Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger confirmed Police Chief Robert McCullough’s account of why he ended up on a list of police officers with credibility concerns but would not release the record about the decision.

On Monday, Baltimore County’s top cop told The Banner the only reason his name is included on a “Brady list” is that, when he was a 19-year-old cadet, he lent his parking validation ticket to another cadet who used it to reduce his own parking fees about 40 years ago.

Brady lists — named after a defendant in a 1963 Supreme Court case — are maintained by prosecutors’ offices and local law enforcement agencies to track police officers with credibility issues.

Initially, neither McCullough nor Shellenberger answered questions about why the chief’s name wound up on a Brady list.

As a result, The Banner filed a formal public records request for any documentation that would reveal why McCullough, the department’s first Black chief, was included.

Deputy State’s Attorney John Cox said there’s a “partial sentence with five words contained within an electronic case management system” responsive to the request, but it cannot be disclosed because it’s part of a personnel record.

Shellenberger said Thursday the record in question corroborates the chief’s story but his office cannot release it.

“The disclosure that the state’s attorney’s office would release matches the story that the chief told to the press,” he said.

Withholding records

Criminal justice experts and the state’s top defense lawyer disagree with how Shellenberger handled the issue and said his office is violating a law mandating the disclosure of police disciplinary records.

In 2021, the General Assembly enacted Anton’s Law, which altered Maryland’s public records laws to remove protections for those records, making them no longer exempt from disclosure as confidential personnel records.

Cox previously acknowledged a section of the statute saying internal affairs investigatory records are not personnel records but said without elaborating that it does not apply to the “partial sentence.”

Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue said in a statement that the law exists to “ensure transparency and public accountability.”

“Withholding records and concealing standards breeds distrust and unanswered questions,” Dartigue said. “The public deserves primary sources, not selective summaries to hide critical details.”

The public defender’s office also criticized Shellenberger for not publishing more detailed criteria for how officers end up on the list.

Generally, Shellenberger said, when the department’s internal affairs division determines an officer violated a policy that calls their truthfulness into question, that officer’s name is added to the list.

“Any theft case can qualify,” the state’s attorney said.

He added that an officer also could end up on the list even when an investigation is not founded but the state’s attorney’s office “could be convinced a disclosure would still have to be made because of the overwhelming evidence.”

However, to ensure “genuine accountability,” Dartigue said, the state’s attorney’s office “must publish clear, objective written criteria explaining exactly how officers are placed on disclosure lists.”

“Discretionary decisions made behind closed doors violate the law’s intent,” she said.

David Jaros, a criminal law professor at the University of Baltimore, said he agreed with the public defender’s office’s position that the state’s attorney’s office was violating Anton’s Law, which he said was “passed precisely to try and shore up confidence in the system and deal with this exact kind of problem.”

He described Shellenberger’s statements as ambiguous and said they fail to resolve the questions about his office’s list.

Parking dispute to Brady list

McCullough’s 1986 violation cost the county less than $3, according to a copy of a criminal misconduct review by then-Assistant State’s Attorney Sue Schenning.

The reports shows Schenning declined to charge McCullough and recommended the Baltimore County Police Department handle the incident internally.

McCullough said the department’s internal affairs division suspended him and the other cadet for three days without pay.

His inclusion on the county’s Brady list shocked McCullough.

“I had never seen the list, nor had I been told in the 40 years that I’ve been around that I was on the list,” he said.

So how did a public safety veteran wind up on the Brady list without even realizing it?

McCullough, who was one of two Black cadets when he joined Baltimore County Police in 1985, described a racist department that was difficult to navigate.

“I wasn’t always treated well,” he said. “Even coming up through the ranks ... even when I was a major and a colonel, and, even now, as a chief of police, I don’t get a fair shake.”

The chief said he did not realize his coworker, who told McCullough he lost his own ticket, was using the validation to save a few bucks.

“He subsequently asked me for my parking validation ticket at least two more times, and I gave it to him and — but I started to get suspicious about it,” McCullough said.

“And, quite truthfully, it was something that had been going on for at least 10 years before me and him even became cadets in the agency,” he said of officers sharing tickets.

Two weeks later, a lieutenant confronted McCullough, who said he immediately came clean.

Jaros, the law professor, said neither the state’s attorney’s office nor the police department has a “stellar record” when it comes to the treatment of people of color, including police officers, so “it’s not beyond the pale to imagine that the chief was unfairly treated.”

“But we can’t do that kind of evaluation without a full, open disclosure about what exactly the state’s attorney’s office said happened, and then do the comparison,” Jaros said. “This is exactly why Anton’s Law is focused on exposing all of these allegations to the light of day, so that the public, and government, can accurately assess the validity of the allegations.”