EXCERPT: “BPD disproportionately stops African Americans standing, walking, or driving on Baltimore streets. The Department’s data on all pedestrian stops from January 2010 to June 2015 shows that African Americans account for 84 percent of stops 55 despite comprising only 63 percent of the City’s population. Expressed differently, BPD officers made 520 stops for every 1,000 black residents in Baltimore, but only 180 stops for every 1,000 Caucasian residents.”
EXCERPT: “Illegal stops result in confrontations that can be avoided, the report said. In one case, police stopped a black man wearing a hoodie in a “high crime area” because he “thought it could be possible that the individual could be out seeking a victim of opportunity.” The incident escalated with police — who had no legal reason to stop the man — beating the man in the face, neck and ribs and deploying a Taser on him twice. The man was later taken to a hospital, and not charged with any offense. Yet later, the officer’s supervisor determined in a report that the “officers 
showed great restraint and professionalism.”
EXCERPT: “The report outlined numerous examples of black men arrested or stopped merely for walking down the sidewalk, sitting on steps outside a private home or talking outside of a liquor store with their sibling — essentially stopping people on the street for no good legal reason. “These and similar arrests identified by our investigation reflect BPD officers exercising nearly unfettered discretion to criminalize the act of standing on public sidewalks.”
EXCERPT: “Numerous Baltimore residents interviewed by the Justice Department recounted stories of BPD officers ‘jumping out’ of police vehicles and strip-searching individuals on public streets. BPD has long been on notice of such allegations: in the last five years BPD has faced multiple lawsuits and more than 60 complaints alleging unlawful strip searches. In one of these incidents — memorialized in a complaint that the Department sustained — officers in BPD’s Eastern District publicly strip-searched a woman following a routine traffic stop for a missing headlight. Officers ordered the woman to exit her vehicle, remove her clothes, and stand on the sidewalk to be searched. The woman asked the male officer in charge, “I really gotta take all my clothes off?” The male officer replied “yeah” and ordered a female officer to strip search the woman. The female officer then put on purple latex gloves, pulled up the woman’s shirt and searched around her bra. Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity. This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges. Indeed, the woman received only a repair order for her headlight.”
EXCERPT: “Many others, including high ranking officers in the Department, view themselves as enforcing the will of the ‘silent majority’.”