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Legendary Journalist, Black Press Columnist George Curry Remembered as Champion of Civil Rights By Hazel Trice Edney

Updated Version
Aug. 23, 2016
Legendary Journalist, Black Press Columnist George Curry Remembered as Champion of Civil Rights
By Hazel Trice Edney

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(TriceEdneyWire) - Renowned civil rights and Black political journalist George E. Curry, the dean of Black press columnists because of his riveting weekly commentary in Black newspapers across the country, is being remembered this week as a legend.
Curry died suddenly of heart failure on Saturday, August 20. He was 69.

"He stood tall. He helped pave the way for other journalists of color to do their jobs without the questions and doubts," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. with whom Curry traveled extensively, including to the funeral of President Nelson Mandela. "He was a proud and tireless advocate of the Black press, serving two tours as editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association's news service."

Curry's fiancée Ann Ragland confirmed that the funeral will be held Saturday, August 27, at 11 am at the Weeping Mary Baptist Church, 2701 20th Street, Tuscaloosa, Ala. Rev. Al Sharpton will give the eulogy. A viewing on Saturday will be from 8:30-11 am.

Ragland said a viewing will also be held on Friday evening, Aug. 26, with Rev. Jackson speaking, but the time and venue have not been confirmed by deadline. Additional details will be announced this week.

Having grown up in Tuscaloosa during the height of racial segregation, Curry often said he "fled Alabama" and vowed never to return when he went away to college. However, Ragland said he always told her to return him home to Tuscaloosa upon his death.

Shocking rumors of his death circulated heavily in journalistic circles on Saturday night until it was confirmed by Dr. Bernard Lafayette, MLK confidant and chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference shortly before midnight.

"This is a tragic loss to the movement because George Curry was a journalist who paid special attention to civil rights because he lived it and loved it," Lafayette told the Trice Edney News Wire through his spokesman Maynard Eaton, SCLC national communications director.

Curry's connection to the SCLC was through his longtime childhood friend, confidant and ally in civil rights, Dr. Charles Steele, SCLC president. Steele and Curry grew up together in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where they played football at Druid High School. Curry bloomed as a civil rights and sports writer as Steele grew into a politician and civil rights leader.

"He was a pacesetter with the pen. He saw things that other people didn't see," said Steele. "And once he saw those things, he embraced them and exposed them in terms of putting information into the hands of people who would normally be left out of the process, meaning the African-American community."

Ragland, Curry's fiancée and closest confidant, drove him to the Washington Adventist Hospital emergency room after he called her complaining of chest pains Saturday afternoon. He insisted that she take him instead of calling an ambulance. She said he remained conscience throughout the cardiac tests and the doctor assured her he would be fine. But his heart took a sudden turn. She said the doctor tried to explain to her that the turn was totally unexpected. "He said, 'He was okay, but then his heart just stopped.'"

Curry's closest colleagues knew and respected him for his journalism and his demand for excellence, which was sometimes expressed in a no nonsense, drill sergeant style of communicating. But, Ragland said the one thing that most people don't know is "how, even though he was so brash sometimes, how compassionate he was for other people."

She gave an example of his being at a recent doctor's appointment and meeting an older man who was having difficulty walking. She said Curry not only helped the man along but bought him lunch.

Curry began his journalism career at Sports Illustrated, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and then the Chicago Tribune. But he is most revered for his editorship of the award-winning former Emerge Magazine and more recently for his work as editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association from 2001-2007 at NNPA offices located at Howard University. He returned to leadership of the NNPA News Service in 2012 until last year when he left amidst budgetary issues.

"It's hard to believe that George Curry, a giant in the journalism profession is no longer with us. The news of George's death leaves a tremendous void that will be difficult to fill," said NNPA Chairwoman Denise Rolark Barnes, publisher of the Washington Informer. "George's uncompromising journalistic leadership delivered on Emerge's promise to deliver edgy, hard-hitting, intellectual, well-written and thoroughly researched content that attracted national attention and left an indelible mark on the lives of many."

