A scathing Justice Department report on unconstitutional police practices in the city includes a section not often seen in federal findings — a lengthy description of how the department has mistreated youth.
The police force does not use best practices for engaging adolescents, which results in the use of unreasonable force and erodes trust within the community, said Justice (DOJ) officials in thereport on Baltimore’s police force.
An officer used a Taser on a young girl without probable cause after the girl tried to walk away from the police, the report said. In a separate incident, officers used force and pepper spray against siblings standing on their own stoop as police dispersed youth gathered in a residential neighborhood.
“It is apparent that officers have not received guidance nor have been trained on well-established best practices for police interactions with juveniles that account for their developmental stage and prevent the unnecessary criminalization of overwhelmingly minority youth,” Justice officials wrote.
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Barr, go to http://jjie.org/future-baltimo...s-with-youth/293275/]
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