September 29, afternoon
Op-Ed - Baltimore City administration said "No."
Have you seen the lame response of the Mayor's office to the contention of the Governor's office that it offered policing assistance which was rebuffed by Baltimore's executive?
Hell no. Oh, hell no.
Ed Norris' (then head of State Police) letter states:
“Maryland State Police can provide you with immediate help,” Norris wrote. “By granting full police authority to state troopers in Baltimore, the police presence in the city would immediately increase by 5 percent, due to the number of troopers who live there.”
O'Malley states he welcomes state assistance in policing and Kristen Mahoney qualifies:
"it was state police who dropped the ball by not following through with their offer.She said her department couldn't permit troopers to roam the city without supervision, but to help with specific tasks." No. What he said was "full police authority" You said "No."
Uh-uh. The state police offer is not because they're bored and looking for a way to spend an afternoon. The offer was to do the job that the Mayor's people have failed at. The Mayor of Baltimore has no business 'supervising' state troops. State troops should be sent in and should take care of business, the same as in any other condition of emergency.
Ms. Mahoney has been very clear that her department will not permit state troops within her jurisdiction. That's it. Mr. O'Malley, let me translate for you.
You said "No."
Your police department said "No."
If that's not your intention, please instruct Mr. Hamm to say "Yes, we will grant full police authority." Not "Yes, but only...." The operative term is "Yes."
Until then, it means "No."
As in ... no safety, no peace of mind, and no end to the murders and other violence rampant in your city.
And one other thing.... on election day, Mr. O'Malley..... "No."
Now, that said, does Mr. O'Malley always have his hand out for cold, hard cash from the State? Sure. His Commissioner has blown an astounding amount of $$$ on counterproductive overtime at time and a half, all the while failing to even expend the amount of payroll appropriated for regular officers' salaries. Why? Because he can't persuade acceptable candidates to work in this rotten jurisdiction. The pay sucks, it's hazardous, and cops don't like working under an arrests quota. What quota? THE quota. Stop playin', sucka. There's a quota. You know it, I know it, and the President of the FOP knows it. No personnel.
O'Malley says fiscal aid to the police decreased during his administration. Yeah, and? He runs a lousy department. I haven't seen this many unsustainable arrests since Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards. Would I fiscally support a foreign dictator's goon squad? Nope. So why should I support the repressive regime of our Mayor's city government? No respect.
If anything, the Baltimore City Police Department should have its police powers suspended and its budget turned over to a State supervisory body, so that we can achieve a reduction in violent crime which reflects more than the best efforts of the Mayor's spin doctors to inflate the number of murders at the start of his administration, so that the reduction in crime appears much higher than it truly is. No progress.
The Baltimore City council should also request that the State and the FBI investigate the routine abuse of civil rights of much of the population of Baltimore. Mr. Hamm is lying. His people do it daily. This I say as someone who has been arrested on absolutely false, groundless bases on multiple occasions. And been uncharged, dismissed or null prossed each time, but jailed nonetheless. This last time, had I not arranged a bail, I would have sat in pretrial detention for three weeks, waiting for the State's Attorney to determine from the witness that no law had been broken, at which time the charge was dropped. I was told "You are free to leave." No apology. No offer of restitution from the department. No.... nothin'.
I know it may not be that way in lily-white Baltimore A, but in Baltimore B it happens daily. For real. It's actually worse than my memories of Chicago in the early 70's. And senior police personnel don't care for it as a work environment, according to Paul Blair of the FOP,because they feel untrusted and resented by the public, as well they should.
Can I be more understanding of Mr. O'Malley's games, given the very high esteem in which I hold good law enforcement personnel?Like I said................ No.
I'm including in the comments section a discussion of the legal basis for Mr. O'Malley's false arrest policies, because of its length.
Have you seen the lame response of the Mayor's office to the contention of the Governor's office that it offered policing assistance which was rebuffed by Baltimore's executive?
Hell no. Oh, hell no.
