First public police discipline hearing – then seven canceled

After a Baltimore police officer was found guilty of misconduct during internal disciplinary hearings that were opened to the public Monday, the next seven officers on the docket decided to accept punishment in last-minute settlements.

While officers frequently settle, some of officers who settled last week didn’t want to have the misconduct allegations made public, according to Lt. Kenneth Butler, vice president of the city’s police union, and Mike Davey, a Baltimore lawyer who represents officers.

Such hearings had been kept private. That changed with legislation passed by the Maryland General Assembly earlier this

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year as part of broader police accountability reforms.

Baltimore police officers may appeal disciplinary cases to internal trial boards after an administrative investigation finds them guilty of misconduct. Possible punishment ranges from a written letter of reprimand to firing.

The details of misconduct complaints against individual officers are still kept private, unless they reach the hearing stage.

In the first hearing to be held in public since the law passed, the trial board found Officer Alice Carson-Johnson guilty of misconduct for missing a meeting in August 2015 with a prosecutor,who was preparing for the trials of officers accused in the death of Freddie Gray. Carson-Johnson’s lawyer said it wasn’t a “big deal” and pointed out that she met with the prosecutor the next business day. (All of the officers in the Gray case have been cleared.)

Butler also said some of the officers recently settled because the odds of winning before trial boards have diminished.

From January to August, all 11 officers lost their appeals before the trial boards. Officers faced much better odds in 2012. That year, 57 percent of officers lost their appeals. Ever since then, winning cases has grown more difficult.

Butler says management won the right to have another seat on the trial board, so that two of three judges are now command staff aligned with management.

Previously, two of three judges were lower-level officers.

“Officers feel the deck is stacked against them,” Butler said, “so they go ahead and take punishment.”

Trial boards are held in a fraction of disciplinary cases. So far this year, threequarters of all disciplinary cases (51 out of 68 through August) closed before going to a trial board, with officers either accepting their punishment or negotiating a legal settlement through a lawyer.