Police Not Complying With Maryland's Excessive Force Law

In the wake of Freddie Gray’s death from injuries suffered in police custody and the subsequent protests and rioting in Baltimore in 2015, state lawmakers passed a law mandating police agencies across Maryland report when officers use excessive force or injure someone and cases of officers’ criminal misconduct, among other data.

However, dozens of agencies — including the Baltimore Police Department — never did so. That’s resulted in extreme undercounting of such encounters in annual reports mandated by the law and collated by the Maryland Police Training and Standards Commission.

In 2018, 42 of 148 agencies required to submit data did not, according to the commission.

“There was a misunderstanding here about which unit was responsible for submitting,” said Matt Jablow, a Baltimore Police spokesman, after The Baltimore Sun asked this week about the agency’s failure to comply with the law.