A court filing shows that the U.S. Department of Justice agrees that BPD is now fully compliant on two sections of its consent decree with the federal government…
Full story: Baltimore Police Department federal consent decree: 2 sections now in compliance – The Baltimore Banner
Do the potential reforms for both officer safety and safe transportation of detainees have an impact on our civil rights?
Through the article, it is clear that the primary reasoning behind the reform for transportation is due to the death of Freddie Gray back in 2015. In this case, it was both brutality and negligence that led to his death, as after Gray had been arrested he continued to resist, to which the officers replied by both shackling him and leaving him in a compromised position in the back of their vehicle. Typically, this sort of treatment would be viewed as both unnecessary and irresponsible, making events like this quite isolated. This begs the question of how these potential reforms will work. Will officers have to carry more restraints to ‘safely’ transport detainees? Will the have expanded rights when it comes to detaining a suspect in general? Whilst the goal of the reform is to protect those taken into custody, and expand officer safety, to the general public these steps could be viewed as an expansion of power that threatens civil rights.