The Freddie Gray case has brought renew attention to a decades old state law outlining due process for officers accused of wrong doing called the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, or LEOBR.
Governor Marvin Mandel signed the bill into law with little fanfare on May 31, 1974. The Baltimore Sun mentioned it a day later as part of a list of bills that Mandel signed.
Jay Zumbrun, criminal justice professor at the Community College of Baltimore County, said the law was created after police officers experienced tough times in the late 1960s.
“They were kind of getting it from all angles,” he said, “The relationship with the community was really less than what they want it to be [and] they feel they weren’t getting the support from their own management team.”
Maryland was the first state to pass an LEOBR; 13 other states have followed. Congress is currently considering a national version of the law. The majority of the time, the law is used for police administrative actions. But it also guides the process if the officer is potentially facing criminal charges.
Attention Grabbing Law
The law became a point of contention in December 2013 during a Baltimore City Council hearing into the in-custody death of Tyrone West five months earlier.
Complaints about similar law in other states grew louder after racially charged incidents in Ferguson, Mo. and Staten Island, N.Y. gained national headlines last year. Critics said they protected bad cops.
Gene Ryan, president of the City Fraternal Order of Police, disagreed during a state Senate committee hearing on a reform bill in February.
“The whole idea – the concept – that the bill of rights protects bad cops; absolutely false,” he said.
Ryan argued LEOBR protects good cops and noted that 300 officers were fired in the last 12 years under the law. That does not include cops who quit before being disciplined.
Reforms proposed by State Senator Lisa Gladden included axing the so-called 10-day rule which says an officer under investigation has a right to a lawyer and that the “interrogation shall be suspended for a period not exceeding 10 days until representation is obtained.”
Dr. Jeffrey Ian Ross, criminologist and University of Baltimore professor, said the rule gives officers under investigation an advantage “in terms of being able to collect their thoughts, re-examine what occurred and also prevent them from saying something that they might regret under the pressure of the moment.”
He also said there are some disadvantages for investigators. Officers could forget details or could make up the details of an incident. Ross said ten days is too long of a “cooling off” period.
“We can get by with half the amount of time; certainly 24 hours is better,” he said.
Professor Zumbrun, who served as an officer in Howard County for 25 years, said he can see both sides of the 10-day argument; for the officer who needs to collect his thoughts after an incident involving force and the chief who needs answers.
“The chief's position is we need to know as quickly as possible; what the facts are, what happened, so we can alert the community or implement any actions that will help the community feel safer,” he added.
The Summer Study
House Speaker Mike Busch and Senate President Thomas Mike Miller announced a joint work group to begin in June to study policing practices.
The group will be examining LEOBR as part of their work.
Baltimore City Delegate Curt Anderson, the group’s co-chair, says they will come up with a reform for the law but noted some legislators are past members of the Fraternal Order of Police and that “they will have their input.”
“We need to try and get a consensus, though, if we’re going to do anything to get a statewide bill passed,” says Anderson, “that’s why nothing happened last year.”
WYPR’s Christopher Connelly contributed to this story.