Application to Serve as Independent Monitor of the ...

Application to Serve as Independent Monitor of the Baltimore, Maryland, Police Department

Pursuant to the Consent Decree Entered April 7, 2017

Michael R. Bromwich June 8, 2017

Table of contents

I. Executive Summary.......................................................................................................... 1 II. Relevant Background and History..................................................................................4 III. Our View of the Monitor's Role.......................................................................................7 IV. Scope Of Work....................................................................................................................8 V. Personnel: Prior Experience, Qualifications, Current Time Commitments,

and References..................................................................................................................13 1. Michael R. Bromwich...............................................................................................13 2. Ann Marie Doherty .................................................................................................15 3. Alfred Durham.........................................................................................................17 4. Paul F. Evans............................................................................................................18 5. Alexa James...............................................................................................................20 6. Lori E. Lightfoot........................................................................................................22 7. John Macdonald........................................................................................................24 8. Tracey L. Meares.......................................................................................................25 9. Amy Watson.............................................................................................................26

VI. Collaboration and Cost Effectiveness ..........................................................................30 VII. Potential Conflict Or Bias ...............................................................................................31 VIII. Budget................................................................................................................................31 IX. Conclusion........................................................................................................................32

Appendix 1 ? Qualifications Appendix 2 - Resumes Appendix 3 ? References Appendix 4 - Budget

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (RFA ? 32)

This application is submitted by Michael R. Bromwich of The Bromwich Group LLC to serve as the Independent Monitor of the Baltimore, Maryland, Police Department (BPD) pursuant to a consent decree agreed to between the City of Baltimore, BPD, and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), and entered by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland on April 7, 2017 (Consent Decree).

The Bromwich Group has assembled a truly extraordinary team of police practices experts, current and former reform police executives, distinguished academics, authorities on law enforcement oversight, and other personnel specifically selected to address the requirements of this Consent Decree. The team is superbly well equipped to address the full range of issues set forth in the Consent Decree. Members of the team have, at various times, monitored police departments pursuant to consent decrees and memoranda of agreement; served as police executives who implemented reforms under such agreements; reviewed policies, training, and other remedial steps adopted by police departments to comply with agreements with the Department of Justice; and performed a wide range of other tasks and responsibilities required in similar situations. Collectively, the team has decades of experience in policing and oversight; its members have been on the cutting edge of issues such as use of force, use and force and misconduct investigations, community engagement, procedural justice, and the full range of issues addressed in the Consent Decree.

The team will be led by Michael R. Bromwich, the Managing Principal of The Bromwich Group LLC. Mr. Bromwich has conducted oversight of law enforcement agencies in the public and private sectors for the past 23 years. He has monitored police departments pursuant to consent decrees and memoranda of agreement, as well as monitored private sector companies. He served as the Independent Monitor of the Metropolitan (DC) Police Department (MPD) (2002-08), and was jointly selected by DOJ and the Government of the Virgin Islands to serve in the same capacity pursuant to a consent decree. In addition to Mr. Bromwich, the monitoring team will include the following participants:

? Ann Marie Doherty -- Superintendent Doherty served for 25 years in the Boston Police Department, holding every sworn rank and rising to the level of Superintendent. She has spent much of the last decade conducting reviews and assessments of police departments operating under consent decrees and memoranda of agreement, in Washington, DC, the Virgin Islands, and elsewhere.

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? Alfred Durham -- Chief Durham currently serves as the chief of the Richmond, Virginia, Police Department and has served in that role since 2015. He has spent 30 years in law enforcement, most of it with MPD (including as Executive Assistant Chief of Police) and the remainder in Richmond.

? Paul F. Evans -- Commissioner Evans served for 33 years with the Boston Police Department, the last 10 years (1993-2003) as Commissioner. He subsequently served for four years as head of the Police Standards Unit in the United Kingdom's Home Office, where he monitored, assessed, and measured the performance of all 43 police forces in the UK. He currently consults with law enforcement agencies.

? Alexa James -- Ms. James is a licensed clinical social worker. Since 2013, she has served as Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) in Chicago, Illinois. She has led NAMI's engagement with the Chicago Police Department's Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program and training. In 2015-16, she served as a member of Chicago's Police Accountability Task Force (PATF), which, among other things, examined the way the Chicago Police Department engages with people struggling with mental health issues.

? Lori E. Lightfoot -- Ms. Lightfoot currently serves as the President of the Chicago Police Board. In 2015-16, she was a co-chair of the city's PATF-- which, among other things, assessed mechanisms for overseeing police misconduct, and issues associated with the use of force, police officer accountability, and identification of at-risk officers. Among her many governmental roles at the federal and local levels, Ms. Lightfoot has served as a federal prosecutor and as head of the Chicago Police Department's Office of Professional Standards, which was, at the time she led the Office, responsible for investigating officer-involved shootings and allegations of excessive force and misconduct.

