Baltimore police ready for reforms despite delay request
BALTIMORE—Baltimore’s mayor and police chief worked closely with Justice Department investigators to scrutinize the city’s police force and embraced a plan they crafted to overhaul the troubled department.
So they were surprised by the Justice Department’s sudden request Monday for more time to see how the proposed changes might conflict with the aggressive crime-fighting approach new Attorney General Jeff Sessions favors. City leaders accelerated negotiations under the Obama administration to get the consent decree done before the change in administrations in Washington “because we know that a consent decree will make the Baltimore police department better both with crime fight and community relationships,” Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said Tuesday. A consent decree binds the police commissioner and mayor, no matter who they are, “to getting those reforms enacted under a timeline that’s not necessarily our own,” he said. The department is already enacting reforms, Davis said, but change won’t come at the pace that it is needed without such an agreement. “The reforms that cost money … are the things behind the scenes that consent decrees really mandate and they hold our feet to the fire,” he said.
Davis and Democratic Mayor Catherine Pugh believed the proposed agreement would repair public trust in the police while also quelling violence. They swiftly voiced their opposition to the requested delay, and pledged to press ahead with the business of transforming the police department, with or without a court-enforceable consent decree.
“Much has been done to begin the process of building faith between the police department and the community it seeks to serve,” Pugh said in a statement. “Any interruption in moving forward may have the effect or eroding the trust that we are working hard to establish.” The government’s request for a 90-day continuance came three days before a scheduled hearing before a federal judge, and just hours after Sessions announced he had ordered a sweeping review of the Justice Department’s interactions with local law enforcement, including existing or proposed consent decrees.
It provided an early glimpse of the attorney general’s stance on police department oversight and his ambivalence about mandating widespread change of local law enforcement agencies. Sessions, an Alabama Republican who cultivated a tough-on-crime reputation during 20 years in the Senate, has repeatedly expressed concern that lengthy investigations of a police department can malign an entire agency. That view reflects a dramatic break from President Barack Obama’s administration, which saw such probes as essential in holding local law enforcement accountable for unconstitutional practices.