3/13/18
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) offered support for a bill that would alter the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBR) to allow civilians to be voting members of police disciplinary hearing boards in Baltimore and give the police commissioner full discretion to accept, reject, or modify a hearing board’s findings and conclusions. In addition to providing support for these reforms to LEOBR in Baltimore, LDF’s letter, which was sent to Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Members, urges lawmakers to amend the bill to apply to law enforcement agencies statewide.
In light of the egregious police misconduct unearthed by the criminal trials of members of the Baltimore Police Department’s (BPD) Gun Trace Task Force as well as the U.S. Justice Department’s scathing report on the BPD, LDF’s letter calls for increased impartiality and transparency for the police disciplinary process throughout the state of Maryland.
The Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee will consider SB 1179 today at 1 pm ET.
Read LDF’s letter here.
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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization and has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF.
