BALTIMORE — Baltimore police officers routinely discriminate against blacks, use excessive force too often, and are not adequately disciplined for misconduct, according to a harshly critical Justice Department report being issued Wednesday.
The report, the culmination of a yearlong investigation into one of the country’s largest police forces, also found that officers make large numbers of traffic stops — mostly in poor, black neighborhoods — with dubious justification and unlawfully arrest citizens for speech deemed rude or disrespectful.
The Justice Department released a copy of the report in advance of its public announcement Wednesday at an event in Baltimore.
The report is a damning indictment of how officers carry out the most fundamental of policing practices, such as traffic stops and searches and responding to First Amendment expression.
Beyond that, though, it could serve as a blueprint for sweeping changes at the police force: The Justice Department said it was seeking a court-enforceable consent decree that would force the police agency to commit to improving its procedures in order to avoid a federal lawsuit.
The federal investigation was launched after the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man whose neck was broken while he was handcuffed and shackled but left unrestrained in the back of a police van. The death set off protests and the worst riots in decades. The report examined a slew of potentially unconstitutional practices, including excessive force and discriminatory traffic stops, within the department.
Federal investigators spent more than a year interviewing Baltimore residents, police officers, prosecutors, public defenders ,and elected officials, as well as riding along with officers on duty and reviewing documents and complaints.
Among the findings: Black residents account for roughly 84 percent of stops, though they represent just 63 percent of the city’s population. Likewise, African-Americans make up 95 percent of the 410 people stopped at least 10 times by officers between 2010 and 2014.
During the same time period, officers stopped 34 black residents 20 times, and seven African-Americans 30 times or more, while the report says that no individuals of any other race were stopped more than 12 times.
In addition to pat-downs, Baltimore officers perform unconstitutional public strip searches, including searches of people who aren’t under arrest.
The report partially blames the department’s unconstitutional practices on a ‘‘zero tolerance’’ policy dating back to the early 2000s, during which residents were arrested en masse for minor misdemeanor charges such as loitering.
Although the department has publicly denounced these practices after a 2010 settlement with the NAACP, which sued the department over the policing strategy, ‘‘the legacy of the zero tolerance era continues to influence officer activity and contribute to constitutional violations,’’ the report said.
Officers also routinely stop and question individuals without cause or a legitimate suspicion that they’re involved in criminal activity, the report says: No charges were filed in 26 of every 27 pedestrian stops.
State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, the city’s top prosecutor, said she expected the report to ‘‘confirm what many in our city already know or have experienced firsthand.’’