? John MacDonald -- Professor MacDonald is Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Fels Institute of Government. His research focuses primarily on the study of crime and violence, race and ethnic disparities in criminal justice, and the effect of public policy responses on crime. Professor MacDonald's research has included numerous studies using quantitative methods to examine the effects of social justice policies on crime. He currently serves on the monitoring team that oversees the New York Police Department's use of stop-and-frisk.

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? Tracey L. Meares -- Professor Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law, Yale Law School. She serves as an Associate Reporter of the ongoing American Law Institute Project on the Principles of Law: Policing. She has served on a National Research Council Review Committee on police policy and practices, and was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Her research and writing have most recently focused on communities and police legitimacy.

? Amy Watson -- Professor Watson is a Professor of Social Work at the Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois. She has worked extensively on issues involving the relationship between the criminal justice system and mental health systems, in Chicago and around the country. During 2015-16, she worked with the De-escalation Work Group of Chicago's PATF. She currently serves on the monitoring team working with the Portland, Oregon, Police Department.

More complete descriptions of the relevant qualifications and experience of the team members are set forth in Section III below, and in Appendix 1.

The members of this team have vast experience in the activities that lie at the core of the monitor's responsibilities under the Consent Decree. Indeed, the issues identified in the Consent Decree involve matters that we have spent years identifying, addressing and successfully reforming--as progressive reform police executives, as subject matter experts, and as members of oversight and monitoring teams. Members of the team have, on multiple occasions, developed detailed monitoring plans and appropriate methodologies for auditing and reviewing compliance with the specific requirements and overall purposes of consent decrees and voluntary agreements. We have extensive experience selecting, reviewing, and assessing use of force and misconduct investigations to assess their quality, their reliability, and their conformity with specific requirements. In countless assignments, members of our team have provided technical assistance to police departments, including strategies to assist their improvement and facilitate their compliance with the specific terms of consent decrees and voluntary agreements. Importantly, these assignments have included working with local law enforcement agencies that serve extremely diverse constituencies to address disconnects between those agencies and the community.

Indeed, we have substantial experience dealing with virtually all of the specific duties set forth in the Consent Decree, as described in detail in this Application and the Qualifications Appendix (Appendix 1). And we have extensive experience in producing readable public reports, written in plain English and shorn of law enforcement and legal jargon, to inform the community and the general public of our activities, our findings, our recommendations, and the performance of the department. Because of the range of our experience, the depth of our knowledge, and our success in

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the face of challenges during previous assignments, we will be better able to earn the respect of the community, the BPD command staff, and BPD's rank and file. We will immediately set to work helping the BPD to improve itself in all of the areas specified by the Consent Decree.

In short, although we have no doubt that the Request for Applications will attract many experienced former police executives, former judges, former federal prosecutors and federal, state, and local law enforcement personnel, we are confident that no other team will equal the breadth and depth of experience of the team we have assembled. No other team stands a better chance of working with the BPD to ensure that it complies with the requirements of the Consent Decree and meets the legitimate expectations of the community that its officers engage in constitutional policing.

The Consent Decree reflects the tension between addressing a wide array of issues in a comprehensive and responsible way, while at the same time doing so within a presumptive cost ceiling of $ 1.475 million per year. The truth is that will be challenging given the broad scope of the monitoring team's responsibilities. Our budget proposal provides our good-faith intention to do the necessary work within that budget cap by the effective division of responsibilities, close collaboration with BPD, and constant monitoring of costs. We project monitoring costs 0f $ 1.44 million in Year 1, and $ 1.32 million in Years 2, 4 and 5, and 1.47 million in Year 3.

II. RELEVANT BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

A city of neighborhoods, Baltimore has faced the challenges of forging diverse cultures and histories into a single community. In recent years, that community has enjoyed a wave of economic growth and benefited from increased tourism. There is much for Baltimore to be proud of. But Baltimore and its approximately 614,000 residents also have faced significant challenges, many of which Mayor Catherine E. Pugh recently described in her first State of the City Address. As Mayor Pugh made clear, among those issues, "Public safety is the cornerstone to the growth and revitalization of our city."1 That means reducing crime rates--and doing so in a way that protects individual rights, builds trust between communities and their protectors, and responds to the financial and social needs of the City and its people.

