Stephen Janis, The Examiner
2007-04-26 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

A meeting between Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm and Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, president of the NAACP’s Baltimore chapter, to address concerns of deteriorating relations between the community and the department was termed productive by both sides.

“We were very candid with each other,” Cheatham said of Tuesday’s meeting. “We promised to work to improve relations on both sides. It was productive.”

“The commissioner believes the meeting went well,” police spokesman Matt Jablow said.

“He’s looking forward to working with NAACP to making the community safer.”

Cheatham requested the meeting after several incidents — including the March 13 arrest of Gerard Mungo Jr., a 7-year-old who police arrested for sitting on his dirt bike — heightened tensions between the department and the community.

“We needed to start being constructive,” Cheatham said.

As a result of the meeting, a memorandum of agreement between the NAACP and the police is being drafted, based on recommendations made the organization made to Hamm.

Included in the recommendations are diversity presentations at the police academy by the NAACP and other ethnic groups; attendance of community-relations meetings by NAACP officers; and an effort to make the public aware of the civilian review board, a group of civilians that investigates complaints of office misconduct.

The NAACP disagreed with the police department’s report on Mungo Jr., which was released April 19.

“We still did not see eye-to-eye on that,” Cheatham said. “The report is inadequate. Truly inadequate; it really didn’t address the whole issue. We simply agreed to disagree on that issue,” he said.

The next step, Cheatham said, was signing an agreement to formalize the NAACP’s involvement with the department.

“Alvin Guillard is drafting it now; it should be ready this evening,” Cheatham said Wednesday. Guillard is the head of the city’s Community Relations Commission.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” Cheatham said. “But we have to make sure the police do what they say they will do.”

sjanis@baltimoreexaminer.com