On June 20, Attorney General Jeff Sessions introduced the National Public Safety Partnership (PSP) to combat violent crime in 12 U.S. cities. Baltimore residents and local officials were stunned to realize that Baltimore was not on the list.

“I’m feeling deprived and disappointed,” said Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis. “Because the criteria, as it was explained to me, really epitomizes the crime challenges that exist right now in a city like Baltimore.”

The PSP was created in response to President Trump’s executive order in February to “reduce crime and restore public safety.” The selected cities—Birmingham; Indianapolis; Memphis; Toledo, Ohio; Baton Rouge; Buffalo; Cincinnati; Houston; Jackson, Tennessee; Kansas City; Lansing, Michigan; and Springfield, Illinois—will receive enhanced federal support to identify and prioritize resources to combat crime in their cities.

The support includes structure, leadership, and crime analysis, training development, and expedited delivery of assistance with gun violence and criminal justice from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Councilman Brandon Scott of Baltimore City’s District 2 and vice chair of public safety, was less surprised to learn that Baltimore was overlooked.

“We know that [President Trump’s] administration is known for talking about cities like Baltimore and Chicago, but they have not lifted a finger to help,” he said. “We need to step up locally, the first thing we need to do is hire a director for the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOJC).”

The MOJC was established to reduce crime, gang activity, and drug trafficking, however, the director seat is currently vacant. Scott attributes the increase of violence in the city to that vacancy.

“We need to develop a complete and comprehensive public safety strategy or gun violence reduction strategy for the city of Baltimore,” Scott said. “We have to do that, not just from a policing lens, but also through the lens of public health because violence is a disease, and we should treat it as such. We should stop treating it like it’s just one symptom of the problem.”

According to Commissioner Davis, there should be an announcement regarding the vacancy in the near future. Baltimore reached out to the mayor’s office for comment, but did not receive a response.

“The mayor is working very hard to build her office of criminal justice,” Davis said. “She’s been very thoughtful and deliberate about building the very best team for the crime fight.”

According to the DOJ, the PSP cities are selected through a process that compares the level of violence in a city to the national average, and the city should also have crime reduction strategies currently in place. Those criteria led Davis to believe that Baltimore was a shoe-in for the program.

“What we have been doing for the last couple of years with the crime fight, reform efforts, and the consent decree, has been at a breakneck pace,” Davis said. “When the Attorney General identified jurisdictions that would benefit from enhancements, we just think that Baltimore is right at the top of the list.”

Recently, the BPD has been taking the necessary steps to ensure that officers are properly trained before hitting the streets. Davis said they have doubled the number of required training hours from the state’s obligatory 40 hours to 80.

The department has also instituted a new type of training, integrated communication and tactics (ICAT), that focuses on communication with suspects. In addition, BPD is a part of law enforcement assisted diversion for crisis intervention, which is only being used by a handful of departments around the country. 

“It’s a blended approach with police officers and mental health professionals to deal with people in a mental health crisis,” Davis said.

Early this month, there were two separate quadruple shootings within two days that caught the attention of the entire city and caused Commissioner Davis and Mayor Pugh to react. Davis placed his entire foot patrol, detectives, and sworn administrative staff on 12-hour shifts to patrol the streets for a week.

“That convinced me of a couple things. Number one: More police officers in the community matter,” he said. “Number two: As police department and a community, we continue to feel the impact of having 500 fewer police officers in 2017 than we had in 2012.”

Davis said the acts of violence needed to be addressed immediately, but the increased foot patrol and mandatory overtime comes with a hefty price tag and this strategy is not feasible.

“We had to assure the community that their police department was paying attention,” he said.   

In Attorney General Sessions’ June 20 announcement, he reassured the public that more cities will be added to the PSP moving forward, but did not specify an exact date or hint at what cities may be included. Until then, Davis said that Baltimore would continue to fight to combat the violence with the current resources.

“We are taking steps, and that’s why my disappointment was tempered,” he said.  “But when an additional opportunity arises like that, one that can sharpen us just a little bit more, we’re always interested.”

Five months after the U.S. Department of Justice released a scathing report on the Baltimore Police Department, the city and federal agency reached an agreement on police reforms Thursday morning.

The binding, 227-page consent decree mandates changes to policing policies and practices in regards to stops and searches; the use of force; interactions with youth, protestors, and those with mental health issues; the handling of sexual assault complaints; and the transportation of detainees.

The agreement, which is projected to cost the city tens of millions of dollars to implement, was approved by the Board of Estimates in a special meeting earlier this morning. The decree also requires that the Baltimore Police Department introduce greater oversight of its officers, improve methods for tracking complaints of misconduct, expand training, and make significant investments in new technology, including upgraded computers in patrol vehicles to enhance data collection, analysis, and reporting.

