Judge goes easy on officer convicted of assault

As always, when a government official is found to have committed a serious crime, the integrity of our criminal justice system is put to the test. Sad to say, it failed miserably this month.

Baltimore City Police Officer Michael Gentil was convicted of first-degree assault in an off-duty road rage incident and a separate offense for the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, which carries a mandatory minimum penalty of five years imprisonment without parole. It was found that he held the victim, Kevon Miller, at gun point, made him lie facedown on the ground, and stomped on the back of his head because the man threw tea on his new car. Judge Robert Taylor of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City sentence him to five years in prison on Oct. 16.

For me, the experience of sitting through this hearing was surreal. I walked into it by accident; I was there for a client on an unrelated case. At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: A police officer convicted of a crime requiring one of those harsh, mandatory minimum sentences shocked me. There was no room for leniency. He had to do five years. Maybe there was hope that an often cruel justice system could, at the very least, be cruel to all alike.

“That he was a police office makes it worse,” Judge Taylor assured everyone, since police are entrusted with the badge and gun. This felt like sunshine on my face.

But it was little more than a masterful acting job. The judge spoke as if he cared about police accountability, while delivering a disgusting sop to law enforcement and showing beyond a doubt that preferential treatment for folks in authority is still the norm. He did this by granting the officer’s request for an appeal bond so that Mr. Gentil can stay on house arrest while he takes the case through the agonizingly slow appeals process.

Since Mr. Gentil is getting credit for time-served for home detention — and has been since he was charged back in April — it doesn’t stretch the imagination to believe this officer won’t spend a day in jail. If he does, it will be for a fraction of his sentence.

When it was his turn to speak, Mr. Miller had told the judge that if he, an African American man, held Officer Gentil, who is white, at gun point and stomped on his head, there would be consequences of the utmost seriousness. Judge Taylor assured him (and us) that being a police officer is no defense. In fact, “it makes it worse,” since police are entrusted with the badge and gun. Then, the judge made sure the officer won’t be going to jail, maybe ever. This is about as much favoritism a court can show to law enforcement nowadays without risking a riot.

To get an idea how unthinkable this appeal bond was, one only needed to observe Assistant State’s Attorney Steven Trostle speak on the issue. Making the whole business seem even more like a tragic comedy, Judge Taylor mistakenly granted the appeal bond before asking the prosecution for argument on the matter, perhaps because he was in such a hurry to assure the numerous police observers in the room that they’re still mostly above the law.

For once, I actually felt terrible for a prosecutor. After years in an office that has availed itself of these harsh mandatory minimum sentence laws, exploited the terrible erosion of our constitutional protections, watched the police railroad suspects (let’s not forget the Federal Consent Decree), here was Mr. Trostle, personally leading the charge to make sure a police officer would be treated the same as everyone else. Then, Judge Taylor ripped it away, showing clearly that a police officer would not be treated like everyone else.

The now beleaguered ASA tried to present something in the way of legal arguments. Mostly though, Mr. Trostle just found several different ways to say that he “couldn’t imagine” that this would be happening for “any John Doe” off the street. Too right: It wouldn’t.

In my time practicing criminal law, I’ve met a lot of people who would love to stay home with their families for years while they slow walk their cases through appeal after appeal. Will my clients hear about this and expect to get the same treatment?

Baltimore County’s proposed “Source of Income” legislation forces owners of rental housing to accept government funded vouchers for rent payments. Organizations advocating for the needy suggest that landlords and housing providers are against providing housing for the poor, most of whom, in our area, are minorities. Housing providers, landlords, reply that “it is not the source, it is the strings” attached to the program to which they object.

There is nothing discriminatory about a person who has invested their life savings in a rental property deciding that they do not want to lose two month’s rent while waiting for a voucher holder to be approved and move in before they begin seeing rent; or from refusing to sign a federally mandated 12-page lease addendum; or from being subject to the whims of government funding for approval for how much rent might be paid; or from being subjected to annual inspections that are unpredictable and inconsistent, where the government will stop paying rent if the rental unit needs repairs, even if tenants abuse and damage the property.

Various Baltimore County, federal and state laws already prohibit discrimination in housing based on a person’s race, religion, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, family status, marital status, handicap or age. And my analysis of an Urban Institute study shows a 90% reduction in racial housing discrimination since 1977.

In May of last year, Johns Hopkins University and The Poverty and Inequality Research Lab produced an in-depth study for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The researchers interviewed 127 landlords in Baltimore, Cleveland and Dallas and analyzed 1.5 million administrative records on landlords and tenants in the HCV program. Roughly 40% of the landlords in the study were black, and 13% were non-black minorities; 60% of the landlords owned 30 or fewer units, with 20% owning fewer than 5 rental units.

The report found evidence suggesting that administrative and procedural factors deter landlord’s participation, not racial discrimination (“It is not the source, it is the strings,” decry the landlords). The study also found evidence that administrative and procedural requirements are key factors deterring landlords’ participation, not profitability or social biases that many tenant advocates claim.

Researchers interviewed and studied a sub-set of housing providers who choose a business model centered on providing housing to Housing Choice Voucher recipients. These specialists hire and train staff, design procedures and systems, and build relationships with HCV bureaucrats, to design their business models around the particulars of renting to voucher recipients. This is a choice in business model that some landlords have chosen, and we, in the housing industry, applaud these specialists.

More than half of all rentals in Baltimore are in small properties, mostly single-family homes and duplexes owned by small “mom and pop” owners with varying degrees of capital and expertise. Researchers found that less than 40% of small owners reported positive cash flow and only those properties owned without a mortgage are viable. Only 25% of mortgaged properties had a positive cash flow.

Housing providers cannot figure out is why it is equitable to force landlords to participate in a voluntary federal government subsidy program, which is the stated purpose of “Source of Income” legislation. Let’s examine some other government subsidized programs.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 72% of physicians accept Medicaid, the government funded health care program for the poor; 75% of food retailers, including grocery stores, convenience food stores and farmer’s market retailers, accept SNAP, more commonly known as food stamps. Food retailers voluntarily sign up and agree to the rules and regulations of accepting money from the federal government.

Likewise, Life-Link provides free cellphones and free minutes/text message plans to low-income residents with voluntary participation by cellphone providers. Verizon provides discounted cellphone plans (not free cellphones) in only four states. AT&T provides discounted service, but not free phones. T-Mobile does not participate in the program. There must be some rational business reason why Verizon, AT&Tand T-Mobile, the three largest providers in the country, have decided not to participate in this federally funded program.

Just like with medical care, food and cellphones, many providers choose participation in government programs as a part of their business model while others choose to avoid the bureaucracy, rules and regulations by serving only private-pay customers. As business owners, landlords should be free to make the same choice.