard something.”
The police employees ? an officer, a cadet and contract worker ? have a week to 10 days to submit an affidavit to the court, the judge said. The documents, 2001 and 2002 confidential command files and administrative tracking files, were shredded by the department because, officers said during a deposition, the police department had run out of file folders.
After the hearing, police officials said officers selected to shred 2001-02 confidential command files for recycling because they were thinner than other files.
“They?re thinner,” said Elizabeth Harris, an attorney for the city. “The typical administrative tracking folder contains, at most, a few pieces of paper,” she said, referring to files that plaintiffs argued were crucial to their case against the department.
But Norris, who left the police department in December 2002 and was later convicted of using police funds for personal use and lying on his tax returns, said documents are notdestroyed without department-wide approval.
He dismissed the city?s claim that the files were destroyed to recycle folders. “If you?re going to destroy documents,” Norris said, “it has to be thoroughly vetted department-wide before it happens.”
