Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison Appointed To Police Reform Work Group
BALTIMORE (WJZ/AP) — The police commissioner in Maryland's largest city has been appointed the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Police Reform and Racial Justice Working Group.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison will be one of three law enforcement leaders working on the group, created by the organization of mayors.
The task force comes after about two weeks of nationwide demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed and unarmed black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into his neck as he pleaded for air.
The group includes the mayors of Chicago, Cincinnati and Tampa, Florida, as well as police chiefs from Phoenix and Columbia, South Carolina — will work to develop reforms that could be adopted by police departments nationwide to address police violence and patterns of racial discrimination, according to the Conference of Mayors' statement.
"The recent killings of innocent black people have highlighted once again that there is much work to do with revising and improving the policies and practices of our police departments," said Bryan K. Barnett, the organization's president and the Mayor of Rochester Hills, Michigan. "We must do better, and we must start this work immediately."
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