Talk:Baltimore Police Department

Salvatore Rivieri

So, the officer in question for the "Skateboard case" and "Artist case" is Salvatore Rivieri. Why is his name not listed? Searching for Salvatore Rivieri redirect to the Baltimore Police Department page already. 24.20.200.29 (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The standards for inclusion change slightly when it is about a living person and the case is still pending. We have to keep in mind that this is an encyclopedia and not a newspaper. We try to follow a neutral stance. There is always two sides, and to name one and not the other is in violation of WP:NPOV. Another (lesser) reason is because of slander (we do not want to put allegations on a particlular person then come to find out that it was completely different than it seemed, now we (the editors of WP) have violated our own policies and it discredits the notability of WP. More information can be included after the trial/case/closure (etc, etc). Happy Editing!--Sallicio^{$\color {Red}\oplus$} 05:07, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure, the case is pending, but Officer Rivieri's name has been published in national media in regards to this case. So this is no secret. Besides, clicking on any of the external links provided as references will reveal his name whether or not it is written in the article. Printing Officer Rivieri's name in this article undoubtedly meets WP:V requirements. There is only one user so far, Sallicio, who wants to take the name out, and by reading his user page, it is clear that he is a police officer himself. In fact, though I cannot say with absolute certainty, I wonder if he is Salvatore Rivieri. Sebwite (talk) 15:36, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, in the Skateboard video Rivieri very clearly states his name. I understand the need for neutrality, but in this case I think the cat is out of the bag. 198.6.46.11 (talk) 17:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a far stretch. And you're right, you cannot say with any certainty that I am Rivieri. Because I am not he. There are over 12,000 police officers in the Baltimore/DC metropolitan area, all of which are familiar with the Rivieri case, so perhaps it is possible that I am someone else. Anyway, back to the issue at hand, the fact that it is published in every newspaper and magazine from here to Kuala Lumpur is irrelevant. This is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper. Many very well-known media outlets are notoriously biased (e.g., The New York Times, Washington Post lean towards the left, FoxNews leans to the right). I am simply trying to maintain the integrity of WP and NPOV (i.e., WP leans neither direction). If the name is going to be included, place it within the article along with the opposing side. For example, Marbury v. Madison has both sides within the article. Calling it, "The Marbury Case" would violate NPOV. "The Rivieri Case" is no different (especially because it is still pending and all we know of the case are small clips from "YouTube") We should remember to exercise due diligence by remaining neutral (and not making frivolous allegations against other wikipedians;) ). You may agree or disagree on my stance; that's beauty of this project! Happy Editing!--Sallicio^{$\color {Red}\oplus$} 17:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Flex Squad

What's the "Flex Squad"? --Purpleslog 14:52, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Article on criticism and corruption

The past several years have seen a large number of problems for which the Baltimore City Police have been criticized by local media. These include a large number of arrests for perceived minor infractions of the law, mistreatment of crime victims, and the beating death of Raymond Smoot (a major news story for which a stub exists, waiting to be expanded; or else it could be merged into a new article).

It would be nice if someone (or several people) could create a neutral article on this topic, describing all the issues, and linked from this article by the main article template. The troubles of the BPD have been all over the news, so there are plenty of external links available as sources. Sebwite 20:28, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Raymond Smoot case

If the death of Smoot wasn't related to the BPD in any way, then why is it listed on this article? The subsection should be removed as it is irrelevant to the BPD. Perhaps it could be moved to the correctional institute's article, if there is one. Sallicio (talk) 03:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)Sallicio

I had originally written a small article on the Raymond Smoot case; it had received a lot of coverage at the time, and throughout the trial of the officers. But I only wrote a few small paragraphs. Rather than writing a full article myself, I would have prefered that an expert on the case would do so. The article since received little attention and no improvement, and given that it was probably a local interest story, I merged it into Baltimore Police Department. If you think you could write a good article on the case, from Smoot's death to the trial and its outcome, you can unmerge it.Sebwite (talk) 15:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

