A backlog of hundreds of complaints about Baltimore police officers continues to grow each week as city officials make their final push toward setting up a new citizen-led oversight board.
The board was mandated in late 2021 by the General Assembly as part of Anton’s Law, a police reform package passed that, among other initiatives, directed each county and jurisdiction to implement the new layer of oversight. Baltimore City’s will be one of the last police accountability boards in the state to get up and running.
The delays can be traced back to a lengthy fight in Annapolis that put Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration about six months behind schedule, as well as the decision by the City Council to allow each of its 15 members to nominate their own member to the new Police Accountability Board, inflating its size in the process. With two appointees from the mayor himself, the board will consist of 17 members. For comparison, the board in Prince George’s County will have 10 members.
The board will review and investigate citizen complaints on Baltimore law enforcement officers, including the city’s police and sheriff’s departments, school police and the soon-to-be-formed private Johns Hopkins University police department, among others.
The new oversight board’s origin story in Baltimore is
