By Catherine Rentz
The Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — A West Baltimore coalition released a report highlighting some residents’ accounts of police misconduct on Tuesday.
Advocates from the West Baltimore Community Commission on Police Misconduct canvassed and attended community meetings in the tumultuous days after Freddie Gray’s death and heard 453 people tell stories of police misconduct. Of those, just 39 people agreed to share their names with the group.
Some of residents were on hand Tuesday evening at Upton Triangle Park in West Baltimore to share their experiences.
Talia Marrow, 30, said she still struggles when remembering how her brother was shot by Maryland Transit Administration police in 2006 after he was suspected of an armed robbery. The Baltimore Sun reported that detectives saw one man rob another of a bus pass at the Reisterstown Road Metro station and that an officer chased the 23-year-old Jeffrey Marrow onto the tracks and fatally shot him when they allege he pulled a gun. His sister disputes he had a gun and said police have failed to share with her family details of what happened. “To this day, we still don’t know what happened to our brother.”
The advocacy commission did not get separate accounts from police of the misconduct allegations and none of the respondent names were included in the report, which cited an “extremely high level of fear community residents have of police retaliation.” The interviews were conducted by Ray Kelly and Rebecca Nagle of the No Boundaries Coalition and researchers at the University of Maryland Baltimore County helped with the analysis.
The coalition is asking for changes to the state Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights and the city’s Civilian Review Board which helps to oversee complaints about police.
Copyright 2016 The Baltimore Sun