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2/20/18

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) sent a list of questions to the Baltimore City Council outlining key matters that must be addressed by Baltimore Police Department (BPD) Commissioner-Designate Darryl De Sousa at tomorrow’s confirmation hearing. The questions offered by LDF are aimed at eliciting answers from the Commissioner-Designate about how he’ll handle the many challenges facing the department should he be confirmed.

“From implementing the federal policing reform agreement to instituting changes following the egregious misconduct unearthed in the recent Gun Trace Task Force trial and police academy scandal, the next BPD Commissioner will have much work to do to address the systemic issues with the department’s policing practices and build trust with the Baltimore community,” said Monique Dixon, Deputy Director of Policy and Senior Counsel at LDF. “It is essential that tomorrow’s confirmation hearing is anything but a formality, and we’re providing the City Council with questions we believe the Commissioner-Designate must answer given the gravity and enormity of the challenges he will face.”

LDF’s questions focus on three primary issue areas, including:

  1. Revelations from the Gun Trace Task Force on entrenched corruption in the BPD;
  2. The federal consent decree in U.S. v. Police Department of Baltimore City, et al; and
  3. Recruitment and training of BPD officers.

Baltimore residents are entitled to substantive answers from city leadership about the way forward for reform, and LDF’s questions as well as those submitted by other Baltimore residents and stakeholders will cause Commissioner-Designate De Sousa to weigh-in on matters that will determine the city’s ability to meaningfully change.

Read LDF’s questions 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.