THREAD: Again, this committee has stained the very honor and affronted the credibility of Maryland law enforcement. If police officers -- the men and women who are sworn, who have the power of arrest, who are legally armed, who are members of a cohort that can provide...
...a legal deterrent and muster backup and resources against any threat against one of their own -- if they are too frightened to STAND BEHIND THEIR POLICE WORK in open society, then how in hell do Maryland officials have the right to ask any solitary citizen anywhere...
...to give a statement to an officer, to cooperate with police, to walk into a courtroom and testify. The system asks for the overt and public cooperation of the public, but now exempts its officers from the basic standards of public accountability. Worse...
...the state's judiciary now attempts to defend this craven, cowardly display by suggesting that they are merely dialing back access to the identification of officers who have arrested and detained citizens, that the information is available in other formats. But of course...
...for those seeking any careful accountability from law officers -- and in a time when in Baltimore, police credibility is at an all-time low -- know that the ability to use the extant data to measure a given officer's performance, priorities, his targeting, the quality...
...of his casework or that of his squad or unit is elementally dependent on being able to access the data. The Maryland judiciary, which is charged with delivering justice in an open, transparent and credible way, has argued instead for darkness. Still worse, they have done so...
...while hiding behind the false flag of officer safety, though again if they are claiming that sworn, armed police officers aren't safe from harm, then no Marylander should ever -- not ever -- give a statement to a police officer, become a willing witness or testify...
...in open court. And to ask that any of us do so after this appalling display of hypocrisy and cowardice is an affront to our intelligence. The same affront was offered by Baltimore police several years ago when the department sought, incredibly, to shield the names...
...of officers who on used deadly force on citizens and the claim at that time was that this was necessary to protect officers from retaliation. Police officials then were immediately embarrassed when it came out that threats against officers had not in fact increased, but now...
...the same unsubstantiated and vague fear is being delivered to shield police from any systematic or comprehensive view of their arrest powers or work product. That this is being done by a group that claims to speak for the interests of a judiciary that has the essential task..
...of maintaining a transparent and accountable legal process is especially debilitating. They apparently made no announcements, sought no input from groups other than police unions, encouraged no debate. And now, efforts to look at the fundamental casework -- the performance...
...and priorities -- of law enforcement itself has been grossly impaired, not only for a free press, but for civil rights groups, community organizers, the defense bar and ordinary citizens. This is not only an abysmal action, it is decisively and willfully undemocratic.
And pardon any typos or lapses in construct. I was typing fast and hot.
What a miserable fucking performance by the state of Maryland.
What a miserable fucking performance by the state of Maryland.
