Baltimore police accountability board calls for independence and audit of city spending in delayed report

Baltimore Police Accountability Board members say they faced hurdles in understanding where city dollars appropriated for police accountability were spent.

Members of Baltimore’s police oversight body say the city should create an independent office for police accountability and audit how officials have spent city dollars budgeted for those efforts, as members of the mayor’s administration signaled willingness to answer financial questions.

The Police Accountability Board, the city’s version of a statewide framework of boards crafted by the Maryland General Assembly, held its first meeting in February 2023. Alongside the Administrative Charging Committee, a civilian group tasked with reviewing police misconduct cases, the board reported more than 900 complaints made against police officers in 2023, according to a delayed annual report.

But board members say they faced hurdles in understanding how city dollars appropriated for police accountability were spent and experienced other transparency difficulties with the city office overseeing police accountability, known as the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Civil Rights.

“Although we’ve made some progress, we’ve encountered some obstacles hindering our ability to fulfill our mandate, which disrupts the board’s mission, purpose and work,” said Lisa Nguyen, a board member, at a morning news conference Monday.

The board reported its issues to that office and the mayor’s team, but responses have “lacked the urgency and commitment necessary for a collaborative resolution,” Nguyen said.

Baltimore’s Chief Administrative Officer Faith Leach said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun that administration officials had been sending budget information to the Police Accountability Board since mid-April, and as recently as Friday evening, when Leach offered to brief the board.

“We’re going to continue working with them,” Leach said. “The work is too important.”

The board provided a draft of its annual report to the media on Monday, saying a version would be made publicly available in “coming days.” In it, the board wrote that its efforts to secure “detailed information about budget allocations, staffing and public access to board records were met with resistance, considerable delay and often incomplete resources,” which delayed the publication of its report.

It added that though $2.1 million was set aside in the fiscal year 2024 budget for 17 staff members focused on the office’s police accountability efforts, there are only five full-time staff members. In total, over fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the report said, the city appropriated $4.53 million specifically for police accountability.

As a result, according to the report, the board formally requested a “thorough audit” of the office’s spending and recommended the city create provisions to safeguard monies for police oversight.

“Ensuring that funds designated for the [Police Accountability Board and Administrative Charging Committee] are used as intended is crucial for maintaining the effectiveness and credibility of the oversight process,” the report said.

Leach said the fiscal year 2023 budget allocation was done as a “supplemental” budget mid-year, to help stand up the Police Accountability Board and Administrative Charging Committee. The office only spent $70,000 on two positions that year; the remainder was returned to the city general fund, similar to other unspent city dollars used to balance the budget at the end of each fiscal year, Leach said.

According to Leach, there are eight filled positions in the office’s police accountability division, not five, and that is down from a high of 11 at one point earlier in fiscal year 2024.

She added that the 17 total budgeted positions were based off an unmaterialized expectation that misconduct complaints would increase upon the creation of the Police Accountability Board. Two fewer positions are proposed in the police accountability division for the upcoming fiscal year 2025 budget, Leach said.

The ordinance creating the city’s Police Accountability Board says the director of the Office of Equity and Civil Rights is to serve as the director of the city Police Accountability Board and be responsible for assisting the board with its duties. With “consultation” from the board, the ordinance says, the office director “may” assign office staff to assist the board and the Administrative Charging Committee. The director “may” also “expend funds.”

“This is a new thing that we were building and that we were standing up,” Leach said. “That’s going to take at least a full fiscal year or more, to stand up a division of this size.”

The Police Accountability Board also called for an independent office to oversee police accountability operations, shifting it away from the Office of Equity and Civil Rights. A new independent Office of Police Oversight and Accountability, the report suggested, would enable a “more targeted and effective approach,” and underscore “the city’s dedication to transparency and justice in law enforcement.”

It also could, the board suggested, give the Police Accountability Board full investigatory and subpoena powers — a recommendation that was one of 20 contained in the annual report.

That police accountability structure would be more aligned with past recommendations, including from the Community Oversight Task Force established under the city’s policing consent decree with the federal government. That body called in 2018 for a fully independent oversight body with subpoena powers.

The Police Accountability Board raised the possibility earlier this year of having its own independent legal counsel but was told by city officials that they had not identified a specific legal conflict of interest.

Joshua Harris, the board’s chair, said Monday that the board’s work is “far from over,” and urged the mayor to respond with “urgency.”

“We ask the mayor to stand with us in support in establishing an independent office of police accountability and oversight. That is a national best practice, not something we made up,” Harris said. “We know that if there’s a true commitment to improving public safety, that should be a priority.”

The board’s annual report, which had been due by the end of December, is one of its main responsibilities, as laid out in the state’s Police Accountability Act of 2021. Police accountability boards across the state also are expected to hold quarterly meetings with the leaders of law enforcement agencies, receive complaints of misconduct and review disciplinary outcomes for cases considered by the jurisdiction’s Administrative Charging Committee.

In Baltimore, the Police Accountability Board oversees Baltimore Police, as well as Baltimore School Police, the Sheriff’s Department, the city’s Environmental Police and Johns Hopkins Police, among other agencies based in the city.

In its report, the board identified a “substantial increase” in police self-reporting misconduct, with internal misconduct complaints rising from 5.8% of total misconduct allegations in 2022 to 24.7% in 2023. The board said that likely was the result of body camera audits done by the Baltimore Police Department.

Of 2023’s more than 900 complaints against officers, it said, neglect of duty and conduct unbecoming were the most frequent allegations.

Only a fraction, 3.9%, of all complaints were submitted directly to the Police Accountabilty Board, the report added. People alleging police misconduct can report directly to the Police Accountability Board, to the Civilian Review Board, which has investigatory powers but a narrower set of allegations it can investigate, or to the police departments themselves.

Baltimore’s Administrative Charging Committee, which reviews internal police misconduct investigations and makes disciplinary findings, reported reviewing hundreds of cases, including those that had accrued since July 1, 2022. Of the cases it reviewed in its first six months, about 32.3% were closed with findings of misconduct through administrative charges. Body camera footage played a “pivotal role” in substantiating complaints, the report noted.

The report also called for Baltimore Police to turn over its internal misconduct cases to the Administrative Charging Committee with at least 90 days left for the body to review the case. Delayed cases have plagued the body, resulting in tight timelines before the deadline for findings of guilt.

Another of the Police Accountability Board’s 20 recommendations called for Baltimore Police to revise its body camera policy to require officers to activate cameras for all voluntary encounters, not just for investigative or enforcement actions. The board cited instances where officers delayed recording encounters claiming that they were not yet investigative or enforcement-related.

It also suggested all Baltimore law enforcement officers receive mandatory training and certification on body cameras. All law enforcement agencies in the state are required to use body cameras by July 1, 2025.

Additional recommendations called for the creation of a statewide entity to standardize local police oversight bodies; for linking oversight budgets to police funding; for the renaming of Johns Hopkins University’s police oversight board to minimize confusion; for “advanced data analytics” for police oversight; for policies on the use of artificial intelligence in policing; and for the creation of exceptions to the state requirement that internal investigations be completed within a year and a day of the incident.