Former Cop: Incompetence Is No Excuse for Freddie Gray's Death

[Jefferson23]

Retired Baltimore Police Department Sergeant Michael Wood responds to the defense's arguments
- December 3, 2015

Well, now to talk about this is Michael Wood. Michael is a retired Baltimore police sergeant, and he's also what you could call a whistleblower, talking about some of the problems he saw and experienced within the Baltimore police force. Thanks so much, Michael, for joining us.

MICHAEL WOOD: No problem, how're you doing.

NOOR: I'm doing well. And it was a very interesting day in the courthouse. I'm just going to take a look at my notes. And so the first two witnesses the prosecution presented yesterday and today were two people that trained Officer William Porter in the academy. The defense is arguing that Porter didn't know he had to seatbelt Freddie Gray in, in that van where he suffered this injury during that ride.

So what's your response to that?

WOOD: I mean, this--it's a really hard argument that they're going to make, because it's Maryland law that we seatbelt everybody. And in the promotional guide that I wrote in 2010, I state in there that everyone that we put in a car must be seat buckled. The--who was it that—Bilheimer. Officer Bilheimer testified today. And I mean, he's right. This is something that's basics. It's--of course they're seatbelted in. I never thought otherwise.

The problem is is that it is common for people to obviously not be seatbelted. I didn't see it a lot, but the evidence is blatantly obvious that it's common. So maybe, you know, like--if that's the norm, then I understand how psychologically he can think that that's just the norm, but that doesn't make it acceptable.

NOOR: Right. In the opening argument the defense said they're going to have a witness that--or they're going to present a witness who's a police officer who's made something like 2,000 arrests. And he can count the amount of times he buckled a suspect in on his hand. Just a handful of times out of those, out of those thousands. And that's part of their defense.

WOOD: Which is really odd, because then he is testifying to systemic policy violation, because that is the policy. He is confessing to common violations of the law on a routine basis, and he's testifying that his supervision let this all go, and that everyone around him did nothing about it. I don't know why--people were calling me a whistleblower. That's a whistleblower right there, if that's what we're truly talking about that he's confessing to.

NOOR: And so the third witness, second today, Martin Bartness, he's the police commissioner's chief of staff. And he was responsible for sending out the general orders. And one was actually sent out, it was written on April 3, and it was sent out on April 9. And this--one of those general orders sent out on April 9 had to do with seatbelting in suspects in the car.

Now, this is really interesting. Because in the cross examination the defense asked the police commissioner's chief of staff, isn't policy and procedure not a top priority for the Baltimore police department? Isn't your priority catching bad guys?

WOOD: Well, the priority is accumulating stats. And whatever metrics they choose to fill those, those stats. And currently it's arrests and it's citation. And it's to keep crime numbers down. That's what they're shooting for. Policy and procedure, they, obviously it's not top, because it's impossible. I've talked about this many times before. To be a successful supervisor in the Baltimore police department, what you have to do is correctly guess which rules you have to violate that day and won't get caught for. That's the only way that you can actually get through your day, because the words themselves, they conflict with one another and there's too many expectations where, you know, you have to do something in a proper way. But nobody in command is supporting that those things get done in that slow, tedious, maybe, way that it needs to be to be proper.

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