The NAACP’s Baltimore branch on Thursday called for a national search to replace former Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, citing a lack of communication and transparency in the selection process since Mayor Brandon Scott announced Harrison was leaving.
It has been three weeks since Scott announced Harrison was stepping down before his contract was up. The mayor appointed police veteran Richard Worley to serve as acting commissioner and planned for him to go through the formal confirmation process within the Baltimore City Council.
NasShona Kess, vice president of Baltimore’s NAACP chapter, explained at a press conference Thursday that they are concerned that “the rush and unilateral decision to appoint a new commissioner is ill-advised and detrimental to meaningful police-community relations.”
Flanked by members of other police accountability groups, like Jews United for Justice (JUFJ), Kess read supporting statements from leaders of CASA and other groups likewise insisting upon transparency and communication around the selection process of the new police commissioner.
Rev. Kobi Little, president of the NAACP’s Baltimore branch, expressed sadness at the need for the press conference, and hope to have a police department “marked by equity that is part of a strategy to build peace in Baltimore city and to advance equity to repair the damage that has been done by mass incarceration and drugs and racial profiling and by an antagonistic history with the African American community and other communities in Baltimore.”
Calling for a “holistic strategy that builds a peace solution that supplants the violent ecosystem that we are beleaguered with,” Little said local law enforcement need an answer to reducing illegal weapons that does not end in the deaths of more residents.
“[T]o date we are unclear as to whether the Baltimore police department has gotten this message,” he said. “The world over we have seen efforts and strategies to disarm people who have built up an amass of arms and those strategies don’t include shooting everyone who has a weapon.”
Little said they were holding the press conference because they want the Baltimore Police Department to get “back on the right track in an effort to build community confidence, community respect, community relationships, and of course an end to violence.”
So far, however, Little said the process of choosing a new commissioner has contained little to no transparency or communication with the groups that are critical to those goals.
After thanking Harrison for the progress he’s made towards building community trust and reducing violence in Baltimore, Little said the process of selecting the new commissioner “should include input from the community, from neighborhood associations, from everyday people, from young people, and certainly from those organizations and leaders and including the organizations represented here today, who have been working tirelessly around the issues of police accountability.”
He warned that to do otherwise risked starting the new commissioner off on the wrong foot with the community, something he doesn’t wish for any commissioner.
“The failure of the administration and the commissioner-designee before and after the nomination demonstrates a blatant disregard for the important perspectives of the police accountability organizations, constitutional human rights organizations, and community organizations,” Little said. “We’ve gone three weeks now since the announcement of an acting commissioner, and we haven’t heard from them. I don’t have Acting Commissioner Worley’s phone number. None of our partners have heard from this acting commissioner. We were assured three weeks ago that the acting commissioner would be reaching out to us to develop a relationship, and that didn’t happen.”
He also urged members of the Baltimore City Council not to “rubber stamp any nomination that fails to start with transparency and civil society input.” Little emphasized that in the past, mayors have always reached out to police accountability organizations for input on the selection process.
“Given the fact that we are still under a consent decree, and one of the reason that we are under a consent decree is that there has been a breakdown in police community relations, it is imperative, it is imperative, I say, that the mayor restart this process in the appropriate manner,” Little said.
He doesn’t think the damage is irreparable, though.
“I don’t think it’s something that can’t be remediated,” Little said. “It’s something that with hard work he can move past. But he’s got to do the work to show that he understands the vital role that our organizations play not only in the selection process, but in the ongoing process of reforming the Baltimore police, of maintaining community relations in Baltimore City, and in advancing a peace ecosystem, building peace and security for all people in Baltimore.”
Delving into the history of policing and explaining the larger ripple effects of the importance of equity in policing, Little said, “We have had inequitable policing in Baltimore as long as there has been policing. Because the aim of policing has been, one, to protect white people and to make white people feel secure, and to make wealthy people feel secure, and to make property owners and businesses feel secure, without an equivalent and equal emphasis on ensuring the peace, safety, and security of all people in Baltimore.”
He continued, “That’s a tremendous equity issue that’s had tremendous ramifications on economic opportunity and wealth creation, it’s had tremendous impact on education, it’s had a tremendous impact on workforce development, and it has stunted our democracy.”
Speaking to the economic and political impact, Little said, “Because the impact of mass incarceration is that mothers and fathers are removed from their communities, and people who should be voting in Baltimore are stripped of their political power and their right to vote, and people in communities where our sisters and brothers have been housed, they’ve inappropriately gotten political power. Because incarcerated people are counted as residents of the community where they’re incarcerated, and then dollars are allocated based on those numbers.”
