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Tag: Baltimore 6

  • The Trial of Edward Nero

    The second trial has begun. If you want to know my thoughts, best to see what I’m saying on Twitter. Mostly I’m just retweeting interesting points from, you know, actual professional reporters (like Kevin Rector, Justin Fenton, Mike Hellgren, and Robert Lang) who are at the trial, doing their job.

    Overall, my opinion is well summarized by this quote in the Guardian:

    “It was clearly a legal chase, stop, frisk, then search. And a reasonable arrest, even if it wasn’t legal (and it might have been legal),” said Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “I can’t imagine a weaker case.”

  • Page Croyder’s on the trials of the Baltimore Six

    Consistently Croyder provides excellent legal analysis of the Baltimore trials.

    http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/05/thoughts-while-waiting-on-next-freddie.html

  • “They pursue not the truth”

    In case you missed it (I did), here’s some good deep legal analysisfrom Page Croyder regarding the trial of the six Baltimore cops:

    They pursue not the truth, but in the words of Mosby, “justice for Freddie Gray.” And they will trample over the law, the evidence, their ethical responsibilities and real justice to get there.

    Croyder doesn’t like Mosby, in case you can’t tell. And for good reason.

    If the published commentsfrom one of the jurors in the first Freddie Gray trial are accurate, then I was right, wrong, and right again.

    Right that the jurors were close to acquitting Officer William Porter on the most serious count, involuntary manslaughter.

    Wrong that they were close to acquitting him on the other charges as well. In fact, they were very close to convicting him for misconduct in office, and leaned towards conviction for reckless endangerment.

    And right that this trial should have been moved. This hung trial makes it all so clear that the six officers cannot get a fair trial in Baltimore city.

    According to the Sun, Judge Barry Williams instructed the jury that to find Porter guilty of misconduct in office, he had to have acted with “evil motive and bad faith,” that he could not have made a “mere error in judgment,” and that he “corruptly failed to do an a act required by his duties.”

    There was zero evidence of evil motive, bad faith or corruption in performing his duties. Porter acted completely consistently with other police officers. Acting in conflict with a general order does not equate to misconduct, either. If one thinks the police, as a department, act unreasonably in how they transport prisoners, that’s what civil suits are for. But not criminal charges.

  • The Baltimore 6 Effect

    To paraphrase Tip O’Neill, “All policing is local.” But that doesn’t mean that something in one town can’t have an effect on policing nationwide. And a trend can be large and worrisome — and national — without being universal. That’s why they call it a trend.

    I don’t know what’s going on everywhere (or even most-where), but I can tell you a bit about Baltimore. And I suspect it holds true in many cities.

    I looked calls for service, arrest numbers, and crimes. Most dramatic is the drop of arrests in Western District. I looked at arrests with a post number assigned to it. The majority of arrests by patrol officers are discretionary. These are the ones I presume were not being made. Arrests listed without a post (a geographic beat) would be a specialized unit that didn’t know or care about the post, a court arrest, or a probation violation. Arrests with no post listed also declined, but not nearly as much.

    Arrests in the Western District, from May to December, were down a whopping 47 percent comparing 2014 and 2015 (39 percent overall in the city).

    Look, the link between police and crime prevention will always be shrouded in some mystery. Causation in the real world can never be “proved” with certainty. But at some point, if you get enough correlation and no alternative causation, correlation might actually be indicative of causation! [queue stats-class thunder bolts.]

    Now there are good and not so good reasons for this drop in arrests. But leaving that why: it happened. Police were less involved, by choice and necessity, and violence skyrocketed. Just because correlation does prove causing, correlation certainly doesn’t mean causation is impossible or even unlikely. I mean, what else changed in the Western except police and crime?

    Arrests and crime vary a lot during the year. Winter is slow. Late spring and late summer hot. But the drop in Baltimore arrests began before the riots of April 2015. They started going down in July and August of 2014, after the deaths of Eric Garner (Staten Island) and Michael Brown (Ferguson). That’s when attention turned to police. That’s when officers started feeling they were being targeted, not for malicious actions but for trying to do good. And there’s a huge drop is arrests in December of 2014 (when protests really got going). Just 2,126 citywide (probably the lowest monthly figure in 50 years). December 2014 was 28 percent off 2013.

    And then May 2015, when normally you’d see more arrests as the weather warms and kids get out of school, arrests were down 50 percent from the previous year. (I looked at arrests that have a post number listed in Open Baltimore data. I can’t be 100 percent certain, but I think these are more likely to be on-view arrests from patrol officers and in response to calls for service. Arrests without post number are more likely to be specialized units and administrative arrests.)

    Cops stopped making discretionary arrests and being proactive in clearing corners and frisking subjects. Look, it’s no surprise where shootings happens and who gets shot. There is a criminal class in Baltimore. You can police aggressively or wait for somebody to call police. Even then, when responding, you can get out of your car or not risk “harassing” the “innocent” youth.

    Arrests, especially non-domestic misdemeanor arrests, are a good proxy for discretionary officer interaction with the public. Arrests can also tip the crime stats up because many crimes aren’t recorded unless an arrest is made (which is why, as an indicator of crime overall, I trust shootings and homicides more than anything else). In 2015, arrests in the Western District went down from 215 April to 114 in June (and an outlyingly low 79 in May, when cops were busy with post-riot curfew). The previous year, 2014, saw 259, 292, and 265 arrests in April, May, and June, respectively. To put this in perceptive, my squad (one of three working midnight and one of nine total in the Eastern District) used to make 60 arrests a month on average.

