Officer investigated over email exchange

The Baltimore police officer who exchanged disparaging emails about an alleged sexual assault victim with a city prosecutor is the subject of a disciplinary investigation, a police spokesman said.

The prosecutor no longer works for the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office, wrote State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby in a letter to The Baltimore Sun.

After the email exchange was highlighted in the U.S. Department of Justice’s scathing investigation of the city Police Department, The Sun submitted requests for the emails to the police and the prosecutor’s office under the Maryland Public Information Act.

The federal probe, released in August, found that Baltimore police fail to adequately investigate reports of sexual assault. In the email, a prosecutor referred to

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an alleged victim as “a conniving little whore.” The officer replied, “Lmao! I feel the same.”

Both agencies redacted the names of the prosecutor and the officer, saying that disclosing the names could endanger their “physical safety.”

In an email to The Sun, police spokesman T.J. Smith said it is the agencies’ position that because of “the current climate of retaliation against Law Enforcement Officers and Officials, to reveal the names of the individuals reflected in the email would create an unacceptable risk to the personal safety of those named in the document.”

Smith said the officer involved is now the subject of “an open and ongoing disciplinary investigation.”

The Jan. 29, 2013, email obtained by The Sun reveals that the alleged victim was a teenager, with the officer writing that the person “is almost 16.”

In her letter, Mosby said her office made “many attempts” to identify the prosecutor, who they determined no longer works there.

“If any of our current prosecutors are found to be engaging in the sort of unseemly conduct detailed in the Department of Justice’s report (specifically the section regarding Sexual Assault Investigations) there will be severe consequences for those actions,” Mosby wrote. “This administration has been and will continue to fight for sexual assault survivors and legislative reform both in Annapolis and in the courtroom.”