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As someone about to publish a book about Baltimore cops with the title "I Got A Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad," I gotta (briefly) address Bret Stephens' op-ed about Baltimore which does not reckon with the full extent of police corruption here
These cops committed crimes and created crimes. They robbed from people, they stole drugs from people, they sold drugs, they planted guns, they beat people up all part of a criminal conspiracy (that's the fed gov't saying that) that goes back nearly a decade at least.
What Stephens argues needs to return is the kind of plainclothes policing these cops did (when they weren't robbing people or while they were also robbing people). But I already explained how this war on citizens policing is terrible IN THE NEW YORK TIMES https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/opinion/police-guns-baltimore.html
The other fallacy I'll address (there are many others I won't spend my time on...right now at least), is the idea that Baltimore's problems come "progressive" changes. In the Post last month, me and @baynardwoods basically wrote a pre-rebuttal to this https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/baltimore-police-reforms-crime/2020/06/18/7d60e91e-b041-11ea-8758-bfd1d045525a_story.html
And mind you, the main thing he claims is hindering cops is the Federal Consent Decree. This is a common talking point by a lot of pro-cop types: "We can't do our job because of these oversights."
The other side of that which Stephens argues is "let police police the way they did before the feds felt compelled to put the city under consent decree." Baltimore is under one as the result of a Civil Rights investigation into the department.
The period Stephens references the tail end of (the 2007-2014 era where Baltimore reduced homicides and reduced arrests) btw came about because of an ACLU lawsuit: Police HAD to change how they policed especially in terms of "Zero tolerance"
In 2012, the ACLU called the Baltimore police department out for failing to comply with the agreements that came out of an illegal arrest settlement. So the kind of "progressive reform" Stephens dismisses had a major impact on the (brief) era where Baltimore reduced homicides
We now know that amid those gentle reforms, cops were doing some really terrible things: unconstitutional policing and robbery, drug dealing. And along with mass incarceration of the early 2000s led to the conditions that killed Freddie Gray—and created an uprising
And again, you can't downplay the extent of the corruption and the effect that cops that create chaos and cops that actually commit crimes has on crime. It's just a terrifying intangible and so Stephens and others just kind of don't wrestle with it.
if cops rob a guy of thousands of dollars or steal his drugs, which they were doing even back then (this charge goes back to a crime from 2009: https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/former-baltimore-police-officer-facing-federal-charges-allegedly-lying-federal-law) it can lead to market disruption, retaliation, etc.
In 2016, Baltimore cops robbed a man for 10k. He was killed a few months later after his court date (they arrested him for a gun, stole his cash) because he couldn't pay a drug debt. That's crime cops created.
I bring all of that up because the kinda implicit thing going through Stephens' piece is: "You should accept some cruddy cops because it's better than 'lawlessness.'" Because for Stephens who can dismiss chokeholds, it's all to him isolated incidents of police malfeasance
But this is why Baltimore is such a bad example. When you see the extent of Baltimore Police corruption it's organized crime, it is a gang doing the stuff gangs do.
And unlike the drug crews—"gangs" as people like Stephens think of them—a gang of police can create violence to maintain power and profit and also use it to argue they need more money etc. because look the crime (which they had a role in creating) continues.
But Stephens can't process that because I don't think he's that deeply informed about Baltimore's police and has instead just found some way to ding progressivism by way of a corrupt unaccountable police force that's ultimately controlled by the state run by a Republican Governor
You can tell he can't process it when he writes this: "Criminals, fearing less, will continue to prey on others. Police, fearing more, will hold back from doing their jobs." Police not working and leveraging violence over citizens as punishment for reform is seen as reasonable
So if cops taking their ball and going home because people want them to do their jobs differently (because of a Consent Decree) is justifiable, then cops busting heads or chokeholds are justifiable too—and serious, organize crime in the police department is downplayed
And lastly, this line: "Peaceful protests and then violence ensued." That's his diagnosis of the Baltimore Uprising. What is missing from that description is POLICE VIOLENCE that killed Freddie Gray. This is the game Stephens and others keep playing: State violence isn't violence
But in Baltimore (HIS EXAMPLE btw), the violence of the police is just far beyond brutality, violation of rights. I don't intend to dismiss those but just that Baltimore Police are exceptionally and ambitiously corrupt, which again makes it just an awful example for his argument
This police robbery of a man for $100,000 and two kilos of cocaine happened on 3/22/2016, less than a year after Freddie Gray's death amid reform talk, DOJ investigating etc. The problem was not a city that was too "progressive" https://crimereads.com/a-heist-on-time-and-a-half-inside-the-most-corrupt-police-squad-in-the-nation/
One more anecdote: One of the things even after the book was finished me and @baynardwoods continue to report out is trying to quantify the crime dirty cops created/caused. We spoke to violence interrupters who were targeted by the cops bc they were violence interrupters
Along with how awful that is (arresting violence interrupters means less shootings are mediated, targeting them discredits the program), I spoke to someone who worked for the city to help people doing the shootings by giving them access to resources etc.
The idea is a select few are doing a lot of the shootings and if they can be given resources you can move them out of that life and give them access and maybe even get them to help others stop shooting. Anyways, Baltimore cops HATED this program, I learned.
They dismissively called that kind of outreach programming "hug a thug." And at one meeting between those doing this outreach and cops, the cops kept calling the people this guy was trying to connect with, "mutants."
So, there's an example of "focused deterrence" of the kind Stephens sorta claims he supports and I learned cops were undermining it.
Also the "mutants" line is just awful and I just thought of it because of Stephens' "bed bug" meltdown.
Also the "mutants" line is just awful and I just thought of it because of Stephens' "bed bug" meltdown.
And here is the “book trailer” for “I Got A Monster” which is a four-minute rush through the details of the case
A thread that details the damage done by dirty cops in Baltimore in just three weeks https://twitter.com/notrivia/status/1284578753893617665?s=20
