Baltimore, MD— June 30, 2022-- The Baltimore Action Legal Team filed an action in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City against the Baltimore City Law Department for acting in conspiracy with the Baltimore Police Department to maintain a pattern and practice of obstructing access to public records of police misconduct.
Plaintiff Open Justice Baltimore, Plaintiff Alissa Figueroa, and Plaintiff Brandon Soderberg have requested records from Defendant Baltimore Police Department (BPD) and experienced the same shameful response; the Baltimore City Law Department (Law Department), acting as BPD’s records custodian and counsel, has responded in a manner that interferes and obstructs the disclosure of police records, and ultimately shields the police from accountability.
A review of the Plaintiffs’ collective experiences shows that this obstruction is not an occasional occurrence, but the only experience ever encountered. This case shows that BPD and the Law Department acted in conspiracy to obstruct the law and violate the public’s right to access public records of government affairs.
Over the past two and a half years, the Plaintiffs in this case have made 21 requests for public records to BPD and the Law Department regarding the police and police misconduct. BPD and the Law Department have violated the law in their responses to every single request.
These requests were for information relevant to the public interest such as officer misconduct files, lists of officers with complaints against them, and even simply a roster of officers on active duty. Not a single record in its entirety has been handed over without a fight, revealing a pattern and practice of obstructing disclosure and a failure to provide the public with what is already theirs as granted under the Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA).
The Law Department has obstructed disclosure of police misconduct records by means including but not limited to: ignoring record requests outright, disregarding mandatory timelines, knowingly using false disclosure exemptions, refusing to acknowledge and properly consider valid fee waiver requests to avoid making records accessible, applying erroneous costs that make information impossible to obtain, using excessive fees to pressure requesters into taking less information than they are entitled, accepting money and not disclosing records for well over a year, sending information other than that requested to avoid disclosing requested information, providing files missing vital information, and disclosing information in unusable formats.
The Circuit Court for Baltimore City has already found that BPD, as represented by the Law Department, has knowingly and willfully violated the MPIA and have not acted in good faith. Yet, BPD and the Law Department refuse to change their actions. As a result, BPD and the Law Department maintain a system that violates Plaintiffs’ rights and repeatedly forces Plaintiffs to take them to court.
Since Plaintiffs’ first MPIA records request in December 2019, not a single full file of an officer’s history of misconduct has been disclosed.
Regardless of such horrific historical police misconduct and failure at change, BPD refuses to work with the public in allowing external transparency and accountability. This case exposes how the Law Department consistently helps BPD in that resistance to change, and ultimately maintains a department riddled with misconduct and community mistrust.
The Law Department has long stayed out of public view, but now must be seen as an active player in protecting the corruption of BPD. The Law Department has shown itself as only being interested in containing liability, never in making right the historic and ongoing harms of BPD.
“We’ve always known the blue wall of silence is the castle that protects police misconduct, but the Baltimore City Law Department is its moat,” Matt Zernhelt, BALT’s Legal Director.
###
BALT is dedicated to politically-conscious lawyering and to using creative, collective solutions to support the Movement for Black Lives in Baltimore.
For more information, press only:
Andy Krew
akrew@baltimoreactionlegal.org
For more information on BALT: