New Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a wide-ranging investigation into Baltimore’s police department Friday
The announcement to investigate the Department of Justice in Baltimore by US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who was sworn in last week as the successor to Eric Holder, is likely to continue to keep the DOJ engaged in the national dialogue about race relations and law enforcement issues. The issues have consumed the years news headlines following the shooting death of an unarmed Black 18-year-old Mike Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer. Lynch is declaring the subject “one of the most challenging issues of our time.”
It was clear to a number of people looking at this situation that the community’s rather frayed trust – to use an understatement – was even worse and has, in effect, been severed in terms of the relationship with the police department.”
-Loretta Lynch
The federal civil rights investigation, which city officials requested following the death last month of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, will search for discriminatory policing practices and examine allegations that Baltimore officers too often use excessive force and make unconstitutional searches and arrests. The investigation is also to build upon the government’s voluntary and collaborative review of the Baltimore police that began last year. The rioting that followed exposed a “serious erosion of public trust,” Lynch said, and showed that community concerns about the police were more pervasive than initially understood and that a broader investigation was warranted.
-Infinite Wiz (@InfiniteWiz)
