Top prosecutors in Prince George’s County and Baltimore on Friday released the names of nearly 150 current or former police officers their offices will not call to the witness stand because of concerning disciplinary histories.
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The “do-not-call” lists have historically been shielded from public view, but the prosecutors say a new law aimed at improving police accountability in Maryland allows the disclosure. The release of the data from Baltimore comes on the heels of an appeals court ruling reversing a lower court decision that allowed Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby to withhold from the public a list of police officers deemed potentially unreliable.
The lists include officers from local and federal agencies whose credibility has been called into question, the prosecutors say. The majority of people on the lists have retired, were fired or left their police agencies. More than a quarter of them are still members of a police force.
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Mosby’s “do-not-call” list includes 91 officers, some of whom were involved in the police department’s now defunct Gun Trace Task Force, a group of officers who pleaded guilty or were convicted in federal court with a slew of abuse of power charges.
More than a quarter of the officers on the list have pending criminal charges ranging from murder to child pornography to theft. Thirteen have been investigated or have had sustained charges with the police department’s internal affairs division. The employment status is not known for about 10 percent of the people listed.
In Prince George’s, the majority of the 57 officers on State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy’s list come from the county police department, including 17 officers currently employed by the agency and another 28 who have left. Braveboy’s list also includes 12 officers from smaller municipal departments. Twenty officers on the list have been convicted of criminal charges that include theft, misconduct in office or violent crimes; 15 have pending criminal cases; and the rest are being investigated by the prosecutor’s office or their police department’s internal affairs division.
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“The public has a right to have the best and most professional set of officers protecting and serving them,” Braveboy said in an interview. “We all rely on them, and the truth is the vast majority of officers are really good officers. It is these officers who are racist, who are not telling the truth, who really disrespect the profession, and those individuals have no place on a police department, certainly they don’t have a place on the witness stand.”
Prosecutors’ offices have various criteria and methods to track police officers who have been accused of misconduct or they believe have a demonstrated lack of integrity. While the government has a legal obligation to inform defendants if a witness in their case has possible credibility issues, advocates for criminal justice reform and defense attorneys have sought more complete information about officers whose conduct has been questioned.
In response to public records requests this summer from The Washington Post, half of the two dozen state’s attorney offices in Maryland, including Mosby’s, said they did not maintain lists of officers deemed potentially unreliable or whose testimony could be problematic. Some said that was because there were few or no officers within their counties that had been in serious trouble.
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Mosby’s office now says the information sought by The Post was not available because its list at the time was broader than what was requested. Her office also has been sued by activists seeking the names of officers whose credibility is in doubt and an appeals court recently ruled for Mosby’s do-not-call list to be released.
Several prosecutors’ offices in Maryland have not responded to The Post’s requests. Five state’s attorneys — in Anne Arundel, Montgomery, Prince George’s, Worcester and Baltimore counties, denied release of lists this summer because they said they amounted to personnel records or were subject to other exceptions to the Maryland Public Information Act.
Under Maryland’s Anton’s Law, the new police accountability law, that went into effect on Oct. 1, records of investigations into alleged police misconduct are no longer considered personnel records.
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Mosby and Braveboy, the only two Black women state’s attorneys in Maryland, were the only top prosecutors to testify in support of Anton’s Law when the legislature was considering the bill earlier this year.
The legislation was part of a sweeping package of police overhaul measures designed to make policing in Maryland fairer and more transparent. The measures came on the heels of nationwide protests following the police killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The police transparency bill, which went into effect Oct. 1, was named for Anton Black, a 19-year-old college student who died in 2018 after being restrained by police officers on the Eastern Shore. Black’s family spent months trying to get information about his death. The legislation gives the public – including prosecutors and defense attorneys – greater access to an officer’s complaint history.
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In releasing their “do-not-call” lists, Mosby and Braveboy urged Maryland’s other prosecutors to follow suit — an act of transparency that they believe holds the entire legal system to account.
“It should not fall on the only two black women prosecutors, yet again, to be the only torch bearers for police accountability in this state,” Mosby said in an interview.
Mosby and Braveboy acknowledged that a prosecutor’s power to hold police accountable is limited. They work closely with law enforcement and their cases in court rely heavily on the integrity of the officers who make arrests, execute warrants and collect evidence.
But they do not have the ability to fire officers they deem unfit. That’s the job of the police departments that employ them, a process that is influenced by police unions and had been controlled in part by the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights — which was repealed in the same legislative session that passed Anton’s Law.
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What prosecutors can control, Braveboy said, is who they allow to testify in court.
In Baltimore, a review committee, made up of top officials in the state’s attorney’s office, will review the do-not-call list every 90 days to make decisions about whether an officer’s name should be removed. Mosby said the list will be accessible on the state’s attorney’s website and updated as names are added and removed.
Braveboy’s office has not yet determined whether they’ll have a permanent public facing list on their website, but said they intend to notify the public when new names are added or removed moving forward.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
Steve Thompson contributed to this report.
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