A federal judge said that four years into a consent decree, the Baltimore Police Department has “all the elements” in place for success and needs “maximum productivity” to speed reform, clean up the department and better serve the people of Baltimore.
U.S. District Judge James Bredar said it’s time the department start showing results after making inroads training officers and implementing policies to correct corruption and damaged community relations, the Baltimore Sun reports. He pointed to successes — the department’s first improvement in hiring officers in years — and problems, such as stalled efforts to upgrade technology and better monitor and punish wayward officers.
“The community should now expect to begin to see some changes ... real changes in how Baltimore police officers carry themselves and in how they perform their duties,” Bredar said. “We are at an important inflection point. The reforms required by the consent decree are hitting the street.”
The judge added: “Well-meaning officers need to be trained that the ‘warrior model’ of policing does not fly in Baltimore; that the city is not made safer by a perception in the community that officers are fearsome and predisposed to use force to solve problems.”
