A Baltimore City Council member says he is investigating sex-offense charges the police brought against a sergeant who refused to drop a lawsuit against the agency.

“This man was on vacation and they are charging him with rape,” said Councilman Bernard “Jack” Young, D-12th District. “I find that troubling.”

Young, chairman of the council’s Public Safety Subcommittee, said he is considering holding hearings about what motivated the Baltimore Police Department to accuse Sgt. Robert Smith of a crime he couldn’t have possibly committed.

Smith and his attorney, Clarke Ahlers, say the department is accusing Smith of false charges because the officer refused to drop his $1.5 million defamation lawsuit.

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The conflict between Smith and the department began when a search warrant leaked to the media during an investigation of the Southwest District Flex Squad alleged Smith was violating drug laws, though no drugs were found in his possession during the search.

Smith sued, claiming he suffered “public ridicule, scorn, dishonor and embarrassment” — and won the right to pursue his defamation case from Maryland’s highest court.

But on Feb. 20, Karen Hornig, chief legal counsel for the police, wrote Ahlers and offered to allow Smith, who is on administrative duty, to “return to the streets” in exchange for dropping the lawsuit.

After Smith refused, the department charged him administratively Feb. 27 with helping former officer Jemini Jones sexually assault a teenage girl in a station house Dec. 27, 2005. Jones had already been acquitted of the rape charge.

Records from the trial and an official duty roster show Smith, a supervisor in the Southwest District Flex Squad, was on vacation during the alleged incident. Baltimore prosecutors say Smith was “never implicated in any way.” Hornig declined to comment Tuesday.

Young said police officials told him Tuesday the charges against Smith were based solely on poor supervision of the flex squad.

But a review of internal charging documents provided to The Examiner show that the department implicates Smith directly, putting him at the scene of the alleged rape — though roll-call sheets and prosecutors state Smith was not there.

One charge said Smith “aided and abetted” Jones by “pushing a door closed from the outside of the office.”

More troubling, Ahlers said, was the fact that members of the police department’s charging committee apparently backdated the charges to February 2006 — 16 months before internal affairs investigators even questioned Smith.

These and other inconsistencies highlight a punishment system that often ensnares innocent officers in a web of unsubstantiated charges and lingering doubt, police union officials said.

“The alleged incident occurred in December 2005 and they’re just getting around to charging him now?” said Paul Blair, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 3.

lbroadwater@baltimoreexaminer.com

sjanis@baltimoreexaminer.com