Barnes added, "I was honored to carry George's weekly column in the Washington Informer and to work with him as he served as editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Wire. George provided so much of his time, energy, wisdom and incredible journalistic genius to the Black Press. His work will stand as a lasting legacy of journalist excellence and integrity of which all of us in the Black Press and in the journalistic field at large can field extremely proud."

Jake Oliver, publisher and chairman of the Baltimore-based Afro American Newspapers, who first hired Curry as NNPA editor-in-chief, recalled their long friendship.

"I'm in total shock. I've lost a very close, dear friend," Oliver said. "I hired him at the NNPA at the turn of the century and even before then we worked remotely on various issues that we had the same point of view about. George was a journalist par excellence...He spent a lot of time at his craft and perfected it at a high level. And as a result, he was able to generate national and indeed, international respect," Oliver said.

"There was so much that he gave to the Black Press and the gifts that he's left us are enormous."

The name, George Curry, is as prominent among civil rights circles as among journalists. He did weekly commentary on the radio show of the Rev. Al Sharpton. Curry had appeared on the show on Friday, the day before his death.

"When I started my daily radio show 10 years ago, I asked him to close the final hour every week on Friday," Sharpton recalls. "About a month ago, he went away for two weeks. He came back last Friday. We teased him [saying] he had rarely missed a Friday. We talked about the elections and everything and the next day he died, which was shocking to me."

Sharpton said Curry's legacy "is integrity, is boldness, is holding people - including Black leaders that were his friends - accountable. And defending us when we deserved it."

Sharpton concluded, "George was probably the ultimate journalist and the epitome of a Black journalist. He held us all accountable as he also told our story with no fear and no concern about his own career. He was a man of supreme integrity and boldness that I don't know if I've met anyone that came close."

Curry's reputation was broad and highly esteemed. Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also issued a statement upon his death.

"George E. Curry was a pioneering journalist, a tireless crusader for justice, and a true agent of change," Clinton wrote. "With quality reporting, creativity, and skillful persuasion he influenced countless people, including me, to think beyond their narrow experience and expand their understanding. George may be gone, but he will not be forgotten."

Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G. K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), wrote: "George E. Curry was a giant in journalism and he stood on the front lines of the Civil Rights era and used his voice to tell our stories when others would not."

When he died he was raising money to fully fund Emerge News Online, a digital version of the former paper magazine. He had also continued to independently distribute his weekly column to Black newspapers.

In 2003, he was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists for his work as editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com, NNPA's public news website.

"I am heartbroken to learn that Mr. George Curry has passed. He has been a beacon for so many and a pivotal voice among Black publishers. His strength and pursuit for the truth will carry on in the lives he touched," said NABJ President Sarah Glover in a statement this week.

The NABJ release also recalled Curry's love for working with students and future journalists.

It quotes Neil Foote, a friend of Curry's and president of the National Black Public Relations Society, saying, "George has made so many contributions to journalism - from the high school journalism workshops to his passionate fight for the black press. There's a generation of journalists - including me - who are grateful to have had the chance to know him."

Curry was working to revive Emerge as an online publication at the time of his death. The NABJ statement quotes TV-ONE host Roland S. Martin, a friend, colleague and fellow columnist, who honored Curry during his NewsOne Now television and radio shows this week: "He was still fighting to revive that magazine until his last moment on earth...George Curry died with his boots on, still fighting."

