The Baltimore Police Department is under federal corruption investigations into nine of its officers, its police commissioner was fired last week, and now two other top cops have resigned.
Mayor Catherine Pugh’s firing of former-Commissioner Kevin Davis came after roughly a year of racketeering and evidence-planting investigations into various Baltimore Police Department (BPD) officers. Davis’ Friday firing was quickly followed by resignations from two of his top deputies on Tuesday, Deputy Commissioner Jason Johnson and Chief Ganesha Martin, the head of the Department of Justice Compliance, Accountability and External Affairs Division, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Remaining administrators have assured, however, the losses will not affect BPD’s ability to enact federally mandated reforms.
“The change in administrative personnel has no bearing on our commitment to the reforms that are being implemented by the monitor or on our responsiveness to the consent decree,” police spokesman T.J. Smith told reporters. (RELATED: Baltimore Police Call For Federal Investigation Of Detective’s Murder)
Most of the officers implicated in the corruption scandal were members of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF). At least eight officers have been accused or indicted for planting drugs on crime scenes or racketeering. The investigation has forced the department and city prosecutors to reconsider more than 850 criminal cases that the officers may have corrupted with their involvement.
Former-Detective Maurice Ward testified Tuesday that the GTTF would routinely carry BB guns in their vehicles just in case they needed to plant one on a crime scene. Ward testified to other shocking acts of corruption by the GTTF as well.
They’d regularly drive fast at a larger group of people, slam brakes and pop their doors to see who ran, then detain and search them. They had no reason other than trying to provoke someone. 10-20 times on slow nights, as many as 50 times others, he said
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) January 23, 2018
When they stopped someone suspected of being in the drug game, Jenkins would ask, “If you could put your own crew together and rob the biggest drug dealer you know of, who would it be?” And then they’d go after the person they named, to rob them
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) January 23, 2018
City violence has skyrocketed amid the police scandals as well, with Baltimore suffering 343 murders in 2017, a record rate with the city’s shrinking population. Pugh cited the surge in violence when she fired Davis and replaced him with Deputy Commissioner Darryl De Sousa.
“Crime is now spilling out all over the city, and we’ve got to focus. I am charging De Sousa and his staff to get on top of it to reduce the numbers and to reduce them quickly,” Pugh said at a news conference. “The fact is, we are not achieving the pace of progress that our residents have every right to expect in the weeks since we ended what was nearly a record year for homicides in the city of Baltimore.”
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