Lawmakers weigh opening police records
Lawmakers in the Maryland General Assembly are considering opening up internal affairs complaints and disciplinary records of police officers in the state to public scrutiny.
Most complaints against officers and records from police department disciplinary decisions would become accessible using a Maryland Public Information Act request under the proposed “Anton’s Law.” It’s named for Anton Black, a young man who died in custody on the Eastern Shore in 2018.
A version of the legislation, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Jill P. Carter of Baltimore, won the backing Thursday of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee in a party-line vote.
Carter and other backers said secrecy surrounding complaints against officers — the majority of which are dismissed without any discipline being meted out — has helped erode trust in law enforcement. Giving the public a look at complaints, and how agencies handled them, would allow residents to judge whether law enforcement is adequately policing itself, supporters of the legislation say.
Disclosing disciplinary records might also root out problem officers who’ve collected similar complaints or bounced between departments while avoiding serious discipline, Carter said. Shining a bit of light on the process “helps us achieve a goal of getting integrity into these police forces,” she said.
Police union officials and Republican senators countered that the change could erode flagging morale among officers and subject decent ones to smear campaigns in which unfounded accusations are publicized.
The bill would remove a confidentiality shield on disciplinary records, including many, though not all, complaints dismissed by a department’s internal process. The bill would also allow the public to find out how — or if — a department punished officers accused of misconduct.
All personnel records of government employees in Maryland, including police disciplinary records and complaints filed against officers, are considered confidential under state law and are broadly exempt from public disclosure.
Under the proposed law, police chiefs and sheriffs could still block the release of records, including materials related to an ongoing criminal investigation. But agencies would need to lay out reasons for those refusals and, as with other public records requests, could be challenged in court.
Previous efforts to open the books on internal affairs records stalled in recent years amid resistance from law enforcement agencies and police unions. Del. Gabriel Acevero, a Montgomery County Democrat, proposed the legislation last year and is again sponsoring the bill in the House of Delegates.
Carter noted that a number of other states have long allowed the public some access to internal affairs complaints and disciplinary records.
The legislation honors Black, 19, who died in the Caroline County town of Greensboro under the weight of three officers holding him down. One of the officers had nearly 30 use-of-force reports from his career in Delaware.
On Friday night, the same committee significantly amended Carter’s bill to repeal Maryland’s Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights after several days of contentious discussion. It then approved the measure, advancing it to the full Senate.
Carter’s proposal would have abolished police trial boards — panels of fellow officers that decide whether a cop committed wrongdoing — and placed authority to resolve complaints almost entirely in the hands of police chiefs and sheriffs.
The bill as amended by the Judicial Proceedings Committee would retain trial boards, but they would be three-person panels composed of two civilians and one fellow officer.
By comparison, the main police reform bill in the House of Delegates, being pushed by House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, also would retain police trial boards but add civilian members. Her proposal would require that two out of three trial board members be civilians.
Maryland’s Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, enacted in 1974, lays out extensive job protections and due process requirements for officers facing allegations of misconduct. Maryland was the first state to enact such a law but at least 20 other states have since followed suit.
Critics have long claimed that various provisions of the law shield bad cops from discipline. For instance, it requires internal affairs investigators to wait at least five days to question officers accused of wrongdoing. Police unions argue the provisions guarantee fair treatment and protect rank-and-file officers from the whims of tyrannical chiefs or sheriffs.
Carter complained that the altered bill “completely guts the concept of repeal.” She called the final product “a smidgen of an improvement” over the existing Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights but “is no longer my bill.”
“I’ll vote yes because it’s a slight improvement,” she said, “but it’s not repeal.”
“Just never forget the fact that we’re making progress here,” said Chairman William C. Smith Jr., a Montgomery County Democrat. “When we get to the floor we’ll have something we can defend and make sure it gets into law.”