Baltimore detectives convicted in shocking corruption trial

[TexasTowelie]

BALTIMORE — Two Baltimore detectives were convicted Monday of robbery and racketeering in a trial that laid bare shocking crimes committed by an elite police unit and surfaced new allegations of widespread corruption in the city’s police department.

Daniel Hersl, 47, and Marcus Taylor, 30, join six colleagues from the Gun Trace Task Force who already had pleaded guilty in a conspiracy that also included overtime fraud. But the guilty verdicts offer small comfort for a city where homicides keep rising and gun violence rocks neighborhoods even as the police department struggles to overcome accounts of bias and lawbreaking.

The head of internal affairs has been transferred and a deputy commissioner has retired after both were implicated in misconduct during trial testimony. Thousands of convictions in cases handled by the task force are now being questioned by defense attorneys.

“This trial took you inside the Baltimore Police Department,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise told jurors last week. “It showed you things more horrible in some cases than you ever could have imagined.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/former-baltimore-detectives-convicted-in-corruption-trial-with-shocking-details/2018/02/12/961995a6-0a98-11e8-8890-372e2047c935_story.html

[Nitram]

1. It will take a number of cases like this to persuade the majority of Americans that our police

forces are out of control and need to be reigned in. They need extensive training in civil rights, defusing potentially violent situation without the use of force, and what is required of a professional officer of the peace. The problem is that most white Americans live in white neighborhoods where the police are always on their best behavior.

[nitpicker]

2. Link to the DoJ PR

https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/two-baltimore-city-police-officers-convicted-federal-racketeering-conspiracy