Fight for $15: Low-wage Workers Take National Message, Movement to Virginia by Leah Hobbs

August 22, 2016
Fight for $15: Low-wage Workers Take National Message, Movement to Virginia
By Leah Hobbs

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Dr. William Barber II, left, president of the North Carolina NAACP, energizes the crowd of thousands who withstood Saturday’s scorching heat to march from Monroe Park to the Monument Avenue statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va. to call for an end to slave wages.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Laura Clark is a home care worker, yet she has no income. The 53-year-old Caroline County resident cares for her 83-year-old mother, who suffers from dementia and COPD, but doesn’t qualify to receive pay as a family caregiver because her mother has life insurance.
She said her daily struggle to keep things going in her own household makes her understand the plight of others working for minimum wage — $7.25 an hour. That’s why she joined several thousand people last Saturday to march and rally in Richmond in the “Fight for $15,” a national movement to raise the minimum wage to $15. Like Clark, millions of workers in Virginia and across the United States don’t earn enough to afford basic necessities. The minimum wage, Clark said, “is barely enough for a teenager to support themselves, let alone a family. The minimum wage should be a living wage.”

Fight for $15 organizers strategically chose Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, for its two-day national convention to show the correlation between systemic racism and low-wage jobs.
With streets closed to traffic, thousands of supporters from Detroit and Chicago to New York and Florida marched from Monroe Park to the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue, where Dr. William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP, addressed the crowd, many of them low-wage workers in fast food, home care and child care.
“Labor without living wages is nothing but a pseudo form of slavery,” Dr. Barber said to applause. “You are right to raise up and declare we can’t wait any longer. Hard-working people can’t wait. Mothers trying to raise their children can’t wait.
“It took 400 years to go from zero wages to $7.25. We can’t wait another 400 years,” he said. Earlier Saturday morning, hundreds of protesters joined with local McDonald’s restaurant workers who walked out on strike in Richmond’s North Side. Workers said they want to send a clear message to fast food giants that they won’t be ignored, but will fight for $15 an hour.
Mrs. Clark said she gets her mother up every morning, helps her use the bathroom, administers her medications, feeds her and keeps the house clean. During some of the hottest days of the summer, her air conditioner barely cools the house lower than 85, but she doesn’t have the money to buy a new one.

“These are basic needs everybody deserves,” she said.
Clark said she’s living off of the proceeds of her husband’s life insurance. Working two jobs to support his family, he was killed in a car accident when he fell asleep at the wheel after working too many hours over the course of three days, she said.
She said she’s uncertain what will happen once the money runs out, but she wants a better situation for her 26-year-old daughter and grandchildren.
“My parents marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the same reasons we are marching,” she said, referring to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. “This fight shouldn’t have lasted this long. I don’t want my grandchildren to fight the fight my grandparents fought. People of color shouldn’t have the same issues from generation to generation.”
Some opponents of raising the minimum wage claim it would harm the economy. But Clark disagrees.
“If you increase the minimum wage, that gives more spendable cash to everyone. Everybody is winning,” she said. “The money will keep circulating. The more money you have in your pocket, the more money you’ll spend.”
She said she realizes many people may not understand her perspective and that of the marchers.
“The rich will never understand what it’s like to be poor. Until they walk in our shoes, they’ll never understand,” she said.
Several people at the rally challenged politicians to live for a month on minimum wage. Organizers reminded people that change in America occurs through grassroots movements like Fight for $15. Dr. Barber encouraged the people to keep advocating for the pay they deserve. He said, “When truth and justice have fought, truth and justice have never lost.”

Hillary Clinton Stands on the Shoulders of Shirley Chisolm by Marc H. Morial

August 21, 2016

To Be Equal 


Hillary Clinton Stands on the Shoulders of Shirley Chisolm

By Marc H. Morial

 

 

NEWS ANALYSIS

 

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Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm announcing her candidacy for presidential nomination in 1972. PHOTO: Library of Congress

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes…We must replace the old, negative thoughts about our femininity with positive thoughts and positive action affirming it, and more. But we must also remember that we will be breaking with tradition, and so we must prepare ourselves educationally, economically, and psychologically in order that we will be able to accept and bear with the sanctions that society will immediately impose upon us.” - Shirley Chisholm

 

The nation has marked the historic occasion of the first woman in American history to win the Presidential nomination for a major political party.

 

While Hillary Clinton has come further than any woman Presidential candidate, she is not the first. Victoria Woodhull ran as the candidate for the Equal Rights Party in 1872. Margaret Chase Smith challenged Barry Goldwater for the Republican nomination in 1964. More recently, Pat Schroeder in 1988 and  Carol Moseley Braun in 2004 vied for the Democratic nomination.