FYI i removed the soomt case for one simple reason, besides the arrest and investigation, though i am not sure they did or it was done by IA, the beating never involved members of the City police for but the Department of Corrections, which is a state agency. While i agree that the case does warrant mention on this site, in either it's own article, an article about the detention center (which has had a long list of issues over the years), or in an article about the department of corrections, which recently has been pick up some flak recently), to list it here would be misleading by inferring that the BPD had something to do with the death of smoot when they didn't, or that they have control of the agency whose officers were involved in the case, which they don't. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 01:39, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Boothy443, it had no business in this article to begin with.--Sallicio^{$\color {Red}\oplus$} 03:06, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

• I have changed back Raymond Smoot from a redirect to this article to an article of its own, which is currently a stub, and I have listed "Raymond Smoot" under "See also" on this page. I hope someone expands it. There should be a link to the Baltimore Sun's archive of articles on this case somewhere - I have not found it yet. You can use that to find more info. Hopefully, someone with a lot of familarity on the case will expand it from a stub to a full article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sebwite (talk • contribs) 15:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Salvatore name inclusion

I have RE-added Salvatore's name, it does NOT go against WP:BLP despite the claim of a certain person. I have sourced the inclusion of his name, as it is mentioned in prettymuch EVERY article. I have even found that there are further allegations against him and I have sourced that with a quote from a spokesman for the police dept. Please do not revert me again, I would support removal of his name if this was some isolated incident, but there are more and more allegations against him surfacing, and it's important to make sure that people do not mistake them as seperate officers. 64.230.5.184 (talk) 04:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I support the RE-addition 198.6.46.11 (talk) 17:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Just as a sidenote, it is starting to appear that the multiple IP addresses taking up nearly identical stances on this issue is one person operating sockpuppets from a proxy server.--Sallicio^{$\color {Red}\oplus$} 18:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Weapons- Shotgun

Is there really even such a thing as a "less lethal version of the 870"? I would think it would just be a regular Remmington 870 using less-lethal ammunition. On Thermonuclear War (talk) 03:40, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

• When less-than-lethal ammunition is loaded into a Remington 870 shotgun, some refer to it as the Remington 870 delivery device. For example, this article states "The 870P Max can reliably feed chamber and extract several different types of munitions seamlessly. This feature is well-known by police armorers who simply put orange stocks and forends on a Remington 870 to make it a less-lethal delivery system." Movementarian (Talk) 05:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

• "hom" :
  • {{cite book |last=Simon |first=David |title=[[Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets]] |origyear=1991 |edition=4th |year=2006 |publisher=Owl Books |isbn=0-8050-8075-9 |pages=111 |chapter= two}}
  • {{cite book |last=Simon |first=David |title=[[Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets]] |origyear=1991 |edition=4th |year=2006 |publisher=Owl Books |isbn=0-8050-8075-9 |page=111 |chapter= two |quote= "Black Baltimoreans grew up with the understanding that two offenses-talking up to a city cop, or worse running from one-were almost guaranteed to result in a beating at best, or gunfire at worst."}}
  • {{cite book |last=Simon |first=David |title=[[Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets]] |origyear=1991 |edition=4th |year=2006 |publisher=Owl Books |isbn=0-8050-8075-9 |pages=110-113 |chapter= two |quote= "Maryland's governor and Baltimore's mayor took the IACP assessment seriously: They hired the man who wrote it."}}

DumZiBoT (talk) 15:28, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Criticism section

We need to reform this section so that the content is meshed throughout the article. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:07, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. There are some good parts of the criticism section. The one story about one person's experience which mentions a specific officer is just unnecessary.

On May 16th, 2006, Baltimore city police officer, Nancy Preston, arrested a Virginian couple for asking for directions to a major highway. The couple, released after 7 hours in city jail, were not charged with any crime. They were initially taken into custody for trespassing on a public street. Their vehicle was impounded at the city lot, with windows down and doors unlocked, resulting in theft of several personal items.

Honestly I think that this should be removed.

