Craig Kemp, a Baltimore man who said that a rogue squad of police officers held his family hostage and stole thousands of dollars from him in November 2005, is among 17 plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed yesterday against the city and the Baltimore Police Department.

The civil rights action claims unconstitutional detentions and warrantless searches by Special Enforcement Team officers who worked mostly in Southeast Baltimore. The plaintiffs allege that the behavior was systemic and tolerated by the Baltimore Police Department leadership and city officials.

The unit has previously been accused of drawing up fictional or embellished charging documents, prompting city prosecutors to stop using its members as witnesses. Prosecutors dismissed more than 100 Circuit Court cases, mostly felony drug charges, that the unit's officers investigated from 2004 to 2006.

When the allegations by Kemp and others came to light in the spring and summer of 2006, the Police Department and city prosecutors investigated and then disbanded the unit.

Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon and for the Police Department, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Kemp said he was pulled over Nov. 2, 2005, by officers in dark hooded sweat shirts. While some officers detained him in his car after finding a gun inside, other officers took his keys and went to his nearby rowhouse, he said. There the officers rifled through Kemp's belongings for about an hour, refusing to let his mother and sister leave, the women said in a September 2006 interview with The Sun.

As part of the prosecutors' investigation into the unit, Kemp and others agreed to take polygraph tests, and Kemp's results, which were reviewed by The Sun, showed no signs of deception. None of the officers has faced criminal charges because of the allegations against the unit.

Two of the unit's officers have resigned. Two more remain suspended, Clifford said, and the other three are on full active duty.

julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com