An Uncontrollable Group of Baltimore Cops Don’t Answer Calls or Investigate Crimes. Instead They Roam Black Neighborhoods Surveilling People They Deem Suspicious and Unlawfully Stop and Search Them

From [HERE] When Tyrie Washington saw Baltimore City Police roll past him a little after noon on a Thursday in July of 2020, he ran. He darted through an alley in West Baltimore—he knew the neighborhood well because he’d lived there for years—and then hopped a fence and hid.  

From the passenger seat of an unmarked police car, Detective Alex Rodriguez spotted the 21-year-old Washington, crouched by a bush in the yard of a residence. 

Moments earlier, Detective Drake Winkey of the Baltimore Police Department’s Northwest District Action Team (DAT) announced over the radio that someone was “running through the alley.” 

Rodriguez got out of the car shouting, “Stop.” Washington jumped a fence, but fell to the ground. Rodriguez grabbed him. 

“Stop bro, stop,” Rodriguez said. “Why you running?” 

Out of breath, Washington articulated what he believed were his rights. “All right, I got my ID,” he told Rodriguez. “You’re not gonna search me.” 

Washington was referring to his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. He believed that would prevent any search of his person and that all Rodriguez could lawfully do was ask for his ID. 

Then Detective Israel Lopez—who pulled up with Det. Winkey moments earlier—announced “gun,” reached into Washington’s pants and removed a handgun.   

“Y’all bitches don’t got nothing else to do?” Washington asked the three cops surrounding him. “[Than] lockin’ up people with guns on the streets?”

DAT Detective Darwin Noesi said. “Yeah.” 

“Exactly,” Rodriguez chimed in. “People like you.” 

The officers who arrested Washington were part of a District Action Team, a group of specialized units within the Baltimore Police Department, currently with 75 members in total. DAT officers do not answer calls or investigate homicides, but instead engage in proactive policing in neighborhoods they deem “high crime” areas. They look for people they perceive as suspicious and keep an eye out for crimes happening—or about to happen.  

Each of the department’s nine districts has at least one DAT unit. The officers operate in marked and unmarked police vehicles; their uniform is tactical vests and other “plainclothes” gear. While DAT officers engage in tasks like foot patrols, traffic stops, and executing warrants, their primary focus is violence reduction through gun and drug enforcement.  

District Action Team enforcement often looks like Washington’s arrest in 2020. Defense attorneys argue, however, that DAT officers circumvent Fourth Amendment protections and manufacture probable cause through a vast set of vague descriptors: “bulges” in clothing or backpacks, “furtive gestures,” nervousness including a  “visible carotid artery,” clothing out of season, and running from police. 

DAT was established in the summer of 2017, just months after the police disbanded the federally indicted gun- and drug-seizing unit Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), whose members stole cash and drugs, dealt drugs, and planted evidence. Then-Police Commissioner Kevin Davis announced the new DAT squads would be a different kind of proactive policing than the plainclothes cops jumping out of unmarked cars to harass and arrest: “The ‘jump-out boys’ culture was just counterproductive to everything we have to do in the crime fight,” Davis said then.  [MORE]