Ed Norris' (then head of State Police) letter states:
“Maryland State Police can provide you with immediate help,” Norris wrote. “By granting full police authority to state troopers in Baltimore, the police presence in the city would immediately increase by 5 percent, due to the number of troopers who live there.”
O'Malley states he welcomes state assistance in policing and Kristen Mahoney qualifies:
"it was state police who dropped the ball by not following through with their offer.She said her department couldn't permit troopers to roam the city without supervision, but to help with specific tasks." No. What he said was "full police authority" You said "No."
Uh-uh. The state police offer is not because they're bored and looking for a way to spend an afternoon. The offer was to do the job that the Mayor's people have failed at. The Mayor of Baltimore has no business 'supervising' state troops. State troops should be sent in and should take care of business, the same as in any other condition of emergency.
Ms. Mahoney has been very clear that her department will not permit state troops within her jurisdiction. That's it. Mr. O'Malley, let me translate for you.
You said "No."
Your police department said "No."
If that's not your intention, please instruct Mr. Hamm to say "Yes, we will grant full police authority." Not "Yes, but only...." The operative term is "Yes."
Until then, it means "No."
As in ... no safety, no peace of mind, and no end to the murders and other violence rampant in your city.
And one other thing.... on election day, Mr. O'Malley..... "No."
Now, that said, does Mr. O'Malley always have his hand out for cold, hard cash from the State? Sure. His Commissioner has blown an astounding amount of $$$ on counterproductive overtime at time and a half, all the while failing to even expend the amount of payroll appropriated for regular officers' salaries. Why? Because he can't persuade acceptable candidates to work in this rotten jurisdiction. The pay sucks, it's hazardous, and cops don't like working under an arrests quota. What quota? THE quota. Stop playin', sucka. There's a quota. You know it, I know it, and the President of the FOP knows it. No personnel.
O'Malley says fiscal aid to the police decreased during his administration. Yeah, and? He runs a lousy department. I haven't seen this many unsustainable arrests since Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards. Would I fiscally support a foreign dictator's goon squad? Nope. So why should I support the repressive regime of our Mayor's city government? No respect.
If anything, the Baltimore City Police Department should have its police powers suspended and its budget turned over to a State supervisory body, so that we can achieve a reduction in violent crime which reflects more than the best efforts of the Mayor's spin doctors to inflate the number of murders at the start of his administration, so that the reduction in crime appears much higher than it truly is. No progress.
The Baltimore City council should also request that the State and the FBI investigate the routine abuse of civil rights of much of the population of Baltimore. Mr. Hamm is lying. His people do it daily. This I say as someone who has been arrested on absolutely false, groundless bases on multiple occasions. And been uncharged, dismissed or null prossed each time, but jailed nonetheless. This last time, had I not arranged a bail, I would have sat in pretrial detention for three weeks, waiting for the State's Attorney to determine from the witness that no law had been broken, at which time the charge was dropped. I was told "You are free to leave." No apology. No offer of restitution from the department. No.... nothin'.
I know it may not be that way in lily-white Baltimore A, but in Baltimore B it happens daily. For real. It's actually worse than my memories of Chicago in the early 70's. And senior police personnel don't care for it as a work environment, according to Paul Blair of the FOP,because they feel untrusted and resented by the public, as well they should.
Can I be more understanding of Mr. O'Malley's games, given the very high esteem in which I hold good law enforcement personnel?Like I said................ No.
I'm including in the comments section a discussion of the legal basis for Mr. O'Malley's false arrest policies, because of its length.
posted by John Galt at 2:38 PM
3 Comments:
In a recent article, Mayor O’Malley has issued a new basis for his police department’s persistent abuse of civil liberties: the gap between probable cause and reasonable doubt. This he claims to raise as a former prosecutor, but please recall that he is also a former criminal defense attorney.
Let’s review:
The Sixth Amendment, called First Appearance, requires that a defendant be brought before a magistrate without delay. In Maryland, District Court provides for a Preliminary Hearing to determine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe a defendant is guilty, to a standard somewhat less than a reasonable doubt. If so determined, a trial will determine whether the charges have been proven, under the rules and procedures of the Maryland judiciary, beyond a reasonable doubt.
