Ben Conarck

3 weeks ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Ben Conarck |Pamela Wood |Dylan Segelbaum

Nearly 15 years after his mother died in the custody of the Baltimore County Police Department, Tim Croker received a phone call Thursday morning from a Maryland prosecutor about an event that fractured his life. The death of his 41-year-old mother, Mary Beth Croker, in July 2010should have been ruled a homicide, he was told.

3 weeks ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Ben Conarck |Dylan Segelbaum |Justin Fenton

Marylandofficials on Thursday released a wide-ranging independentaudit of nearly 90 in-custody deaths spanning 2003 to 2019, finding thatthree dozen cases should have been classified as homicides but were not. The unprecedented review was sparked by a highly critical letter from more than 400 medical professionals raising questions about the tenure of Maryland’s former chief medical examiner.

3 weeks ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Justin Fenton |Ben Conarck |Pamela Wood

An unprecedented independent audit found that 36 deaths in police custody over a two-decade span in Maryland should have been ruled homicides by the state’s top medical examiner, a stinging rebuke of Maryland‘s past efforts to investigate the deaths of those once held by law enforcement.

3 weeks ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Ben Conarck

At a meeting of Baltimore County’s Police Accountability Board last month, one of its members unsuccessfully pushed for what would have been a radical change: actually reading the complaints filed by citizens. Peter Fitzpatrick, the District 1 representative, had crafted a motion that would have modified the nine-person board‘s rules to allow its members to read and review — but not adjudicate — police misconduct complaints filed by the public.

1 month ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Ben Conarck

As scores of attorneys flee the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, nine of them recently withdrew from the federal case overseeing the Baltimore Police Department consent decree. The wave of departures threatens to tilt the 8-year-old court case into dysfunction. It represents the strongest ripple effect yet for policing in Baltimore as President Donald Trump remakes the federal government, sparking the Justice Department exodus.