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Body camera footage after Det. Suiter’s death show Baltimore residents living under police watch | The Baltimore Sun

Body camera footage after Det. Suiter’s death show Baltimore residents living under police watch | The Baltimore Sun Police body-camera footage from the days after Det. Sean Suiter was shot to death in West Baltimore shows residents of Harlem Park living under police watch — with officers stopping everyone entering the neighborhood and residents having to show identification as they tried to get to and from their homes.

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland said the videos, which the Baltimore Police Department provided this week in response to independent Public Information Act requests by The Baltimore Sun and the ACLU, showed a disregard for residents’ constitutional rights at the highest levels of the department.

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“What I see in the videos is the people of Harlem Park living in a police state where walking out of their house subjects them to a warrantless stop by a police officer asking them for ID,” said David Rocah, the Maryland ACLU’s senior staff attorney. “None of that, in my view, is legal. None of that, in my view, is what is supposed to happen in the United States.”

Baltimore Police spokesman T.J. Smith said the department would not be commenting on the videos until the independent review board appointed to investigate Suiter’s shooting and the department’s response to it finishes its work. The review is expected to take months.

In one video taken two days after Suiter was shot in mid-November, a man is stopped on the street about 1:40 a.m. by an officer who tells him he can’t go home without first providing a photo ID.


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