When Howard County set up its Police Accountability Board, community advocates hoped the body would take on thorny issues about how the county police interact with Black people.
The board was established in 2022, around the time a statewide mandate went into effect as part of criminal justice reforms that Maryland lawmakers passed in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
Three years later, those advocates with the similarly named Police Accountability Task Force of Howard County are criticizing the new board for failing to do its job.
Although the board and task force have similar names, objectives and even membership, they operate separately. The board’s authority is derived from state and local laws while the grassroots task force has positioned itself as the board’s unofficial watchdog.
The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.
Task force members claim that the board failed in 2024 by not effectively addressing apparent racial disparities in county law enforcement or sharing that data with the public, and that it also failed to effectively follow up on some of its own recommendations.
The task force outlined its grievances in a letter dated March 12 to County Executive Calvin Ball and the County Council and called for the resignation of the accountability board’s chair Nellie Hutt.
“Our assessment is that, continuing a pattern that has persisted since the formation of the [Police Accountability Board], its performance in 2024 fell significantly short of meeting its statutory obligations,” the letter states.
Hutt referred questions about the complaints to county administrators.
Three County Council members, Liz Walsh, Opel Jones and Deb Jung, did not respond to requests for comment, while Christiana Rigby declined to comment.
The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.
Councilman David Jungmann, the lone Republican, said in an email that he felt that the police department had adequately refuted or addressed the issues and that he was not aware of widespread community concerns.
The advocates’ concerns are rooted in how data from local law enforcement agencies is interpreted.
An estimated 20% of Howard County residents are African American, according to U.S. Census data from 2021. However, Black people were represented at far higher rates in traffic stops, arrests, use of force and criminal citations by county police, according to 2022 data reviewed by the board.
The apparent racial disparity troubles members of both the board and task force. Each has called for a third-party study of the data, though task force members say the board hasn’t pushed hard enough.
“We don’t know what’s causing it,” said Ted Stewart, a task force member who said police mistook him for a robber and pointed guns at him when he was 12. “The question is why.”
The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.
Howard County Police declined to comment on the matter and referred questions to county administrators.
Police Chief Gregory Der told the board in 2023 that the data includes police interactions with people who are not Howard County residents. An independent study was not necessary, he said, noting that the department is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. That involves a third-party review of policies and training including for racial bias, county officials said.
County police have taken other steps to be more transparent. Officers now wear body cameras. The department launched two dashboards to share data on traffic stops and crime reports that are searchable by types of crime, ZIP codes, time frames, police beats and Columbia villages.
The task force noted, however, that the dashboards do not include data on arrests or uses of force.
Former accountability board member Jim Gormley said the board obtained that data in 2022 from law enforcement agencies.
The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.
Gormley has the unusual experience of having served on the board and now the task force. He’s pushing his former board colleagues to approach the issue with more urgency.
“These folks being pulled over are disproportionally Black,” he said. “They either live in Howard County or they don’t, but they’re being pulled over as Black people.”
Task force members called it a big disappointment that the board failed to seek data for more years from the police.
“They didn’t even have that intellectual curiosity to say, ‘These stats are horrible for 2022, what did they look like for 2023?’ ” Stewart said.
An independent study is listed as one of the board’s objectives for 2025, but vacancies have hampered the seven-person entity’s ability to even meet.
The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.
Three seats are currently vacant, meaning all four remaining members must be present to achieve a quorum. The board has not yet convened in 2025, and no meetings were scheduled as of Thursday, according to the county website.
Ball recently appointed Eric Clark to fill one of the vacant seats, which requires a final approval from the County Council later this month. He also issued a callout for applicants to fill the other two positions.
In the meantime, the county executive has thrown his support behind both the police department and the board — even as the two are at odds.
In a letter to the board dated Feb. 26, Ball backed the police department’s decision to forgo an independent study, echoing some of Der’s talking points.
“Policing has been rightfully scrutinized in recent years, both in Maryland and around the nation,” Ball said in his letter. “We have all witnessed troubling law enforcement practices in other places, which have reinforced our commitment to ensure those issues don’t plague the [Howard County Police Department].”
The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.
Jamar Herry, the county’s deputy chief administrative officer, said Wednesday that administrators do not believe a study would be effective or fiscally responsible when the state and local jurisdictions face funding hurdles. Officials estimate a third-party study would cost $100,000 to $200,000, depending on the scope and vendor.
If cost is prohibitive, task force member Bill Cozzo suggested, the county could at least release more data publicly.
Police face variables that aren’t always captured in the data, Herry said. For example, officers cannot discern a person’s race at night or through a vehicle’s tinted windows.
Herry said county leaders are confident in the police department and the processes in place to deal with complaints against officers.
At the same time, the administration “absolutely” supports the accountability board and its chair in the face of criticism from advocates, Herry said.
“We feel they’ve stepped up and not everyone’s willing to do that,” he said.
The tangle of conflicting perspectives suggests that, even in a Democratic stronghold like Howard County, developing consensus about police accountability is hard.
Meanwhile, the national landscape has changed dramatically since Floyd’s death in 2020 kicked off a national reckoning over race and law enforcement. President Donald Trump spent his early days in office reversing several policing reforms and stripping references to diversity, equity and inclusion from the federal government.
Just before he took office, Howard County received a letter from a group linked to Trump adviser Stephen Miller threatening penalties for policies “concealing, harboring or shielding” immigrants.
That’s all the more reason for Howard County to make sure there are no racial or ethnic disparities in police engagement, Cozzo said.
“We want to live in a community where that doesn’t happen,” he said.
Comments
Welcome to The Banner's subscriber-only commenting community. Please review our community guidelines.