Make no mistake: achieving these goals will not be easy. It will require years of hard work, commitment, receptivity to change, and continuing good faith discussions among all Baltimore stakeholders. While the BPD has made substantial progress in recent years, the underlying problems are longstanding, complex, and deeply rooted. They flow not only from BPD's policies and practices, but also from implicit

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biases and unspoken cultural norms--as well as from legitimate concerns about how to secure police safety and public order while patrolling dangerous neighborhoods. And these challenges, in turn, relate to the stark reality of economic and racial inequalities that persist in Baltimore and that can be exacerbated by police practices that damage trust rather than build and maintain it.

The death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015--and the explosive response to that tragedy--proved the status quo is not sustainable. It was not that event alone, though, that compels reform. Since Gray's death, many African-American residents of Baltimore have come forward to share their experiences with BPD. Those disclosures raise disturbing questions about what it means to go about the ordinary tasks of daily life as a black person in this city. They also suggest a breakdown in relations between certain communities and the police department sworn to serve them, which both imperils civil rights and undermines effective law enforcement. As the events and revelations of the past years have shown, respect for principles of liberty, dignity, and equality can--and must--march in tandem with adherence to the value of aggressive but constitutional policing and fiscal responsibility.

This story and these dilemmas are well known to Baltimore. Following the death of Freddie Gray, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake invited the Department of Justice to investigate BPD policies and practices. As she explained, "Our city is making progress in repairing the fractured relationship between police and community, but bolder reforms are needed and we will not shy away from taking on these challenges."2 On August 10, 2016, DOJ issued its report of investigation summarizing the results of its year-long investigation (Report). The Report found reasonable cause to believe that BPD engaged in a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct, specifically in relation to (1) stops, searches, and arrests; (2) enforcement strategies producing severe and unjustified racial disparities; (3) use of excessive force; and (4) retaliating against people engaging in constitutionally-protected expressions. The Report also noted concerns relating to BPD's handling of sexual assault investigations, interactions with transgender persons, and policies for training, supervision, and accountability.

The Report's statistics concerning racial inequalities drew particular attention. Although the City is 63 per cent black, DOJ found that "African Americans accounted for 91 percent of the 1,800 people charged solely with `failure to obey' or `trespassing'; 89 percent of the 1,350 charges for making a false statement to an officer; and 84 percent of the 6,500 people arrested for `disorderly conduct.'" As Sherrilyn Ifill, President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, noted, "Seeing it all collected and pulled together really hit me in the solar plexus."3

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To its credit, in addition to a thorough quantitative analysis, DOJ engaged with people from all across the City, including political leaders, police officers, religious groups, and community organizations. And on the basis of those talks, it reported that, "There is widespread agreement that BPD needs reform." This shared view of the need for reform, DOJ found, had not been acted on mainly because of a breakdown in trust between BPD and community leaders. And this development was itself attributable at least in part to BPD's embrace of "zero tolerance" policing, which contributed to the public's perception that there were "two Baltimores" in the eyes of the BPD, "one wealthy and largely white, the second impoverished and predominantly black." Faced with this reality, DOJ concluded that "[t]hese challenges amplify the importance of using policing methods that build community partnerships and ensure fair and effective enforcement without regard for affluence or race through robust training, close supervision, data collection and analysis, and accountability for misconduct."

Upon receiving the Report, Mayor Rawlings-Blake acknowledged, "These findings are challenging to hear."4 But she added, "we have to heal our city" and "transparency is the only true foundation upon which can rebuild community trust." Police Commissioner Kevin Davis agreed: "Nothing is as painful as being stuck in a place that we do not belong . . . We know that our citizens are outraged at some of the details included in this report, and they should be."5 Commissioner Davis also rightly made clear that the Report was not an indictment of every person serving in the BPD and that, to the contrary, many officers were appalled by incidents discovered by DOJ.

Following the Report, DOJ and Baltimore's leaders signed an Agreement in Principle, committing to "negotiate reforms to ensure sustainable, constitutional, and effective policing." By this point, BPD already had undertaken substantial reforms-- including to its use of force policies and training programs--and all parties recognized that these were important developments. But all parties further agreed that "despite this progress . . . there is still much work to do."

Ultimately, the parties entered into the Consent Decree, which has elicited overwhelming public support from every relevant stakeholder and which Mayor Pugh has aptly described as "a great victory for the citizens of the Baltimore, as well as the Baltimore Police Department."6

The purpose of the Decree is clear and profound: "[T]o ensure that the City and BPD protect individuals' statutory and constitutional rights, treat individuals with dignity and respect, and promote public safety in a manner that is fiscally responsible and responsive to community priorities." Fully embracing community policing, the Decree

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