City leaders are negotiating with the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police to allow civilians to sit on the department's internal disciplinary panels that review cases of alleged officer misconduct. That's something that should have happened years ago, but until recently the city was prevented from doing so by the so-called Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights, which sharply restricted the power of police departments to investigate officers accused of crimes. It's past time Baltimore City shone a light on a process that for too long has been shrouded in secrecy.
Yet the police union is resisting opening up its disciplinary procedures to public scrutiny, and so far its leaders have been adamant in saying that only sworn officers are qualified to judge their fellow police. Not surprisingly that's a non-starter for civil liberties advocates and neighborhood activists who are urging greater transparency in the handling of police misconduct cases — and rightly so given the raging national debate over policing in poor and minority communities. If civilians can vote to elect candidates to the highest offices in the land and serve on juries that decide the fate of civil and criminal defendants, why shouldn't they be able to make similar judgments about police officers facing misconduct charges as well?
This year the General Assembly approved legislation permitting local governments to add up to two civilian members with full voting rights to local police trial boards. The panels are charged with investigating cases of alleged of misconduct and recommending disciplinary action against officers found guilty. But a companion bill that would have required jurisdictions to include civilian members on the panels failed to pass. Instead, the legislature left the inclusion of civilian members on police trial boards subject to the agreement of police unions during collective bargaining. Baltimore City, whose labor agreement with the FOP expired last month, is currently trying to hammer out a new union contract that makes provisions for civilian participation in the disciplinary process.
Both sides have agreed not to publicly discuss the negotiations going on behind closed doors. Yet it's obvious the FOP is digging in its heels against any change that would open up trial board panels to civilian membership, oversight or review. It's betting it can buck the trend toward greater transparency and accountability in such matters, but over the long term that's not a battle it can win. It would be far better for it to recognize that long-accepted policing practices are under scrutiny not just in Baltimore but across the country and that change is inevitable.
Given that many residents already feel that police are out of control and unaccountable to the public, the union's stonewalling is only likely to make people even less willing to cooperate with law enforcement. That's counterproductive if the goal is to clear the toxic atmosphere enveloping the day-to-day interactions of Baltimore's finest and many of the communities they serve. Ultimately the union's stand works against the best interests of the officers it represents because it makes their job even more difficult.
Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find a better way to poison the relationship between the police and ordinary citizens than to make it look as if officers operate according to a different set of rules that allow them to engage in misconduct with impunity. It's to their credit that City Police Commissioner Kevin Davis and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake seem to recognize that. So do the city's state senators, who have long pushed for civilian participation on trial boards as a way to rebuild public confidence in the department's ability to police itself. The city can't afford not to get this right.
Moreover, It's not as if making the disciplinary process for police officers more transparent is some new, untested experiment. Other cities — including Washington, Chicago and Detroit — have moved to give civilians a greater role in reviewing cases of police misconduct and emerged all the stronger for it. Baltimore, which has a long and unhappy history of strained relations between the police and residents of low-income and minority communities, needs to acknowledge that attitudes about how the cops do their job are changing rapidly, and that the department needs to keep up with them.