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NAACP calls for outside investigation in the recent dropping of charges
As charges against a dozen police officers are dropped, some are questioning the integrity of the investigations while others are disturbed by the transparency regarding the multiple cases thrown out.
This week, the Baltimore City police department relinquished charges lodged against multiple officers’, based on the alleged mishandling of their cases, by removed chief of trial boards officer, JoAnn C. Woodson-Branche. However as persons of interest in some of these cases were highly publicized, in their alleged wrongful actions, which include the officers accused of forcing a black homicide detective to watch a racist website for hours, interest groups are questioning the real motive behind these mysterious dropped charges.
Marvin ‘Doc’ Cheatham, President of the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), has sent out an email to the BCPD, via spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, asking for “the immediate release of any public documents, with complete transparency being a must!” He also states that “the department should request an immediate and thorough outside investigation, into these cases”, assuring that “in the absence of such, there would be an almost assured outcry from the community”, calling for such an investigation.
However Robert F. Cherry, a former homicide detective and president of the union [Fraternal Order of Police], says that he believes that all the charges brought against officers, under Woodson-Branche’s watch, should be thrown out. Comparing the current situation to a situation when prosecutors throw out criminal cases against officers of misconduct, or judges tossing cases based on Miranda right violations, Mr. Cherry believes that "the law is the law. It needs to be followed when the department is charging its police officers, just like when you charge criminal suspects,"
Yet this case seems to delve further into the politics of positioning, as some have asserted that the only reason the NAACP seems so animate about this case, is based on the connection Ms. Woodson-Branche has to the State chapter, as her mother, Natalie Wise Woodson, was the Education chair for the Maryland branch, before her passing in 2008.
However the Baltimore branch has been very outspoken on many of these issues, including the aforementioned case lodged against officers’, Lt. James W. Hagin and Detective Paul Kidd, who were charged in connection with an incident in which Sgt. Kelvin Sewell, a black homicide detective, was forced to view racist material on the Internet.
Yet a City Hall staffer revealed anonymously that “while Mayor Dixon supports the efforts of Commissioner Bealefeld III and the internal policies and process of the BCPD, she remains concerned and somewhat discontent on the current situation, yet is willing to allow the current inside baseball styled-politics of the department and these reinstatements, to be handled by [legal counsel] Mark Grimes and the Commissioner!”
Well with that said; we now must question if is this the cleaner, greener, healthier and SAFER Baltimore that she has promised?
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