    Meanwhile, after the riots, with police demoralized and understaffed and politicians wasting resources prosecuting innocent cops, criminals in the Western were shooting or killing another black man every other day. These deaths are real. They are evidence. And they matter.

  • “Law enforcement is instilled”

    Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore State’s Attorney, keep emphasizing that she comes from a family of cops:

    To the rank-and-file officers of the Baltimore City Police Department, please know that these accusations of these six officers are not an indictment on the entire force. I come from five generations of law enforcement. My father was an officer. My mother was an officer. Several of my aunts and uncles.

    (I was never understood why she said “five generations” when she meant two.)

    But five relatives who are cops is kind of rare. Impressive, even. What are the odds?

    Well it turns out at least four of these “generations,” including both of Mosby’s parents, were bad cops. What are those odds?!

    Her mom repeatedly tested dirty for coke and was suspended multiple times. She had a her gun taken away and nine disciplinary actions and drug rehab. Yowzas. But at least she didn’t get fired. Mosby’s dad, also a Boston cop, was fired in 1991 after being acquitted by a jury for assault and robbery. He got his job back on what cops would call “a technicality.”

    Her uncles? Two of her mom’s brothers, both cops, were also fired, one in 1991 and the other in 2001. A third uncle successfully sued the Massachusetts state police for discrimination. On the plus side there’s no evidence that her grandfather, a founder of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers in 1968, did anything illegal as a cop.

    Hey, it’s bad enough to have criminals parents, but it’s worse to have criminal parents who are cops. But it happens, I suppose. Not the kid’s fault. But to use these disgraceful cops as a badge of honor and distinction while prosecuting good cops? That’s disgraceful.

    Mosby says, “I come from five generations of police officers, so law enforcement is instilled.”

    God only knows what these clowns instilled in her.

    [This is not new news, but first I’ve heard of it. I think I was in Greece when this news broke in July.]

    July 2016 update:

  • Page Croyder is mad as hell

    She’s the former prosecutor who has taken to writingabout her former office and its overreaching prosecution of the six Baltimore cops who in the neighborhood when Freddie Gray died in police custody. Here’s her latest:

    I said in my first blogon Freddie Gray, days after Mosby sensationally announced her charges, that she was setting up the false expectation that a crime was committed and that convictions would follow. She showed only the weakest of evidence in her probable cause statement, and it got worse over time. When the autopsy report revealed that she could not prove her case, the Sun said nothing. NOTHING. It had been moralizing and pronouncing legal judgments all over the place (see below), but went silent when the autopsy report made clear that an accident had occurred. The editors never delved into, never elucidated for its readers, the difference between civil and criminal standards of conduct, but instead helped perpetuate the false belief that they were one and the same. All it wanted after the autopsy report was leaked was for the trials to stay in Baltimore, where it was most likely that citizens would also confuse the issues. Take a quote from a citizen in the same edition as the editorial: “The city gave the family all that money. They practically said [Porter] was guilty. How can the jury not find him guilty?” And nearly every other quote from Baltimore citizens expressed surprise at the failure to convict.

    …

    Wouldn’t it have been refreshing had the editors said, “Our bad. We trusted that Mosby had the evidence, that she knew what she was doing, and we were wrong. Instead they wrote two pusillanimous editorials after the verdict defending themselves.

  • Next up…

    Next up…

    Porter’s trial ended on Dec 16 with a hung jury.

    The next trial, Caesar Goodson the wagon driver, is scheduled for Jan. 6, 2016. Goodson is charged with second-degree depraved-heart murder, manslaughter, second-degree assault, two counts of vehicular manslaughter and misconduct in office.

    Three officers, Porter, Sgt. Alicia White and Lt. Brian Rice face involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault and misconduct in office charges. White’s trial is schedule for Jan. 25. Rice’s for March 9.

    Officers Edward Nero and Garrett Miller are charged with second-degree assault and misconduct in office. Miller’s trial is scheduled for Feb. 9. Nero’s on Feb. 22.

    (Definitions of those charges.)

  • “What led to a mistrial”

    Luke Broadwater and Ian Duncan summarize the issues in The Sun.

  • Hung Jury in Porter trial

    Hung on all four counts. That is not what I expected. I expected acquittal on the major charges, and perhaps a hung jury on the minor charge of “misconduct.” But no conviction is still a big setback to the prosecution.

    What does this mean? Since I’m no legal expert, best to turn to those who understand these issues. Here’s Richard Thornburgh, former Attorney General, being interviewed by Ali G’s:

    Thornburgh: All bets are off. They have to try him again. Hung jury.

    Ali G: But surely da size of their dongs, whether they is hung or not, won’t affect their judgement.

    Thornburgh: Well, uh, I don’t see the connection.

    Ali G: You was saying dat if you was hung, you know, if all the jury members…

    Thornburgh: No! That’s a figure of speech. A figure of speech. A hung jury is one that can’t agree. It has nothing to do with the physical characteristics.

    Ali G: So it ain’t like 15 blokes that is like well packing down there?

    Thornburgh: No, I’m sorry I should have make that clear.

  • Maryland Pattern Jury Instructions

    The jury, which is currently in deliberation, will be given this (or something very similar to this) to help them decide if Officer Porter is guilty of these charges: involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment, misconduct, and second degree manslaughter.

    (thanks to a reader.]