The Independent Investigations Division of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General started more probes than ever last year, including three in Baltimore that remain active.

The division was created by the General Assembly in 2021 to investigate deaths involving local police officers in Maryland and avoid potential conflicts of interest. It was further empowered in 2023 to prosecute its own cases. In December last year, the division exercised that authority for the first time.

Following a 10-month investigation into a fatal police chase, prosecutors determined that two Anne Arundel County Police Department officers weren’t authorized to engage in the vehicle pursuit and made “material misrepresentations” to their supervisors about the fatal collision, according to an annual report released by the Maryland Office of the Attorney General on Friday.

In the report, Attorney General Anthony Brown called Maryland a “national leader in police accountability” and said the decision to prosecute the Anne Arundel County case was one that “neither I nor my team took lightly, but one we believe we necessary to uphold justice and protect Marylanders.”

The division’s 22 investigations last year outpaced each of the two years prior. Prosecutors launched three probes in Baltimore City and three in Baltimore County, which tied for the second-most investigations in Maryland. Prosecutors launched four investigations in Montgomery County last year, two involving the county’s Police Department, one involving the county sheriff’s office and one involving the Gaithersburg Police Department.

The three active Baltimore Police shooting investigations are the cases of 39-year-old Anthony Ferguson, 17-year-old William Gardner and 54-year-old Robert Phillip Nedd Jr.

Prosecutors declined to file charges in three Baltimore County Police Department incidents, which included the police shooting of 29-year-old Sha-Kim Webley, the “in-custody death” of 41-year-old Craig Cousin, and the fatal vehicle pursuit that led to the death of 37-year-old Dimeka Thornton.

Since the division started investigating the deaths in 2021, the bulk of the investigations related to officers responding to calls for service. But 28 of the deaths in that time stemmed from “law enforcement-initiated” interactions, and 22 of those were related to traffic enforcement, the report said.