Eli H 03:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Squeekyzebra (talk • contribs)

big picture

Some thoughts on this article:

• The "Controversy" section is bulky, heavily biased towards the last decade, and reads like a tabloid. It could probably be split off into its own article, with a smaller section here that hits the major points and links to the right pages. (I.e. it could mention William King and Antonio Murray (police officers).
• "History" could use some expansion, which I hope work on. I'm also interested in the police union—maybe the union (and its history) should get its own section.
• "African Americans in the Department" could be its own section. That would free up the history section for a little more internal chronological division. Much of this section also appears to be lifted verbatim from sections of "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" by David Simon, but that work is not cited.
• The "Operations Bureau" section is annoying to scroll through and, without descriptions of the individual list items (if we had these that would be enough for a separate article) it doesn't seem very useful. I suggest we remove this section and direct the curious to this chart, which is easier to read anyway.
• It would be great to include something on this report (pdf) just released by FOP3. Unsure of the best way to do that. "Current affairs" section?

Looking forward to hearing y'all's thoughts. groupuscule (talk) 14:57, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Misconduct sections are critical as there is no one place on the internet that lists the (sometimes very shocking) history of abuse by some police departments. That being said, balance is important, as is ease of reading. Give breaking off the misconduct section and let's see what it looks like. If need be, we can change it back. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 19:58, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

9 years later, the BPD page still is mostly a litany of (legitimate) abuses which, while interesting and important, don't seem like the best way to structure the overall article. They're not even all located in the same section. I'm not sure what if anything should be cut, or spun off, but the status quo isn't satisfactory. Sauzer (talk) 15:01, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:47, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Remove Criticism from the Controversy Section

I have removed the last line from the Criticism section as it appears to be POV and has no source to back it's claim. I have also added a citation to the paragraph backing up claims of high crime in that city. 149.101.37.2 (talk) 15:14, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Notable incidents

This section has gotten completely unwieldy. It needs to be trimmed down greatly. A cop shooting his girlfriend's dog is not even a close event in the entirety of the Baltimore City Police Department. In fact, most of the one lined notable incidents should be removed. This article isn't supposed to be a list of misdeeds by the police department. If you're going to list them, make them notable. 149.101.37.2 (talk) 12:39, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

A person trained to show good judgement under stress killing a dog with his bare hands seems quite notable and a reflection on the quality of officer hired, trained and trusted by the Baltimore Police Department. Legal misconduct of public officials is by its nature notable. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 17:47, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Or it was just one officer who had a nervous breakdown? Wikipedia doesn't need to list every single incident that happens with their officers. That's not the point of this page. They need to be notable. This isn't notable in the least. 149.101.37.2 (talk) 19:24, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, we can agree this page is going to get a lot of attention in the next week or two. Let's let people take a look and see what they think. Since it made the paper, there is a good cite. There was an admission of wrongdoing. So there is no BLP problem with leaving it here for a while to see what happens. OK? Paul, in Saudi (talk) 01:42, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

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Addition of content about 2015 riot and DOJ consent decree

I added more historical material, as well as summary content about the 2015 Baltimore riot after Freddie Gray's death in police custody, the ensuing DOJ investigation, and the consent decree reached with the city and signed off by the federal judge in April 2017.Parkwellss (talk) 14:21, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

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Batons

"[T]he espantoon was banned in favor of the koga stick...." What is a koga stick? The Wiki article on the espantoon mentions a koga baton; the term is linked, but the link provided is to the article on batons, and the word koga does not appear anywhere in that article.

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Rank structure correction

Even though it was indeed announced July 2016 that the colonel and lieutenant colonel ranks would be dissolved and replaced by chiefs, they are still in use, with here being an example of lieutenant colonel being still in use in 2018. And from its organization chart, another example of how lieutenant colonel is still an active rank, alongside the rank of colonel. 108.49.119.9 (talk) 01:53, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Baltimore Police Department Chevy Caprice PPV.jpg

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 08:51, 11 January 2020 (UTC)