When bad cops testify Our view:

Allegations against seven Baltimore officers highlight flaws in the system that keep juries from knowing about credibility issues

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby is now scrambling to determine how to proceed — if at all — with scores of criminal cases in which the seven Baltimore police officers who were indicted last week on federal racketeering charges were involved. Meanwhile, defense attorneys are poring over old cases in which the seven played a role to determine whether their clients might be entitled to new trials or to have their verdicts overturned. But whatever the outcome of the officers’ cases, and whatever impact they may have on current and past prosecutions, this incident underscores how the Baltimore Police Department’s ineffective disciplinary processes and lack of transparency make it far too easy for police officers with questionable integrity to testify with juries none the wiser.

The names of at least two of the indicted officers were immediately familiar to attorneys in the Baltimore public defender’s office. They had, on dozens of occasions, sought internal police disciplinary records for one or the other, but to no avail.

In theory, when an internal affairs complaint involving an officer’s credibility is sustained — meaning the internal investigation found, by a preponderance of evidence, that a violation had occurred — police are supposed to tell prosecutors, prosecutors are supposed to tell the defense, and the defense can request the records so that they might potentially be introduced as evidence at trial.

But, as the Department of Justice investigation into the Baltimore Police Department found, internal affairs investigations have historically been sloppy at best, with investigators failing to follow up on leads for months, if ever. Cases are routinely “administratively closed” without any real effort to determine the facts. The DOJ cataloged example after example of serious allegations being misclassified as minor ones, leading the cases to be closed with no investigation at all.

In the rare instances when a complaint against an officer is sustained, there’s no guarantee the attorneys involved will find out about it. The Police Department maintains a database of internal affairs cases, but the DOJ found inconsistencies in the way information was entered. When prosecutors learn of past cases that could impeach an officer’s credibility, they are required to tell defense attorneys. But that doesn’t mean the defense will actually see the information.

The Police Department routinely objects to the release of information on the grounds that such records are protected personnel matters. It’s the same reason members of the public have such difficulty in obtaining information about the investigation into and resolution of complaints against officers. Defense attorneys say judges exercise varying standards about whether to grant access to the information, much less whether it should be admitted in court.

Consequently, officers can testify in court and put people in jail in case after case with juries ignorant of their real, documented credibility problems.

The consent decree Mayor Catherine Pugh agreed to with the DOJ includes a variety of reforms designed to facilitate the proper receipt, timely investigation and documentation of complaints against officers. It calls on the department to improve its database of internal affairs cases and to develop a protocol for sharing it with state or federal prosecutors, where appropriate, but more reform is needed. Laws allowing the Police Department to conceal from the public of cases in which its own investigation sustained complaints that raise serious questions about an officer’s integrity is wrong and antithetical to fostering a relationship of trust between police and the community.

But the concealment of such information in cases when it directly impacts a criminal case against a defendant is egregious. At the very least, defense attorneys should have routine access to sustained complaints against officers involved in cases against their clients so they can make an argument to a judge about whether that information should be admitted in court.