Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's leadership was lacking during the turmoil last year, and that was what led to the DOJ investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department, which validated the many complaints citizens have leveled against police ("Justice Department report: Baltimore police routinely violated civil rights," Aug. 9).
To suggest that the mayor attempted to gain politically by charging the DOJ to investigate the Baltimore police is misguided. The DOJ's report found that citizens encountered what they felt to be unnecessary, unwarranted and unjust treatment by the same police personnel who are sworn to protect them.
That mistreatment is ingrained and current. The scales of justice often tilt away from the citizens who lodge the complaints. They fall into the abyss of shadows created by the blue wall of silence.
Is there enough resolve among all concerned to ameliorate the very real problems that the DOJ's report highlighted?
Geraldine Wright-Bey, Baltimore