Mass shooting: After-action report details ‘officer indifference’ ahead of South Baltimore block party

BALTIMORE — The signs were there.

The social media post three days earlier flagged by a police intelligence unit. A U-Haul truck loading in tables and other equipment on the morning of what would be the Brooklyn Day celebration. The growing crowd observed by city surveillance footage that CitiWatch employees viewed before gunfire claimed the lives of two young people and injured 28 other attendees.

Still, none of the signals was enough to spur Baltimore Police and other city officials to sufficient intervention, according to a long-awaited report released Wednesday, nearly two months after what is likely Baltimore’s largest mass shooting in history.

The after-action report, compiled by city police and other agencies, is expected to be discussed at a Wednesday morning news conference with the mayor and other agency leaders. In a statement, Mayor Brandon Scott called the mass shooting “one of the most painful chapters in our city’s history” but said focusing on accountability and prevention, with the steps outlined in the report, would “lay the path forward.”

“[The report is] only a first step,” Scott said. “Now, we will continue to pursue the reforms necessary to respond. Baltimore City government agencies and counterparts fell short on our promise to our residents, and we will do everything in our power to ensure those mistakes are not repeated.”

Recommendations from the mayor’s office were compiled in a memo from City Administrative Officer Faith Leach, who coordinated the participating agencies — Baltimore Police, the Mayor’s Office for Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, the Fire Department, the Office of Emergency Management and the Housing Authority of Baltimore City.

Much of the report confirms what was already publicly known: Police officers failed to properly flag to commanders the growing gathering or take steps to disperse the crowd before violence erupted. Safe Streets violence interrupters were present at the block party but left before the shootings occurred. The Housing Authority says it was unaware of Brooklyn Day planning and did not approve the party.

The report, however, adds some damning details to the public’s understanding of what led to the event.

For instance, a transcript of an internal chat room for Southern District supervisors shows that, about two hours before the shooting, a sergeant alerted superiors to a crowd of roughly “800-900 people” in the Brooklyn Homes housing development who had “snuck in” the block party.

A captain replied to the message: “Anyone that wants some OT tonight the check book is open!”

It was about an hour and a half later before a major weighed in, advising that police “monitor only don’t get drawn in and become a target.”

Baltimore Police wrote in their assessment that that shift’s sergeants and lieutenant gave “very little consideration” to possible public safety concerns inherent in a crowd of up to 900 people, and failed to share the information quickly. Commanders additionally failed to provide officers with direction on how to intervene in the large crowd or to immediately request additional resources, which the department insists were available.

In another instance, prior to the day of the block party, district personnel failed to fully investigate after receiving notice from the agency’s open-source intelligence unit about an upcoming “Brooklyn Saturday” advertised in a social media post. And the unit that flagged the item wasn’t staffed the day of the party to potentially catch other references in real-time.

Taken together, it could amount to a diagnosis of “indifference,” according to an equity assessment done by the department.

“Officer indifference may have significantly compromised the awareness, planning and response to Brooklyn Day prior to the large crowds arriving,” the report’s authors wrote. “Members of the community can view such indifference (whether real or perceived) as a form of bias.”

Councilman Mark Conway, who chairs the Baltimore City Council’s Public Safety and Government Operations Committee, said Wednesday that the report captures “a heartbreaking series of failures and missed opportunities.” He continued by saying that police and the Housing Authority should’ve known more about the event beforehand and acted before it “spiraled out of control.”

The committee has a second oversight hearing on the mass shooting scheduled for Sept. 13 at 1 p.m.

The Scott administration’s proposed fixes ranged from continued dialogue on the report’s findings to building the capacity of community-based organizations in the Brooklyn area to requiring city agencies to alert top mayor’s office officials about any events of more than 50 people.

The latter appears to be a reference to Safe Streets’ advance knowledge of the celebration. The violence intervention program, administered by city-funded contractors, heard at least one month ahead of time that tentative plans were in the works for the planned celebration, according to the report. By the end of June, Safe Streets employees knew Brooklyn Day would be held on July 1, although nothing suggested it would become violent.

On the day of the shooting, Safe Streets workers staffed the area of the block party, dissuading visitors from outside the neighborhood from joining the event and attempting to separate or spread out the growing crowd, the report said. They mediated five conflicts at the event, all of which were successfully resolved. Some were set for follow-up counseling. None resulted in gunfire, the report said.

The Safe Streets employees, whose shifts ended at 11 p.m., left between then and 12:20 a.m. When they learned of the shooting, staff returned to the site or reported to a nearby hospital where victims were being treated, according to the report.

During a July Baltimore City Council hearing on the shooting, some members of the council were critical that Safe Streets did not relay information about the event to city officials.

The report found there are no documented protocols for when Safe Streets should notify the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, which oversees the program, about large events or emerging threats to public safety. The report recommends the city develop an operations manual and proposes a protocol calling for Safe Streets to escalate incidents that could cause “mass harm or destruction.” Those may include events with 50 or more people, those where weapons are likely to be present or where the situation exceeds the capabilities of Safe Streets.

The 173-page after-action report, the majority of which focuses on police, was compiled from a review of more than 200 hours of surveillance camera footage and five hours of body camera footage. Radio chatter, emails, texts and in-person interviews were also compiled.

In some cases, the report’s authors found materials to be missing. The body-worn camera of a supervisor who ordered officers to not engage the raucous Brooklyn Day crowd was reviewed, but no video was on file. The issue will be referred to the Public Integrity Bureau to be reviewed for potential policy violations, the report stated.

The report further calls for Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley to make changes within the department’s command staff in the 30 days following the report’s release. Any police who may have violated policy are to be referred to the Public Integrity Bureau, the report stated.

The police department’s section of the report takes a probing view of its community policing efforts in the Brooklyn neighborhood, concluding that there was insufficient proactivity from patrol officers, given the historic level of crime in the area. The Brooklyn Homes and Brooklyn neighborhood police post, prior to redistricting that went into effect after the mass shooting, was one of the two busiest in Baltimore based on call volume.

Commanders and outreach officers, it added, had insufficient relationships with the community and over-relied on community associations or other formal mediums.

Turnover among commanders also had an effect, according to the report. Conditions that helped to avoid a “substantial incident” at Brooklyn Day prior to 2023 dissolved over time under new majors and a vacant public safety coordinator position at the housing complex. A 2022 deployment plan — put together after the district learned days ahead of time about the date of Brooklyn Day — wasn’t shared with a new commander.

Residents told the report’s authors they believed flyers for the event were easily accessible and that police “deliberately” ignored them, according to concerns documented in BPD’s equity assessment section.

Some in the community added: “Had this large group of people converged in a predominantly white neighborhood, the police response would have first been preemptive and then certainly swiftly tactical toward dispersing the crowd,” the report said, “well before any violence occurred.”

_____