Five new members of the Baltimore Civilian Review Board were sworn in Wednesday by Mayor Brandon Scott, who said they were joining a police accountability “ecosystem” working to create “a more just city for all.”
The city’s review board, which dates back to the late 1990s, is charged with investigating a variety of complaints made against city officers, including excessive force, false arrest, false imprisonment, harassment and abusive language. It recommends discipline to the chief of the officer’s department, which could be Baltimore Police or smaller agencies, including the sheriff’s office, city school police or Morgan State University Police, among others.
“The task before you all is not an easy one,” Scott told the new members at a ceremony Wednesday morning. “I’m confident that you all will handle that task with the utmost integrity and respect for those who report wrongdoing on the part of any police officers.”
The five new members — Ronnie Brown, Shannon Harris, Aaron Maybin, Priscilla A. Batten and Darren G. Rogers — each represent a police district across Baltimore City. They join a panel of volunteers that has been called a “toothless tiger,” but which uniquely hears and considers independent investigations of the police outside police investigators.
Maybin, a former NFL linebacker who turned to teaching art and helped open a recreation center in West Baltimore, said he was drawn to apply for the board because it is a “necessary service.”
“A lot of the work I’ve done in the community since I came back from college has been centered around not just police accountability, but community upliftment and self-determination,” Maybin said. “A vital component of that, especially in the City of Baltimore, that has a decadeslong rift between ourselves and law enforcement — it’s important that we have community versions of accountability that people can believe in.”
The city’s Civilian Review Board is separate from the more recently established Police Accountability Board and Administrative Charging Committee, which date to 2021 and have been established in jurisdictions across Maryland. The Administrative Charging Committee similarly is a panel of nonpolice who consider disciplinary cases pertaining to officer misconduct, but it relies on the police department’s own Internal Affairs Investigation.
Caron Watkins, director of the city’s Office of Equity and Civil Rights, which supports all three police oversight boards, acknowledged Wednesday that much of the focus and attention has recently been on the two newer boards. But, Watkins said, the work of the Civilian Review Board remains “important.”
“As you can see today, we want to make sure that it is equipped to be able to hear the cases that come through,” Watkins said.
She also noted that the city recently hired a “complaint intake specialist” to help “triage” complaints and identify, with complainants, which route would be best for their case.
Under the statutory process for the Civilian Review Board, members consider each complaint and determine whether to authorize an independent investigation by the board. For those complaints that are investigated, the board reviews completed investigative reports and reaches findings. It passes those on as a recommendation for discipline to the police chief. The recommendations are not binding.
If a complainant files directly with police, it’s possible that police could conduct an internal investigation while an investigation by the Civilian Review Board is simultaneously proceeding.
The five new members join a board that has been plagued by vacancies for a number of months. In January, there were just two board members out of nine voting members, one for each police district.
In April and May, the number of members fell to just one.
Meeting minutes show that board members regularly asked about the status of any incoming board members. In February, according to meeting minutes, a city employee said the process of moving candidates was “on hold” until after the legislative session ended around mid-April.
At the April meeting, the board’s chair attempted to interview applicants herself but was told by the then-director of the Office of Equity and Civil Rights, Dana Moore, that she couldn’t do that because the board was created by the state, not the city, so the powers laid out in the city charter did not apply to it. (Two of the six candidates in April — Maybin and Harris — were among those being sworn in Wednesday.)
Also at the April meeting, voting and nonvoting members questioned why the number of Civilian Review Board complaints were decreasing. At least one attendee suggested that complaints were not being reviewed for whether they fell within the Civilian Review Board’s purview, and instead were being forwarded directly to police.
At the May meeting, the most recent for which minutes are available online, the Office of Equity and Civil Rights reported 11 intakes by the Civilian Review Board and four completed investigations for the year. In 2023, there were at least 43 intakes and 16 completed investigations.
Watkins also noted Wednesday that the Office of Equity and Civil Rights would be doing more community outreach to help build awareness of the ways people can report police misconduct and see it investigated.
Rogers, another new member, said Wednesday that he applied to help create accountability for law enforcement and to show community organizers or residents that there are additional opportunities to lead in Baltimore.
“Often, individuals who are in the community and doing the work aren’t necessarily in these spaces. When they’re not in the spaces, it doesn’t give the opportunities for insight,” said Rogers, who runs a youth male empowerment project called I AM MENtality.
Those community perspectives are important, he said, because “if you’re on the ground all the time, you see the field a lot differently.”
