TRENDING: Civilian Investigators?

By: Joel E. Gordon

The Baltimore Police Department announced plans to become one of the first law enforcement agencies in the nation to hire civilians to investigate low-level crimes, internal affairs complaints and cold cases.

Baltimore will set “a standard for staffing allocations in law enforcement agencies across the country,” which have struggled with hiring and retention, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said. “This will free up our sworn detectives to better meet the needs of our residents by being out on our streets, deterring and solving crimes.”

Baltimore has 2,274 sworn officers and 519 civilian employees, below the budgeted 2,640 sworn officers and 615 civilian positions.

Nine civilians would be added to the department to staff the city’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy, which aims to focus resources on people most likely to be the victims of violence or perpetuate it. Ten civilians would be moved to facilities and fleet maintenance duties, freeing up officers for patrol or other duties. Twelve civilians will help staff the Telephone Reporting Unit, which receives non-serious police reports that do not require an officer’s response. Unlike sworn police officers, civilian officers would not carry guns, have arrest powers or require the same level of academy training.

The new civilian investigator positions would have a starting salary of $49,000 and still require background investigations “but allows us to hire at a much faster pace, helps us with speed; it helps with frequency. We can get to cases faster, and we can take on more cases at the same time. We don’t want to reduce or compromise quality.” Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said.

Harrison said the plan is not about taking away jobs from sworn members of the department. Police union leaders, however, expressed skepticism about the plan and said department leaders should focus on hiring more officers.

“The priorities of the BPD should be recruitment and retention of sworn personnel,” said Sgt. Mike Mancuso, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3. “The reason for hiring civilian investigators is nothing more than the BPD’s acknowledgment that the BPD cannot hire or retain sworn officers.”

Now additionally, Police Commissioner Michael Harrison announced the newest initiative, calling it SMART policing, which stands for “strategic management and alternative response tactics.” He said the goal is decreasing violent crime by freeing up sworn officers to focus more on proactive patrols, community policing and emergency calls: “To be efficient with our ever-shrinking resources, to be effective in where we’re spending our time and what we’re asking officers to do. According to the Baltimore Sun newspaper, 80% of Baltimore 911 calls are non-emergencies. Under the full plan, if you call 911 to report a theft in Baltimore, dispatchers will soon ask you to do it over the phone or online, instead of sending a police officer to respond in person. If you report someone having a behavioral health crisis, a social worker will be dispatched instead of the cops. Non-emergency calls and minor car accidents will trigger similar non-police responses.

Will non-police responders be ready for criminal acts and violent encounters?

Increasing the number of civilian employees has been a trend in policing for the past 20 years, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, the D.C.-based policing think tank.

Baltimore has already had an issue with a civilian hire and investigative quality is being questioned. The Baltimore Police Department fired a civilian employee who was hired on April 11, 2022 and is a person of interest in a homicide investigation which dates back to 2020. City police identified the official as the chief of fiscal services, which is the No. 3 position in BPD's fiscal division. He was terminated soon after he got on an elevator at police headquarters and was recognized by a detective working the homicide case in which he is a person of interest. This was just one week after he was hired. It has also been discovered that he was put on the city's gun offender registry in 2019 yet apparently that, too, was missed in any background check.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott released a statement later, saying: "Upon learning of a systems failure in the civilian hiring process at the Baltimore Police Department yesterday, Mayor Scott has directed Baltimore City Chief Human Capital Officer, Quinton Herbert, to perform a comprehensive review of BPD's civilian hiring practices and submit recommendations to improve their policies and procedures. Mayor Scott is committed to reforming HR practices throughout the city to ensure we hire only eligible and qualified candidates to fill these critical positions in city government."

Harrison said the department is investigating how that may have been missed in a background check."We are working to ascertain the answers to those questions ourselves ... There was a background investigation done, and the HR department did a background investigation. It was missed.”

So the question remains, will civilian personnel replace or will they supplement highly trained sworn personnel? Will quality of investigations suffer to greater levels than before? Will civilian employees be held to the same level of accountability as those sworn to uphold the law? What danger lies ahead as civilian positions in law enforcement encroach on traditionally held responsibilities of sworn personnel?

Is this a good idea? You decide.

Joel E. Gordon is a former Field Training Officer with the Baltimore City Police Department and is a past Chief of Police for the city of Kingwood, West Virginia. He has also served as vice-chair of a multi-jurisdictional regional narcotics task force. An award winning journalist, he is author of the book Still Seeking Justice: One Officer's Story and founded the Facebook group Police Authors Seeking Justice. Look him up at stillseekingjustice.com