There is clearly a need for law enforcement to be able to apprehend a criminal, given reasonable suspicion and having satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of Probable Cause. The Supreme Court has characterized probable cause as the "accumulated wisdom of precedent and experience."
Draper vs. U.S. gave us that "Probable cause is where known facts and circumstances, of a reasonably trustworthy nature, are sufficient to justify a man of reasonable caution or prudence in the belief that a crime has been or is being committed." and Smith vs. U.S. that "Probable cause is the sum total of layers of information and synthesis of what police have heard, know, or observe as trained officers. "
These principles have their genesis in the colonial history of this nation. Under English colonial rule, Writs of Assistance authorized by the royal governour were presumptive in character, requiring no justification beyond the will of the governour. Redcoats used to just bust in and do the governour’s will.
At the time of the framing of our legal system, the population consisted primarily of smallholder homesteaders. Even our leading cities were sparsely populated by European standards. As a result, if a crime occurred on or to your property, it was most likely the case that the primary witness was the victim. Further, since antivagrancy laws were in effect, most of the candidates for criminality were well-known to the victim and his neighbors. Enforcement would be carried out by fairly certain citizens swearing out warrants through a constable, whose job was primarily one of due process. There were very few transients, at least outside of ports, so identifying perps was pretty easy.
With urbanization and the corresponding influx of unrecognized immigrants speaking foreign tongues, places like New York and Boston came to realize that they needed a professional police force, such as then existed in London, because many of the modern perps were strangers, or were transient. And as citizens’ lives became more complex and less associated with tilling the soil at the family homestead, the likelihood of observing crimes oneself diminished, creating the need for a municipal watchman, the modern patrol officer.
When the officer (constable) was primarily processing a warrant for a victim/complainant, it would have been quite reasonable that the complainant meet first a loose standard for probable cause and then a somewhat stricter standard before the court for guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The logic being that it is the court’s function and not that of the executive branch, to adjudicate innocence or guilt. In the contemporary setting, however, the officer is both the complainant for the warrant/charges and the principal witness at trial. It is, therefore, unnecessary for him to face a far less exacting standard for probable cause leading to arrest than the guilt beyond reasonable doubt which he will still need to demonstrate at trial. By that standard, if a police officer cannot using the facts at his disposal convince himself of guilt beyond reasonable doubt, how could he expect anything but injustice to come of his arresting based upon a probable cause which in his mind is apparently far, far removed from guilt beyond reasonable doubt. It becomes more or less a speculative detainer with the burden placed upon the prosecutor to establish a case to the satisfaction of the court where the arresting officer felt very likely none existed.
Therefore, it seems to me, to the degree that the conviction on a charge will hinge exclusively on the offerings of the arresting officer, except for the forms of pleading interposed by a prosecutor, then in the same degree the probable cause must bear similitude to the expectation of guilt beyond reasonable doubt by that pivotal officer. Where the gap between the two is great, a grave injustice is done by facilitating the arrest of the defendant on flimsy grounds.
In fact, Mr. O’Malley thereby comes to be in the same boat with George W. (Dubya) in respect of foreign detainees without charges.
Two brief legal points on your post - MSP already has statewide police powers. A state trooper can enforce the traffic and criminal laws statewide without any sort of special authorization (unlike, say, a county police officer outside his jurisdiction).
And to respond to the comment - you do NOT get a preliminary hearing in Maryland except for serious felony charges. Otherwise you sit until the trial date. Other states have a probable cause hearing on misdemeanors. We don't.
MSP has statewide concurrent jurisdiction. My understanding of what this signifies is that under Home Rule legislation adopted in the early 70's, I believe, Md.'s counties received all residual powers not specifically reserved to the state.
I am informed by MSP that they cannot just walk in and uphold law in Baltimore.
Regarding the absence of a prelim hearing for misdemeanors, you're right. I guess the idea is to dispose of both probable cause and evidentiary issues simultaneously and avoid a trial + hearing for low level stuff.
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