 

But the most historically significant forerunner to Hillary Clinton was Shirley Chisholm, the Brooklyn-born trailblazer who was also the nation’s first African-American Congresswoman.

 

The daughter of working-class immigrants from the Caribbean, Chisholm became interested in politics while serving as the director of a child day care center and an educational consultant for the New York City Division of Day Care.  She served three years as a New York State Assemblywoman before running for Congress in 1968 with the slogan "Unbought and unbossed".

 

“My greatest political asset,” Chisholm said, “which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn’t always discuss for reasons of political expediency.”

 

Chisholm hired only women for her staff, half of whom were African-Americans. “Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being Black,” she said.

 

She announced her candidacy for President at a Baptist church in Brooklyn. In an article about her candidacy, the Associated Press wrote, “Ironically, her major headache seems to come from Black politicians.”

 

“They think that I am trying to take power away from them,” she said. “The Black man must step forward. But that doesn’t mean the Black woman must step back.

 

“While they’re rapping and snapping, I’m mapping,” she said.

 

She competed in 14 states, winning 28 delegates to the convention. As a symbolic gesture, candidate Hubert Humphrey released his 83 Black delegates to cast their votes for Chisholm.  With the votes of several other delegates at that contentious convention, Chisolm finished fourth in a field of 13, with 152 delegates.

 

It is hard to imagine, in this era of sharp division in politics, the remarkable moment during that campaign when she visited her segregationist rival, Alabama Governor George Wallace, in his hospital room after he was shot and wounded. “What are your people going to say?” he asked her. “I know what they are going to say,” she said. “But I wouldn’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.”  She recalled that her words moved him to tears.

 

Chisholm retired from Congress in 1982 and remained an outspoken activist for civil rights until her death in 2005.

 

It would be difficult to overestimate the impact and influence of Chisholm’s Congressional service and Presidential candidacy. While Congress remains disproportionately white and male, one-in-five members of the current House and Senate are a racial or ethnic minority, making the 114th Congress the most diverse in history.  The nation’s first African-American President is winding up his second term, and a woman – a former senator and Secretary of State – has just won the Democratic nomination for President.

 

In her acclaimed speech on the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970, Chisholm said, “The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no Black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so.”

 

Marc H. Morial is president/CEO of the National Urban League.

DOJ Baltimore Report: Is There Light at the End of This Tunnel? By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III

August 22, 2016

DOJ Baltimore Report: Is There Light at the End of This Tunnel?
By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III

NEWS ANALYSIS

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “…the Department of Justice concludes that there is reasonable cause to believe that BPD (Baltimore City Police Department) engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law…” - DOJ August 10, 2016 Report on the BPD

In response to the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of members of the BPD the US Department of Justice (DOJ) engaged in a thorough investigation of the patterns and practices of the BPD.  The DOJ issued a scathing 163-page report documenting what many African-American Baltimoreans  have known and experienced for years, “Racially disparate impact is present at every stage of BPD’s enforcement actions, from the initial decision to stop individuals on Baltimore streets to searches, arrests, and uses of force.” The DOJ also found that “BPD uses overly aggressive tactics that unnecessarily escalate encounters, increase tensions, and lead to unnecessary force, and fails to de-escalate encounters when it would be reasonable to do so.”

The report cited specific cases of supervisors issuing explicitly discriminatory orders, such as directing a shift to arrest 'all the black hoodies' in a neighborhood. They also found that black residents were more likely to be stopped and searched as pedestrians and drivers even though police were more likely to find illegal guns, illicit drugs and other contraband on white residents.

In one incident officers in BPD’s Eastern District publicly strip-searched a woman following a routine traffic stop for a missing headlight. Officers ordered the woman to exit her vehicle, remove her clothes, and stand on the sidewalk to be searched. The male officer ordered a female officer to strip search the woman. Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the female officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity. This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges. The search occurred in full view of the street.

