WASHINGTON — The Justice Department waded anew Friday into fraught big city police-community relations, with Attorney General Loretta Lynch declaring the subject “one of the most challenging issues of our time.”
She announced a wide-ranging investigation into Baltimore’s police.
The federal civil rights investigation, which city officials requested after the death last month of a man in police custody, will search for discriminatory policing practices and examine allegations that Baltimore officers too often use excessive force and make unconstitutional searches and arrests.
The investigation is to build upon the government’s voluntary and collaborative review of the Baltimore police that began last year. Since then, the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray and the days of rioting that followed exposed a “serious erosion of public trust,” Lynch said.
She said the death and riots showed community concerns about the police were more pervasive than initially understood and that a broader investigation was warranted.
“It was clear to a number of people looking at this situation that the community’s rather frayed trust — to use an understatement — was even worse and has, in effect, been severed in terms of the relationship with the police department,” Lynch said.
The announcement indicated that Lynch, who was sworn in last week as the successor to Eric Holder, is likely to keep the Justice Department engaged in a national dialogue about race relations and law enforcement.
That issue consumed the final year of Holder’s tenure and flared most vividly last summer following the shooting death of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer.
