The Baltimore Police Department on Thursday identified the officer who is suspended and under investigation in the wake of a viral video that appears to show him attempting to hit someone with his cruiser before he crashes into a fence.

Robert A. Parks, who has been on the force since 2020, is the officer under investigation, confirmed Lindsey Eldridge, a Baltimore Police Department spokesperson.

The move comes after the Maryland Office of the Public Defender earlier in the day chided city officials for not being more transparent.

“When the state refuses to disclose even the name of an officer caught on video attempting to run down a civilian, it violates both the spirit of the consent decree” and prosecutors’ obligation to provide information about officers’ credibility concerns, said Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue and Marguerite Lanaux, the district public defender for Baltimore, in a joint statement.

In statements issued Wednesday afternoon, Police Commissioner Richard Worley called the video “not only disturbing, but alarming.” Mayor Brandon Scott said what’s depicted on the video is “deeply concerning.”

State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said he was “deeply concerned” and his office won’t call the officer as a witness in any active criminal prosecutions during the investigations and his suspension.

Court records show Parks listed as an arresting officer in more than a dozen active cases.

On Thursday morning, the Police Department’s leadership met publicly with the judge overseeing their federal oversight for the first time since April.

It took about an hour for the topic of the viral video to come up, with U.S. Judge James K. Bredar commenting that his law clerks showed it to him on a social media app. Bredar said that when incidents of misconduct occur, the goal of the department should be to handle them swiftly and effectively.

To that end, internal affairs division head Brian Nadeau said the unit started a case on the officer within 16 hours of the incident and immediately suspended his police powers.

While Bredar broadly cheered the agency’s progress on internal investigations and reform, the public defenders said such incidents were “undermining the consent decree’s goals and enabling officers with credibility issues to operate in the shadows.”

Parks, who is white, is seen in the video interacting with a young Black man in the Park Heights neighborhood of Northwest Baltimore as someone films the encounter.

“What’s your reason for stopping him? You don’t even got no reason for stopping him, yo,” the person filming says.

It is unclear from the video why the officer and the young man were interacting, but WBAL reported that the man told them the officer was trying to talk to him because he had a failure to appear in court for driving without a license.

The person capturing the moment encourages the man to walk away. He obliges and begins walking down a nearby alleyway.

That’s when the officer jumps into his black police cruiser and speeds toward the young man, nearly running him over. The man just barely escapes as he runs through tall grass and down the street away from the officer.

As the man continues running, the officer pursues him in the cruiser, turning his sirens on and honking his horn. In the process, the police officer crashes the vehicle into the yard of a nearby home.

The public defender’s office said prosecutors specifically needed to provide more information about the officer.

“How many other officers with similar credibility issues or misconduct histories are currently testifying in cases where people’s liberty is at stake?” Dartigue and Lanaux said. “The SAO’s obstruction of access to officer personnel records perpetuates the problems the consent decree was designed to eliminate and prevents us from identifying and challenging bad actors in court.”

Banner reporters Ben Conarck and Darreonna Davis contributed to this story.