Officers still not putting arrestees into seat belts
11 months after Gray's death, poll found more than 20% of passengers unsecured
A year after the Baltimore Police Department changed its seat belt policy, officers still do not secure many arrestees in transport vans.
More than 20 percent of the 298 people polled by the Department of Justice said they were unsecured for part of their trip after being arrested, according to the department's investigation into Baltimore police, released Wednesday.
“BPD continues to fail to secure arrestees during transport, placing them at significant risk of harm,” the report said.
The anonymous survey of arrestees during bail review hearings was completed in March, almost a year after the Police Department issued a policy requiring officers to seat-belt arrestees in vans in all cases.
The policy was issued a few days before the arrest of Freddie Gray, 25, who suffered a fatal spinal injury in April 2015 while in police custody. Prosectors alleged Gray was injured while riding in the back of a transport van.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis has pledged to use the Justice Department report to improve the police force.
Many of the city's police vans lack functioning seat belts, the Department of Justice investigation found. The report says that while many vans are equipped with cameras, many are broken. And the vans effectively lack padding that could prevent injuries to arrestees, the investigation found.
The vans also put officers at risk. For officers to seat-belt multiple people, they must climb into the van, putting their weapons in reach of the arrestees in the first two seats. Officers can accidentally get locked inside.
The Justice Department report notes that the Police Department's transport vans have long been a concern and were the subject of past reforms.
After Jeffrey Alston was arrested for speeding in 1997, he was placed in a chokehold by officers and thrown into a transport van. Injuries suffered in that incident caused him to become quadriplegic, the report said.
Alston received a $6 million settlement from the city. The incident prompted the Police Department to issue a general order requiring officers to secure arrestees in vans.
But arrestees continued to be left unsecured, the report noted, citing the case of Dondi Johnson, who was arrested in 2005 for urinating in public and was injured while riding unsecured in the back of a transport van.
Johnson later died. His family received $7.4 million in damages, the report said.
A 2012 police audit of 18 vehicles found none of the 34 arrestees were seat-belted. An audit shortly after Gray's death in 2015 found that 13 of 14 arrestees were secured.
The report notes that new patrol cars will have partitions to allow officers to transport arrestees.
The report notes that the Police Department has not done any audits recently and has not gathered any data on injuries to arrestees or van inspections.
Investigators heard from many officers about frequent “rough rides,” the report said.
“Officers repeatedly told us that they knew of or had heard about ‘rough rides' that had taken place in the past, although they declined to give us specifics,” the report said.
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