The police department has already begun making some changes following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody in April of 2015 and the ensuing unrest and broad public demonstrations. City police are now deploying body cameras and have added cameras inside police transport vehicles. Starting this year, Commission Kevin Davis doubled the hours of required in-service training for officers from 40 hours—the Maryland minimum requirement—to 80.

Notably, the agreement calls for the creation of a community oversight task force of the Baltimore Police Department. It describes the community oversight task force as “essential to rebuilding trust between the BPD and the communities it serves and ensuring that BPD’s enforcement activities reflect community values and are consistent with the Constitution and federal, state, and local laws.”

Mayor Catherine Pugh, as well as Davis, reiterated in recent days that they support putting civilians on oversight review boards. However, Pugh acknowledged at a press conference Wednesday that despite the consent decree, placement of citizens on disciplinary trial boards can’t happen until that is negotiated with the police union.

Gene Ryan, president of Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police, has stated strong opposition to putting civilians on police oversight boards. He also issued a statement Thursday that said “despite continued assurances” his organization was not included in the consent decree negotiations.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch joined Davis and Pugh in announcing the signing of decree at City Hall. Lynch is scheduled to make an address at the University of Baltimore School of Law Thursday afternoon and discuss community policing, and efforts around the country designed to build trust and collaboration between citizens and police.

Pugh called the signing of the consent decree “a great day for Baltimore . . . This is about fairness and understanding,” she said, adding that while the cost of the mandates and funding mechanisms remain uncertain at this point, she is committed to pursuing the necessary resources for full implementation.

Davis said the reforms, additional training, transparency, and oversight can only benefit the Baltimore Police Department in the long run. “I have no doubt we will emerge from this as better crime fighters,” he said. “And with better relations with the community. This is a path forward.”

The next step in the consent process will be getting the agreement approved in the U.S. District Court for Maryland, where it has been assigned to Judge James K. Bredar, according to The Baltimore Sun. It will be up to Bredar to appoint an independent monitor to oversee the implementation of the decree mandates and measure the Baltimore Police Department’s progress.

City officials and the Department of Justice said they have worked around the clock in recent weeks to get an agreement in place before the presidential administration of Donald J. Trump assumes office on Jan. 20. His nominee to replace Lynch, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, has said in the past and in recent confirmation testimony that he is generally skeptical of such consent decrees.

The most positive takeaway from the press conference, said University of Maryland law professor Douglas Colbert, who followed the police trials related to Gray’s death closely, was the cooperation of the Baltimore Police Department. “I find it very promising that the police department didn’t resist this process,” Colbert said. “We’ve seen in other jurisdictions where police don’t engage in the process [of a Department of Justice investigation and consent decree], drag their feet, and even obstruct.”

Colbert added that the selection of the independent monitor remains a lynchpin to any reform. “It needs to be someone who knows Baltimore,” Colbert said. “It can’t be just someone who graduated from the best law school.

Attorney Billy Murphy, who has represented the Gray family, Colbert, and City Councilman Brandon Scott described the Department of Justice’s intervention into Baltimore police practices and polices as an historic occasion. “Today is a revolution in policing in Baltimore,” said Murphy, adding criminal justice activists in the city have been waiting decades for such action. “It will be remembered. It is a sea change.”

In its 164-page August report, the Department of Justice investigation concluded that there was “reasonable cause to believe” that the Baltimore Police Department “engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law.”

Those systemic violations included:

• Making unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests;
• Using enforcement strategies that produce severe and unjustified disparities in the rates of stops, searches and arrests of African Americans;
• Using excessive force; and
• Retaliating against people engaging in constitutionally protected expression.

Some of the statistics produced by the DOJ investigation were startling:

“BPD’s pedestrian stops are concentrated on a small portion of Baltimore residents. BPD made roughly 44 percent of its stops in two small, predominantly African-American districts that contain only 11 percent of the City’s population. Consequently, hundreds of individuals—nearly all of them African American—were stopped on at least 10 separate occasions from 2010– 2015. Indeed, seven African-American men were stopped more than 30 times during this period. [However] only 3.7 percent of pedestrian stops resulted in officers issuing a citation or making an arrest. Arrests without probable cause: from 2010–2015, supervisors at Baltimore’s Central Booking and local prosecutors rejected over 11,000 charges made by BPD officers because they lacked probable cause or otherwise did not merit prosecution.”

The DOJ report also highlighted the Baltimore Police Department’s “unreasonable force against people who present little or no threat to officers or others,” and “ineffective oversight of its use of force.”