Marilyn Mosby Flags 305 Officers For 'Integrity' Issues; GTTF Investigation Has No Time, Money Limits
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby said a list of officers with possible integrity issues has ballooned to 305 — more than 10 percent of the force.
She made the comments at the latest meeting of the Maryland Commission To Restore Trust In Policing on Tuesday, which is tasked with investigating what led to corruption in the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force.
The officers are not necessarily excluded from testifying, but Mosby said her office will "provide automatic disclosure" to defense attorneys when these officers are involved in cases.
A smaller list of officers has been excluded from testifying, she said.
"Hopefully, they don't put that officer in a position where he has to come and testify because (...) we will not call that officer," Mosby said.
She told the commission, "We don't have anything to hide."
She said the list includes current and former officers and those with complaints that have not been sustained.
Brian Nadeau, the deputy BPD commissioner overseeing the Public Integrity Bureau, said the list of officers excluded from testifying in criminal cases stands at 22. He says only two of those officers are currently employed by the department.
Nadeau said he is working to revamp his office to handle a backlog of disciplinary cases against officers. He plans to hire 11 detectives to fill 12 vacancies and work to handle most complaints within 90 days. He said some currently take a year or more to resolve.
Nadeau told the commission he does not have enough staffing to provide random integrity tests on officers but does so when he is alerted to a problem officer.
An "early warning system" to flag troubled officers is currently manual, but Nadeau hopes to have a computerized system in place soon, noting that the system would flag officers with higher-than-normal complaints and excess overtime, among other issues.
The commission also heard from Michael Bromwich, who works for the Steptoe and Johnson law firm. The city has hired him to perform an independent investigation into the Gun Trace Task Force scandal. Officers on that once-elite squad were stealing from citizens.
Bromwich said he has no time or budget limits and has yet to get the internal affairs records of the officers involved.
He aims to find out the scope of corruption within and beyond the GTTF.
"We want an answer to the questions, 'Were others involved other than those we now know about? Who else was complicit? Who turned a blind eye?'" he said.
The only two officers to go to trial in the GTTF scandal, Marcus Taylor and Daniel Hersl, have been writing letters from prison to the commission.
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Among other topics, Hersl has addressed the case of slain Detective Sean Suiter, who was killed the day before he was set to testify in front of a grand jury in the GTTF investigation.
Taylor has questioned whether prosecutors needed to drop all cases in which he was involved. He said he has evidence from more than 80 cases on his cell phone.
Mosby told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren her office has hired 10 employees and reviewed more than 2800 cases tainted by the Gun Trace Task Force.