We have to be very clear in this analysis and the resulting discussions. For as thorough as the DOJ report is, it fails to identify the source of these problems. First, these documented practices of using excessive force and issuing discriminatory orders have nothing to do with fighting crime, keeping the community safe, “Community Policing” or “Broken Windows Policing”. They are the result of what Dr. Francis Kress Welsing called racism (white supremacy).  The local and global power system structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined; this system consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of activity (economics, education, law, etc.). This is not a policing problem; this cuts to core of who America really is and always has been.

Second, looking at Baltimore as though it exists in a vacuum fails to take into account the widespread and historic nature of this problem.  The city of Chicago is now on the hook for $5.5 million as it has to pay 57 people who were found to be victims Commander Jon Burge who along with his “midnight crew” gained notoriety for torturing criminal suspects between 1972 and 1991 in order to force confessions.

According to The Guardian newspaper in a separate investigation, “Internal documents from the Chicago police department show that officers used physical force on at least 14 men already in custody at the warehouse known as Homan Square.”  There have been at least 7,351 people and more than 6,000 of them African American who “have been detained and interrogated at Homan Square without a public notice of their whereabouts or access to an attorney.”

Look at the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865 that abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…” This provision provided the space for convict leasing programs to take over where slavery left off.  According to Douglas Blackmon in his book Slavery By Another Name, within 35 years of the 13th Amendment, “By 1900, the South’s judicial system had been wholly reconfigured to make one of its primary purposes the coercion of African Americans to comply with the social customs and the labor demands of whites.” This is clear evidence of the historic nature of this problem.

In 1951 Civil Rights attorney William Patterson and activist and actor Ossie Davis took the US before the UN charging the US with genocide for crimes against the Negro people.  They wanted to “expose the nature and depth of racism in the United States; and to arouse the moral conscience of progressive mankind against the inhuman treatment of black nationals by those in high places.” This depth of racism gets to the core of what America has always been.

Finally, the DOJ report fails to hold anyone accountable. Baltimore Mayor Rawlings-Blake in an August 10 press conference was asked who should be held responsible for the BPD being in this situation.  She replied, “These problems are systemic.  A system is not an individual. Doing the work of implementing meaningful reform is not aided by pointing fingers of blame.  It is aided by rolling up your sleeves and doing the very tough work.” Wrong!

No one is asking to point “fingers of blame”. Blame can be arbitrary; accountability is fact based. These atrocities were committed by real people, individuals with names. “Supervisors issuing explicitly discriminatory orders…” Who were these supervisors? Are they still on the force? Why are they not being held accountable for the patterns or practices of conduct that violated the Constitution or federal law?  It’s not about placing “blame” as the Mayor spun the question. It’s about accountability!

Is there light at the end of this tunnel?  Yes there is. But with the most recent police shooting of Joseph Mann in Sacramento, CA, homeless, mentally ill and apparently unarmed; the light at the end of the tunnel is from an oncoming train.

Dr. Wilmer Leon is the Producer/ Host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon,” on SiriusXM Satellite radio channel 126. Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. www.twitter.com/drwleon and Dr. Leon’s Prescription at Facebook.com

Justice Department Findings of Baltimore Police Treatment of Blacks Called 'Damning' By Hazel Trice Edney

Aug. 15, 2016

Justice Department Findings of Baltimore Police Treatment of Blacks Called 'Damning'
By Hazel Trice Edney

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Attorney General Loretta Lynch

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that its investigation following unrest in the Freddie Gray death case has revealed extreme racial discrimination by the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD).

“The Justice Department announced today that it found reasonable cause to believe that the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution as well as federal anti-discrimination laws,” said a DOJ statement Aug. 10.  “BPD makes stops, searches and arrests without the required justification; uses enforcement strategies that unlawfully subject African Americans to disproportionate rates of stops, searches and arrests; uses excessive force; and retaliates against individuals for their constitutionally-protected expression.  The pattern or practice results from systemic deficiencies that have persisted within BPD for many years and has exacerbated community distrust of the police, particularly in the African-American community.”

