“Two Baltimore detectives were convicted Monday of robbery and racketeering,” the Washington Post reported, “in a trial that laid bare shocking crimes committed by an elite police unit and surfaced new allegations of widespread corruption in the city’s police department.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise presented the jury with “things more horrible in some cases than you ever could have imagined.”
Test your imagination:
- Four police officers, already convicted, testified to routinely violating the rights of citizens in order to steal cash and property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Officers left the scene of an accident they caused without summoning assistance for those injured, and then covered up their involvement.
- Detectives “doubled their salaries by lying to claim extravagant overtime when they were actually at bars or … out of the country on vacation.”
- There was an allegation of murder against one policeman and a charge that another high police official covered it up.
A total of eight officers of the Gun Trace Task Force have now been convicted of or pleaded guilty to felonies.
Where was Internal Affairs? “The head of internal affairs has been transferred” the Post informed, after he was “implicated in misconduct during trial testimony.”
We could sic the feds on them! Oh, wait, “[m]ost of the behavior charged in the case took place even as the [Baltimore police] department was already under federal investigation by the Justice Department …”
Prospects for reform?
Last Wednesday, Mayor Catherine Pugh claimed to having been “too busy to follow the trial closely or read Baltimore Sun coverage…”
Baltimore, we’ve got a problem.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
