Robert McCullough, the Baltimore County Police Department chief since April 2023, appears on a list of law enforcement officers whose potential credibility concerns require disclosure to defense attorneys if they’re called as a witness in court.

Neither the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office, which maintains the list, nor the Baltimore County Police Department is explaining McCullough’s inclusion on the “Brady/Giglio list.” The list was obtained by the nonprofit journalism group MuckRock in July and shared with The Baltimore Banner.

Brady/Giglio lists are typically kept by prosecutors’ offices and local law enforcement agencies to track law enforcement officers with sustained or confirmed incidents — such as untruthfulness, past criminal convictions or other misconduct — that may require disclosure in court.

On the list, which is sorted alphabetically, McCullough’s name appears next to his badge number under the status of “IADISLOSE,” the most common status for the dozens of officers mentioned. Others are listed under statuses such as “IADONOTCALL” or “IACLEARED.”

Deputy State’s Attorney John Cox declined to explain why McCullough is on the list.

In an interview, Cox said a police officer could end up on the list for “any potential necessary disclosure” and that it was “more inclusive than just credibility concerns.”

After the interview, The Banner filed a formal public records request for any documents that might shed light on the reason behind the chief’s inclusion.

Cox claimed that the only documentation within his office responsive to the request is a “partial sentence with five words contained within an electronic case management system.”

But that partial sentence, Cox asserted, is “prohibited from disclosure ... because the source is a personnel record.”

In 2021, the General Assembly enacted “Anton’s Law,” which altered Maryland’s public records laws to remove protections for police disciplinary records, making them no longer exempt from disclosure as confidential personnel records. Cox acknowledged a section of the statute saying internal affairs investigatory records are not personnel records, but claimed without elaborating that it was inapplicable to the “partial sentence.”

In response to earlier records requests, the county police department provided two internal affairs histories for McCullough, one for his original 35-year stint with the department, which lasted from 1985 to 2021, and another dating back to his rehiring in April 2023.

The only investigation listed for McCullough stemmed from a vehicle accident in 1995.

On Friday, Joy Lepola-Stewart, spokesperson for the police department, referred a question about why McCullough was on the list to the state’s attorney’s office.

The next day, Stewart said the department would issue a statement on the matter Monday. On Monday, the department never sent the statement.

Heather Warnken, executive director of the Center for Criminal Justice Reform at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said the mystery around McCullough’s inclusion on the list underscored broader challenges in legal systems around trust and transparency.

Warnken said she understood the need to balance privacy concerns and other considerations law enforcement might have, but police should be held to a “really high standard.”

“It’s a real problem if you can’t even get to the why, and then be able to understand and interrogate whether it’s a good why,” Warnken said.

McCullough, originally from West Baltimore’s Parkwood neighborhood, is Baltimore County’s first Black police chief in the department’s more-than-150-year history.

He was 18 when he joined the department in 1985, where he served for more than three decades before retiring as a colonel and operation bureau chief in 2021, only to return two years later to lead the agency.

This article was completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures, which has funded MuckRock to support this reporting.