I agree with most of what retired Baltimore City police Major Robert DiStefano said in his letter about State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's mishandling of the Freddie Gray case. I disagree, however, with everything he said about Baltimore City Police Commissioner Kevin Davis' response ("Mosby's rush to judgment,'" May 31).
City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's rush to judgment against the six officers charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray resulted in the prosecution of at least one officer, Edward Nero, who never should have been charged.
Moreover, the charges against the other five officers are so serious that she has no reasonable chance of proving them at trial.
The fact that one or more of the remaining officers may be convicted of lesser offenses does nothing to remedy the injustice to Mr. Nero.
There would be nothing to be gained, however, if Mr. Davis joined the chorus of people publicly condemning Ms. Mosby. The last thing that the city needs is a recurrence of the open warfare between the police department and the State's Attorney's Office that existed during the tenure of former State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy.
As soon as either Mr. Davis or Ms. Mosby fires the first salvo by publicly criticizing the other, the war will resume. Citizens will suffer the collateral damage because an inevitable casualty of such conflict is the vital working relationship between the two elements of the criminal justice system.
That relationship already is strained and has been for years. Mr. Davis and Ms. Mosby have to work together to repair it, not push it to the breaking point.
In the worldview of Mr. DiStefano and the Fraternal Order of Police union, you are either with the officers or you are against them, and they call on the commissioner and the prosecutor to prove that he or she is with them on a regular basis.
The threat implicit in the letter is that because Mr. Davis failed such a test by choosing not to "speak out in defense of his troops and against the obvious an unnecessary rush to judgment," his "troops" could turn on him in a heartbeat, as they did with his predecessor.
Mr. Davis deserves credit for having the courage to stay focused on the goal presumably shared by the FOP, which is the successful prosecution of the violent criminals who are destroying the soul of the city.
David A. Plymyer, Millersville
The writer retired as Anne Arundel County Attorney in 2014 and previously served as an assistant state's attorney in Anne Arundel County.