The Sun‘s Kevin Rector on Tuesday did what most reporters do on Twitter and shared a bit of news from his outlet. In this case, it was a story on a new report from consent decree monitors saying the Baltimore Police Department “still struggles to fully investigate its own.”
Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby was, apparently, unimpressed. Her response was a .gif of former senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looking bored as members of Congress tried to grill her during the Benghazi hearings.
— Marilyn J. Mosby (@MarilynMosbyEsq) July 23, 2019
For whatever it’s worth, Rector didn’t even write the story in question. When presented with this glib response, he did what reporters do and pressed for more information, saying the State’s Attorney’s Office hadn’t released any use-of-force reports in over a year and that public defenders complain internal affairs files on officers are withheld by Mosby’s office.
Mosby responded with another .gif, using Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s mock applause from the State of the Union address.
— Marilyn J. Mosby (@MarilynMosbyEsq) July 23, 2019
Rector kept going, writing, “You’re making light of serious critiques of your role, as one of the city’s top law enforcement officials, in holding police accountable in a city that is desperate for accountability. Why aren’t you posting shooting reports anymore?”
At that point, someone running the Baltimore SAO’s Twitter account stepped in to provide an actual written response.
Fact Check: (1) We are the only SAO office in the state to post P/O declinations (2) We are the only office to provide open and transparent IA access to defense attorneys (3)The SA had nothing to do with the slanderous allegations that you contend
— Baltimore City State’s Attorney Office (@BaltimoreSAO) July 23, 2019
They went back and forth for a few more rounds, with Rector pointing out complaints about the internal review process and Mosby’s office arguing they have an “open and transparent” process–there were 516 file reviews by 118 defense attorneys last year, they said, and 302 reviews by 41 attorneys so far in 2019.
But the matter of the use-of-force reports was altogether side-stepped, even though Rector followed up about it twice.
Then, voila! The landing page for the reports was magically updated with three previously unreleased reviews from 2018.
In each, the State’s Attorney’s Office declined to bring criminal charges against officers for firing their weapons and, in two instances, killing citizens armed with guns, concluding they had acted in self-defense.
No reports from 2019 were posted, though one on an officer-involved shooting from Jan. 28, 2018 erroneously said in the body text that the incident occurred on July 23, 2019–i.e. yesterday.
Baltimore Fishbowl reached out to the SAO to ask why they hadn’t released the reports until yesterday. A representative did not respond.
In 2017 the Baltimore SAO became the only jurisdiction in Maryland to join the Use of Force Project, an initiative by the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys to explain to the public why charges against officers were not pursued.
“This is what the public needs in order to rebuild its faith in the criminal justice system,” Mosby said in a statement at the time.
