The Maryland American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed a class action lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court Thursday alleging that Baltimore police systematically arrest people and hold them for hours without charge. The lawsuit - which names Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, present and past police officials, state corrections officials and individual police officers as defendants - also alleges that officials at the Maryland Central Booking and Intake Center often perform strip searches and body cavity searches on people arrested for minor offenses such as loitering, impeding or obstructing pedestrian traffic and disturbing the peace, as well as detain them in dirty and overcrowded jail cells.

The suit claims that policed arrested more than 76,000 people last year, and that 30 percent of those cases were dismissed after a preliminary review. The ACLU-MD believes that the Baltimore police department rewards its officers for the quantity of arrests, and tends to make unreasonable and unconstitutional arrests as a result. City Solicitor Ralph Tyler called the allegations "truly wild," adding that the plaintiffs will not be able to prove them. ACLU attorney David Rocah said that the lawsuit aims to change police policy and offers a remedy proposal [PDF text], including creating an incentive program for police officers to make arrests that are likely to be prosecuted and expunging the record of arrestees when they are not prosecuted. AP has more. The Baltimore Sun has local coverage.

It was as a crime-busting mayor some 15 years ago that O’Malley first gained national attention. Although he is positioning himself as a progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton, O’Malley also touts a police crackdown during his time as mayor that led to a stark reduction in drug violence and homicides as one of his major achievements.

Yet some civic leaders and community activists in Baltimore portray O’Malley’s policing policies in troubling terms. The say the “zero-tolerance” approach mistreated young black men even as it helped dramatically reduce crime, fueling a deep mistrust of law enforcement that flared anew last week when Gray died after suffering a spinal injury while in police custody.

Police in Baltimore — like their counterparts elsewhere — have had strained relations with African Americans for generations. But community leaders say the relationship reached a nadir during O’Malley’s tenure, thanks to a policing strategy that resulted in tens of thousands of arrests for minor offenses such as loitering and littering...


“We still have men who are suffering from it today,” said Marvin “Doc” Cheathem, a past president of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, which won a court settlement stemming from the city’s policing policies. “The guy is good at talking, but a lot of us know the real story of the harm he brought to our city.”

Bishop Douglas Miles, a community leader, said O’Malley’s department “set the tone for how the police department in Baltimore has reacted to poor and African American communities since then.”
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In Chicago, Sanders threw himself into activism—civil rights, economic justice, volunteering, organizing. “I received more of an education off campus than I did in the classroom,” Sanders says. By his 23rd birthday, Sanders had worked for a meatpackers union, marched for civil rights in Washington D.C., joined the university socialists and been arrested at a civil rights demonstration. He delivered jeremiads to young crowds. The police called him an outside agitator, Sanders said. He was a sloppy student, and the dean asked him to take a year off. He inspired his classmates. “He knows how to talk to people now,” said Robin Kaufman, a student who knew Sanders in 1960s Chicago, “and he knew how to do it then.” He was a radical before it was cool.
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The civil rights movement also became a home for him. He became leaders of an NAACP ally called the Congress of Racial Equality at a time when most civil rights activists were black. He was arrested while demonstrating for desegregated public schools in Chicago. (No big deal, says Sanders: “You can go outside and get arrested, too!” he jokes. “It’s not that hard if you put your mind to it.”) He once walked around Chicago putting up fliers protesting police brutality. After half an hour, he realized a police car was following him, taking down every paper he’d up, one by one. “Are these yours?” he remembers the officer telling him, holding up the stack of the fliers.
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