Baltimore state's attorney candidate Thiru Vignarajah posted a database of police officers' names online Saturday after they were removed from a public website this week.

Vignarajah’s campaign created the database after the Maryland Judiciary removed the names of police officers and other law enforcement authorities from the state’s searchable public online court database, citing safety concerns. Vignarajah, other attorneys and journalists have criticized the removal of the names.

“There’s so much concern about lack of information especially about police right now,” Vignarajah said in an interview Saturday. “This is a time when the community needs more, not less.”

The removal of the officers’ names, which took effect Thursday, follows weeks of troubling testimony on police corruption in the federal trial of two members of Baltimore’s gun trace task force. Eight officers who served on the task force have been convicted of federal racketeering charges, potentially compromising thousands of cases.

Vignarajah has called on the state to reverse the change. “Both law enforcement and public defenders, and elected officials, all were calling to make this information public,” he said.

By publishing the database, he said, he hopes to provide a community resource and increase transparency. The officers’ names are still theoretically available to the public on kiosks at courthouses. But when a reporter attempted to access the information at Baltimore Circuit Court Friday, no kiosk was available, and the computer program in use at the kiosks is not as searchable as the online database.

The Maryland Judiciary Case Search database has provided information about court cases, including information about defendants, the charges they face, the names of prosecutors and defense attorneys, and the names of officers who were involved in the arrest. The website provides access to such information for all counties across the state, including circuit and district court cases. It is used by members of the public, lawyers, journalists and police departments to track cases.

The Vignarajah campaign’s database includes case numbers and indictment dates and the first initial and last names of officers involved in Baltimore Circuit Court cases from 2010 through early July 2017. The campaign said it used the first initial and last name to be “consistent with the original request by police groups” to not use officers’ first names. Case Search had provided the full names of Baltimore police officers. “We thought this was an appropriate balance” between transparency and some law enforcement groups’ concerns, Vignarajah said.

Police in Anne Arundel County lobbied for a change in how officers’ names were displayed in Case Search in 2015. They wanted to replace officers’ first names with first initials. Department officials said Friday that they do not advocate removing officers’ names entirely. “We had officers coming to us saying, ‘Hey, why is our full name coming up in Case Search?’ We brought it to the attention of the clerk’s office,” Anne Arundel County Police union president Cpl. O'Brien Atkinson told The Baltimore Sun. But “at no time did anybody with the [Fraternal Order of Police] or the department lobby or try to have officers’ full names removed.”

Vignarajah’s staff created the database last year to analyze sentencing data in firearms cases. Vignarajah published an op-ed in The Sun on the subject in August.

Vignarajah, who has served as Maryland deputy attorney general, is now challenging Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby to be the city’s top prosecutor. Vignarajah criticized Mosby’s “lack of attention” to the change. “It is troubling that either the state’s attorney’s office didn’t know this was happening… or [Mosby] was aware and did nothing to try and stop it,” he said. He said Mosby’s office had direct access to the case information.

In a statement Saturday, Mosby said her office is the only one in the state to post decisions about when prosecutors charge officers in use-of-force incidents. She pointed to a Court Watch database for residents to follow “pertinent cases that impact their respective neighborhoods and “an exhaustive annual report” of her office’s work.

“Criminal justice reform has been the hallmark of this administration and our record of transparency, applying justice fairly and equally, and progressive prosecution speaks for itself,” she said.

jkanderson@baltsun.com

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