Baltimore Mayor Nominee Pugh Reacts To DOJ Report
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- It could take decades for Baltimore to turn around its troubled police department following the release of a report by the U.S. Department of Justice that outlined decades of discriminatory practices.
That will be an immediate challeng for whoever succeeds outgoing Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake come November. WJZ's Ava-Joye Burnett sat down with Democratic nominee Catherine Pugh, who appears poised to take over.
While city leaders have vowed make reforms, much of the work needed to overhaul the police department will fall onto the next mayor's shoulders, and Pugh knows that.
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Though she acknowledged she had not yet completed the 163-page report, Pugh said some of the examples of wrongdoing referenced in the report were not surprising to those who have lived here long enough to recognize them.
"I think if you're moving around Baltimore as much as I have moved around this city, you've seen examples of some of the things that are talked about in this report," she said. "Whether you see individuals that are being sat on the sidewalk or stopped, and as the report pointed out unjustly, these things are things that are painful, painful for anybody to read, painful for anyone to hear."
Added Pugh, "I think anyone in Baltimore reading the (report) would say, 'We've got to change.'"
RELATED: Baltimore Police Discriminate Against Black People, Use Excessive Force, DOJ Report Says
Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said Baltimore will one day become a model for good policing. Pugh agreed with that, but noted it's going to take a united effort to get there.
"A lot of this is about how we heal our city and when we think about some of the horrific things that many people in our city have gone through," she said. "We need to regain that trust of the police department by our communities and that has to be earned over a period of time, and I think we are working in that direction."
Doug Ward, a law enforcement expert and director of the Johns Hopkins University division of public safety leadership, told WJZ the reforms could take as few as five years or as long as two decades.
The reforms are expected to cost the city between $5-10 million a year.
