Racist and Sexist: DOJ Issues Damning Report on Baltimore PD

FEATURING JODIE AMROUR – The US Department of Justice recently released a damning report on the Baltimore Police Department in Maryland a year after riots rocked the city over Freddie Gray’s police custody death.

The report singles out how BPD officers routinely and egregiously violated the constitutional rights of African Americans, stopping black men in particular hundreds of times with few if any charges. Racist epithets were commonly used to refer to black residents revealing widespread problems of racism among officers.

The DOJ report additionally found gender bias against sexual assault victims and disproportionate targeting of transgender Baltimore residents.

The problems are so systemic and deep rooted that many community members and groups are calling for police officers who specifically violated policies to be publicly named and fired, and for the Baltimore Police Department to be overhauled from top to bottom.

Jody Armour, the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America. He is also a Soros Justice Senior Fellow of The Open Society Institute’s Center on Crime, Communities and Culture. And he is the Race and Criminal Justice Correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali.