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A federal judge ruled Wednesday to unseal an expert report detailing dozens of instances of misconduct and discriminatory practices perpetrated by officers in the Prince George鈥檚 County Police Department.
The report, which聽聽last summer, will largely be unredacted, barring any officer contact or personal information and certain details related to internal investigations records.
Names of many of the officers cited in the report will be publicly available.
鈥淎ll in all, this is a very good result for the Public Defender鈥檚 Office, and for the broader Prince George鈥檚 County community, which will now have access to new information about PGPD misconduct that had previously been hidden from public view,鈥� said Nicolas Riley, the attorney representing the Prince George鈥檚 County Office of the Public Defender.
The court is requiring an unredacted version of the report聽compiled by聽policing expert Michael Graham to be submitted by Feb. 20.
Graham鈥檚 expert report was聽filed in support of a聽聽brought by the Hispanic National Law Enforcement Officers Association against Prince George鈥檚 County in 2018, and was聽聽under a confidentiality order.
In his report, Graham found that Prince George鈥檚 County Police Department was not adequately investigating discrimination allegations that Black and Brown employees leveled against white officers.
鈥淭he current leadership of the Department appears to have made a deliberate choice not to track or monitor its performance concerning these matters,鈥� he wrote.
The document detailed allegations of sexist text messages, jokes about lynchings and slavery and a walk-out staged by mostly white officers during an implicit bias training session, among other uninvestigated incidents.
Additionally, when allegations were looked into, Graham said that they weren鈥檛 properly investigated.
In the opinion released Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang stated that Prince George鈥檚 County argued that the document should remain redacted or under seal because it contains 鈥渟ensitive employment and disciplinary information of PGCPD personnel.鈥�
Under the Maryland Public Information Act, records relating to police discipline and misconduct, including internal investigations records, are considered personnel records, protecting them from public disclosure.
Chuang disagreed with the county鈥檚 argument, calling its inclusion of data aggregated from internal investigations records, state court records, news articles, social media posts, emails, equal employment opportunity complaints and civilian complaints used in the report an 鈥渙verly expansive definition.鈥�
鈥淎lthough at least some of the records at issue meet this definition, such that there is a specific state interest in maintaining their privacy, invocation of the MPIA is not dispositive on the issue of sealing because this interest is by no means absolute,鈥欌�� he wrote.
In September, attorneys representing the Prince George鈥檚 County Office of the Public Defender聽聽in the lawsuit and to unseal, or unredact, the expert report, alleging that state prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that could influence their cases.
Under the 1963 federal court case聽, the Supreme Court ruled that withholding evidence is a violation of Fifth Amendment due process rights. The motion to unseal filed on behalf of the Office of the Public Defender argued that Prince George鈥檚 County State鈥檚 Attorney Aisha N. Braveboy (D) had violated that precedent.
In response, Braveboy told聽Maryland Matters聽in September that she had similarly been denied access to police misconduct records by the county, and was 鈥渇iling an emergency motion with the federal court for the unredacted report.鈥�
According to Chuang鈥檚 opinion, the Prince George鈥檚 County State鈥檚 Attorney鈥檚 Office filed a motion to modify the confidentiality order, which would allow the department to turn over protected records to state prosecutors.
Braveboy was also granted access to the report Wednesday.
