An unlikely panel of officials shared the stage of a church in Prince George's County, where they faced pointed questions Wednesday night about stalling police reform in Maryland.
The president of the state police union sat next to one of Baltimore's most vocal anti-police defense attorneys, an American Civil Liberties Union lobbyist and a state senator who had proposed legislation on the issue that never made it to law.
Pastor Delman Coates, who acted as the moderator, grilled Vince Canales, the president of the state Fraternal Order of Police, state Sen. Victor R. Ramirez and others about the 17 police brutality-related bills proposed in the past year that stalled in committees. The discussion, held at Coates' Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, was organized in response to the failed bills and unrest over the death of Freddie Gray.
Canales said the union opposed the bills because they were badly written and in some cases "criminalized" police, getting a small rise from Ramirez and Sara Love, the ACLU lobbyist.
Canales sought to humanize the officers he represents.
"On behalf of the 22,000 officers in the state of Maryland, we're [your] partners," he said. "We talk about police as if they're not people. The reality is, they're your neighbors, they attend your churches, their kids go to your schools. In the course of the conversation, don't forget that."
Ramirez, a Prince George's County Democrat, hesitated when asked why so many of the bills died in the last legislative session. He said that he couldn't speak for his colleagues in Annapolis but that voting for police reform can contribute to an image of politicians being "soft on crime."
Coates, the senior pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, asked questions varying from specific ones about police body cameras and the Law Enforcement Officer's Bill of Rights, to broader ones, such as whether poor, black communities are "over-policed."
Canales said police deployments are based on a neighborhood's crime statistics, not race or economics. "It's not an us-against-them mentality," he said.
J. Wyndal Gordon, the Baltimore defense attorney, disagreed.
"Minority communities are oppressed by the police," he said.
Rev. S. Todd Yeary, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's pastor at Douglas Memorial Community Church, said the past week's unrest felt like "deja vu" from the 1968 riots after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
About 100 people in the church's pews clapped to show their support after some statements, mostly those sympathetic to protesters' demands for additional reform.
In a video preceding the discussion, images of last week's riots in Baltimore over the death of Freddy Gray, overlaid with words from one of King's speeches: "Riots are the language of the unheard."
Love, the ACLU lobbyist, said she was heartbroken by the death of Gray, 25, who on April 19 succumbed to a spinal injury sustained in police custody after his April 12 arrest. Gray's death set off weeks of protests and on April 27, some rioting in Baltimore.
"I'm saddened but also incredibly hopeful because we see people standing up and saying 'No more,'" Love said.
Gordon said the protesting needs to lead to legislative change if police brutality is to be stopped.
"I've been fighting this battle for 20 years," he said. "I've been screaming at the top of my lungs. There will be another Freddie Gray and another Freddie Gray and another Freddie Gray until we get police reforms."
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