In recent months, the Baltimore Police Department has made considerable progress bolstering its recruitment class sizes and reversing the steady attrition of sworn officers that has plagued the agency for years. But it’s now facing delays in getting trainees out on the streets due to its reliance on a state-owned firing range.

U.S. Judge James K. Bredar revealed the issue during a quarterly hearing on the Police Department’s progress with its federal consent decree on Thursday morning, saying it has long been on his radar. The department has been under court-monitored oversight for eight years after the death of Freddie Gray in 2015 sparked an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice that found a “pattern and practice” of unconstitutional policing in the city.

But what initially seemed to be an easily solvable issue, Bredar said, has spiraled into an administrative nightmare that is pushing the timeline for trainees from 30 or 32 weeks to 38 weeks. That is keeping new officers off the streets at a time when the city government is funneling tens of millions of dollars into overtime spending that has become one of the most significant drags on its finances.

“This is the classic bottleneck that is having and will continue to have consequences that are all out of proportion with its true elements,” Bredar said during the hearing. “I can’t believe that this can’t be relatively and quickly and easily fixed so it’s not standing in the way of other very important progress.”

The Baltimore Police Department has only one firearms training range, Bredar said: an indoor facility based out of the Northeastern District that is already undergoing improvements. The agency has relied for “many years” on a larger outdoor facility in Baltimore County, Bredar said, which is owned by the state and is primarily used by the National Guard.

Bredar indicated that the Police Department has run into issues lately scheduling time at the range.

“The bottom line is that the Training Academy is unable to move its recruits through that phase of their training in an efficient and predictable and scheduled manner,” Bredar said.

That unpredictability is delaying the “throughput” of officer training, said Bredar, who urged the Police Department to coordinate with the governor or a state agency to address the issue.

“Work out the issue with the National Guard, find another facility, but don’t let this critical process of training police officers to be slowed or derailed by a single administrative bottleneck,” he said.

Bredar has frequently referred to the Police Department’s staffing levels as the single most important challenge holding the agency back from exiting its consent decree, which turned 8 years old this month.

The Police Department is supposed to have around 2,600 sworn officers, but that number dipped below 2,000 in the last year, Bredar said.

Due to improvements in recruiting, the number of officer trainees has outpaced the number of officers leaving in recent months, finally reversing what appeared at times last year to be a staffing death spiral. Earlier this month, a department spokesperson said the agency currently has about 2,011 sworn officers.

In addition to overtime spending, the lack of sworn officers has hampered the department’s efforts to improve its community engagement, the judge added.

Later in the hearing, attorneys for the city and the Police Department told Bredar that the issues at the state-owned range stem from deadlocked lease renewal negotiations and growing recruitment class sizes.

They said that Mayor Brandon Scott has made the issue a priority. The attorneys expressed optimism that a deal could be reached soon, but also bemoaned a lack of “reasonable and responsible” state counterparts in the lease negotiations.

Police Department marks historic milestone

In a significant move, Bredar granted a joint motion by city officials and the U.S. Department of Justice to terminate two sections of the consent decree: the transportation of people in custody and officer assistance and support.

Last month, the DOJ and the city filed a joint motion for termination after a year of “sustained compliance” with the decree’s requirements on transporting people, as well as the provision to provide services to officers dealing with stress and trauma.

At the time, city leaders celebrated the filing as a “historic day” for Baltimore. The termination on Thursday represented the first time in the consent decree’s eight-year history that the agreement’s scope has been narrowed.

Gray died on April 19, 2015, from neck and spinal injuries sustained while in the custody of Baltimore Police officers, federal prosecutors determined. Their investigation found that officers placed Gray in handcuffs and seated him on a bench in the back of the wagon with his legs locked into a “leg lace,” but did not secure him with a seat belt.

Bredar said he felt comfortable supporting the termination in large part due to how the Police Department has learned to audit itself to make sure its officers are following its reformed policies.

“I am persuaded that this department, at this point in its history, has fully embraced a culture of compliance,” he remarked before ruling on the motion.

But Bredar also expressed some worry that, years down the line, and perhaps under different leadership at the city and Police Department level, the agency will fail to sustain that culture.

Responding to that concern, Kenneth Thompson, who leads the independent monitoring team gauging the department’s compliance with the consent decree, said he has been around Baltimore a long time and knows how political changes can bring “unintended consequences,” but he believes in the system now in place.

“I use the term muscle memory,” Thompson said. “I think once the officers have done things for a certain period of time … police officers don’t like change. They want to keep doing things the same way.”

The termination of the provisions will allow Baltimore Police and its independent overseers to focus more resources on other areas of the consent decree, of which 15 provisions remain, including crucial areas such as stops and searches, use of force, community engagement and responding to people with behavioral health issues.