Author: Peter Moskos

Who’s really to blame in the Freddie Gray case

(CNN) — On Monday, a third Baltimore police officer, Lt. Brian Rice, was acquitted of all criminal charges in the death of Freddie Gray, a suspect who was fatally hurt last year while being transported, handcuffed, in a police van.

This was the fourth failed attempt by Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore City’s elected state’s attorney, to convict six officers of any crime in the case.

Rice’s acquittal comes less than a month after Baltimore police officer Caesar Goodson, who was driving the van in which Gray was transported, was also acquitted of all criminal charges in Gray’s death, as was Officer Edward Nero in May. Last December, the trial of Officer William G. Porter ended in a hung jury.

Those who have not been following the trial assume there was some justification to the state’s charges. This assumption may be too generous. The prosecution not only failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, but as presented, the facts failed to show even evidence of a crime.

That may disappoint some who believe the police get away with murder, but these verdicts were correct. When cops do commit crimes, by all means they should be charged and convicted. Gray died in an accident — a tragic, even preventable accident — but he did not die because of a criminal act.

The trials come down essentially to failure to seat belt and failure to provide prompt medical attention. Since Rice was the highest-ranking officer on the scene, perhaps Mosby hoped her luck would change.

But with the same facts and evidence presented in each trial, the judge reached the same verdict. Calls have grown stronger for Mosby to drop charges against the remaining officers, since further trials are almost assured to achieve similar not guilty on all charges verdicts. Porter’s new trial is scheduled for Sept. 6. Officer Garrett Miller faces trial on July 27; Sgt. Alicia White on Oct. 13.

The professional failings of Mosby are many. She failed to work with other investigative teams; she rushed to bring criminal charges with great fanfare; her office withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense and put a non-supporting witness on the stand.

But highlighting these instances of incompetence may distract from the real issue: These six Baltimore police officers never should have been criminally charged to begin with. Since the riots of last April, as their trials have progressed, more than 400 Baltimoreans have been killed.

Do their lives not matter? Most of the killers walk free, unprosecuted.

The video of Gray being dragged to the van by police officers at his initial arrest outraged many. But Gray went limp and was not injured at the time of his arrest. State prosecutors conceded this. He was fatally injured later, they said, after being uncooperative, shackled hand and foot, and placed face down on the floor of the van.

When cops do commit crimes, by all means they should be charged and convicted. The charges is this case came down essentially to failure to seat belt and failure to provide prompt medical attention.

But no evidence was presented that officers knew of and then failed to act on Gray’s injuries. Had Freddie Gray been seat-belted, he would probably still be alive. So why wasn’t he?

To protect prisoners from each other, Baltimore installed a partition in police vans that runs down the middle front to back. The remaining width is less than 30 inches, seat included. The problem is less about seat belts than 21st-century use of what is little more than a motorized 19th-century wagon.

It is not practical, safe, or reasonable to ask officers to seat belt combative prisoners in a confined space. It takes two hands to seat belt a combative prisoner who might bite, head butt, spit, or reach for your gun even while handcuffed. There just isn’t enough room.

Better and safer transport vans do exist, but Baltimore hasn’t invested in them. These have cameras and forward-facing compartmentalized rows of high-back slightly padded seats. When Baltimore finally bought new vans, they purchased slightly roomier versions of the old vans.

So is it just about money? Well, the city quickly paid Gray’s family $6.3 million after his death. And Gray wasn’t even the first prisoner to die in transport.

This money could have replaced the city’s prisoner transport fleet many times over before the death of Freddie Gray.

That the city didn’t and still hasn’t is a failure of political leadership, not of the arresting officers or drivers of the police wagon.

Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer, is an associate professor in the department of law and police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He is the author of “Cop in the Hood” and “In Defense of Flogging.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

Who gave this reserve cop a gun?

(CNN) — Robert Bates, 73, shot and killed a man while playing cops and robbers with real police.

Bates was a reserve deputy sheriff, which allowed him to “work full time jobs in the community and volunteer … time in a myriad of events such as the Special Olympics and Tulsa State Fair,” according to the Tulsa County Sheriff Office’s website.

But Bates wasn’t limited to crowd control at sporting events for the disabled.

He had taken part in more than 100 operations with the violent crimes task force, according to his lawyer. On April 2, Bates thought he was going to use a Taser on Eric Harris, who deputies had just tackled after he sold an undercover officer a Lugar pistol and then took off running. But Bates wasn’t holding a Taser. He was holding his gun. He fired one shot and killed Harris.

From a policing perspective, there wasn’t even good reason to use a Taser against Harris. Cops were on scene. Harris wasn’t getting the upper hand. He wasn’t going anywhere. And despite what Bates would later claim, Harris was not running like a man with a gun. In fact, Harris was running fast and his arms were pumping very much like a man who is not protecting a gun in his waistband.

What was Bates, an insurance company CEO, doing there in the first place?

It certainly looks like Bates was given special access to “real” policing. Harris had given $2,500 to Sheriff Stanley Glanz’s re-election campaign. He donated cars to the department. He gave equipment. So it would be noteworthy if Bates ends up being convicted based on evidence provided by “sunglass cameras” that he may have purchased for the department.

A Tulsa police official said the agency has 130 reserve deputies, many of them wealthy people who make donations to the police. “That’s not unusual at all,” he told the Tulsa World.

Maybe Bates could have been a reserve deputy without donating anything. But I doubt there are many volunteer septuagenarians working with the violent crimes task force.

He was too old to be policing the streets. Tulsa police said that Bates had served a year in 1964 as a police officer. Most police departments have mandatory retirement ages. Federal law-enforcement officers, for instance, retire at 57.

Police officers generally look with a skeptical eye toward volunteers. For one thing, it makes it tougher to push for a pay raise when people are offering to do your job for free. But departments also know that you get what you pay for. What is the point of background checks, psychological tests and the professional training police undergo if a person can donate a few grand and go out on patrol?

Some people are a little too eager to be police officers. These people perhaps buy a police-like car for their personal car. Maybe they put in a police light or two. Some have actually made car stops. Police departments hate cop impersonators (it’s illegal, by the way) and try and weed them during the hiring process. You want workers who like the job, but not too much; there’s a fine line between passion and fanaticism.

That said, there are good volunteer police officers. New York City, for example, has auxiliary police. These officers received more limited training and help with neighborhood events and other nonenforcement activities. They wear an NYPD uniform but do not carry a gun.

Auxiliary police and similar programs reinforce the notion that the police are the public and the public are the police. Volunteers remind us all that policing is a noble public calling, and most police work does not have to be done by overly militarized SWAT officers.

An auxiliary program also allows young recruits a way to dip their foot into the police world before taking the plunge. It can be a great benefit to everybody when potential officers discover the job isn’t for them before they are locked into a 20-year commitment.

What happened in Tulsa County is a disgrace to police professionalism, and the fallout from this disaster may push police departments to end these kinds of programs. That would be a mistake.

Police departments should encourage more productive interactions between police and the public. But a line does need to be drawn.

Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer, is an associate professor in the department of law and police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He is the author of “Cop in the Hood” and “In Defense of Flogging.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.