The findings were so severe that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a Montgomery, Alabama-based anti-discrimination group and expert on racial hatred in America described the results as “damning”.

The Justice Department has delivered “a damning indictment of the conduct of police in Baltimore – describing in great detail the nonstop, systematic harassment targeting the city’s Black population. The investigation exposed a staggering degree of racially biased, unconstitutional behavior by police,” wrote SPLC President Richard Cohen. “African Americans are stopped, interrogated and frisked on the street for no reason. They’re frequently arrested without probable cause for misdemeanors like ‘loitering’ or ‘trespassing’ or ‘failure to obey.’ And they’re routinely subjected to police violence, even when posing no threat to anyone and not suspected of any serious crime.”

Among the most egregious violations pointed out by the SPLC:

  • In a 4½-year period, Baltimore police recorded more than 300,000 pedestrian stops, but only a tiny percentage led to charges. One African-American man was stopped by police 30 times – and not charged with anything.
  • African-Americans were arrested on drug charges at five times the rate of White people – even though searches of White people were far more likely to find drugs.
  • The blistering DOJ report leaves little doubt that these practices are rooted in racial bias. But while there are surely some who are overtly racist, it wouldn’t be fair to lay all the blame on individual police officers. Beginning in the early 1990s, city and police leaders encouraged ‘zero tolerance’ policies that emphasized the very practices still in place today.

The Baltimore-based NAACP also scrutinized the report saying it is also “damning” for American policing overall.

“We all know that over-aggressive policing that targets African-Americans is not just Baltimore’s problem. The DOJ issued similar findings about Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of Michael Brown, which happened two years ago yesterday. It is, in fact, a deeply engrained problem across America – and part of a larger criminal justice system that has resulted in our country having the world’s highest per-capita incarceration rate,” said NAACP President Cornell William Brook, in a release. “The tactics instituted in Baltimore more than two decades ago were the wrong answer to rising crime rates in impoverished urban areas that for decades have borne the brunt of systemic racism. The DOJ carefully highlights the structural forces at work in the city: poverty, segregation, poor health care access and economic isolation.”

The DOJ report comes weeks after the realization that all six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore had been exonerated. The first three were exonerated by the judge. Baltimore Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby dropped the charges against the final three.

Still, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a release that the conduct of the BPD had for years seriously corroded and undermined the public trust.

“Our investigation found that Baltimore is a city where the bonds of trust have been broken, and that the Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of unlawful and unconstitutional conduct, ranging from the use of excessive force to unjustified stops, seizures and arrests.  The results of our investigation raise serious concerns, and in the days ahead, the Department of Justice will continue working tirelessly to ensure that all Baltimoreans enjoy the safety, security and dignity they expect and deserve,” Lynch said.

Among the rogue practices listed in the DOJ report:

  • Conducting stops, searches and arrests without meeting the requirements of the Fourth Amendment;
  • Focusing enforcement strategies on African Americans, leading to severe and unjustified racial disparities in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Safe Streets Act;
  • Using unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment;
  • Interacting with individuals with mental health disabilities in a manner that violates the Americans with Disabilities Act; and
  • Interfering with the right to free expression in violation of the First Amendment.

The DOJ has issued specific principles and policies to which the department must agree in order to correct the past violations and prevent the going forward. They are:

  • Policies, training, data collection and analysis to allow for the assessment of officer activity and to ensure that officers’ actions conform to legal and constitutional requirements;
  • Technology and infrastructure to ensure capability to effectively monitor officer activity;
  • Officer support to ensure that officers are equipped to perform their jobs effectively and constitutionally; and
  • Community policing strategies to guide all aspects of BPD’s operations and help rebuild the relationship between BPD and the various communities it serves.

The agreement provides a framework for change, but the DOJ is also seeking community outreach “to solicit input in developing comprehensive reforms.”

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