Hasan Says the N Word

Freddie Gray was 25 when he died in April 2015 from a spinal cord injury he sustained

while in police custody.

His death sparked outrage among black Americans who felt that Gray's death reflected the

reality about urban police departments across the country, that they don't serve and protect

black communities, but rather operate as occupying forces tasked with controlling, harassing,

and threatening African-American residents.

Surprisingly, prosecutors brought a case against the six officers implicated in Freddie Gray's

death.

Surprisingly, the result was the same as if no case had been brought, with zero convictions,

with three officers acquitted before prosecutors dropped all charges against the three remaining

officers before trials even took place.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department released a report on police activity in Baltimore.

This report was not about Freddie Gray's death, but covered general police conduct in

Baltimore.

The report which spans more than 160 pages details the clear evidence of bias and disproportionate

discrimination against black people that is pervaded in the city for decades.

Baltimore is 63 percent black, yet 91 percent of those arrested for minor discretionary offenses

like trespassing or failure to obey or loitering were African-American.

Black people also accounted for 95 percent of the 410 people stopped at least 10 times by

officers between 2010 and 2015.

Officers would also routinely make illegal stops and perform unconstitutional searches, even

of those who weren't under arrest.

They even went as far as to perform strip searches in public.

These are some of the ugly remnants of a legacy of zero tolerance policing policy that dates

back to 1999 that officially ended a decade ago after a settlement with the NAACP, yet they

still influence the city's policing strategy.

For example, most of the unconstitutional stops occurred in predominantly black neighborhoods,

the department actually encouraged these illegal stops as a crime suppression technique even

though no charges were filed in 26 of every 27 pedestrian stops.

These practices, instituted by then mayor Martin O'Malley, resulted in more than 100,000

arrests a year filling up jails but having no real impact on curbing crime.

So why did Baltimore PD continue to follow these policies?

Well, there are a few reasons. In the report's most damning finding, the BPD routinely taught

officers to use unnecessarily aggressive tactics.

Officers frequently employed excessive force and situations that did not call for such violent

escalations, not only violating Fourth Amendment rights of citizens, but also their right to

free speech by routinely arresting individuals who merely said something that offended officers.

Ironically, then the 60 instances of citizen complaints that alleged Baltimore officers

use of the racial slur nigger were misclassified as a lesser offense.

Now the training that encouraged these types of police practices fuelled on us versus

them mentality and officers that wound up alienating the community they were meant to serve.

The report also described a cultural resistance to accountability within the Baltimore PD that

let serious cases of misconduct go unpunished.

So these problems were allowed to fester because the department lacked systems to deter and

detect improper conduct and did not collect or analyze data to identify frequent abuses

or abusers.

Now this is not the end of the story.

The Justice Department has undertaken similar investigations into police departments in

Chicago, Cleveland, Albuquerque, and Ferguson as well as other cities where longstanding practices

of police brutality and discriminatory policing have been alleged.

High profile cases like Freddie Gray's have led to more investigations across the nation

fueling the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged in the wake of Trayvon Martin's murder

in 2013.

Without movements like these shining a light on widespread police abuses, millions of Americans,

particularly Black Americans, would continue to live under oppression without any hope for

institutional change.

That is why Black Lives Matter matters.

For many years, civil rights activists who challenged the city over unconstitutional and discriminatory

police practices were met with backlash and accused of besmirching the reputations of

the hardworking and honorable men and women of the Baltimore police force.

And there are hardworking honorable men and women in the Baltimore police force.

But this isn't just the case of a few bad apples.

This is institutionalized racism within a police force that's meant to protect the community.

And because of all of these movements, the rhetoric is now changing and these serious

issues that affect communities are coming to light.

Even Maryland State's attorney, Marilyn Mosby, said she expected this report to confirm

what many in our city already know or have experienced firsthand.

The Baltimore investigation does confirm what activists have been saying.