(BALTIMORE – April 16, 2026) – The issue of police violence against Black people has been a central site for the struggle against the societal dehumanization of Black people. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement published a report in 2012 that revealed that a Black person was killed once every 40 hours by police or someone acting in the capacity of law enforcement. A 2020 study from Harvard’s School of Public Health found that Black people are 3 times more likely to be killed by police. In Maryland, according to a 2015 report from the ACLU of Maryland, there were 109 people who were killed by police between 2010 and 2014, and 75% of them were Black (Black people only make up 31% of Maryland’s population). There is no credible refutation of the claim that Black people historically, and contemporarily, have been victims of ongoing violence from the institution of law enforcement. This is not a statement of liking or disliking individual police officers; it is an objective, social-scientific assessment of the relationship between the institution of law enforcement and the Black community.
The analysis that emerges from mainstream social justice organizations is that this is the result of bias or racial discrimination, but this analysis is insufficient. The narrative of white police officers killing unarmed Black people is an easier narrative for a white liberal mainstream to be galvanized by, but this is an oversimplified frame. The dynamic that drives the violence that is brought to bear against Black people from law enforcement (and the entire criminal justice system) is the societal propaganda that has seared the notion of Black masculinity as inherently animalistic and criminal into the collective American consciousness. During the 1831 Nat Turner rebellion against white enslavers, the press characterized Turner and his comrades as savages for killing white people, which is absurd given the fact that the actual savages were the society of white people that normalized reducing Black people to chattel. The widely held notion that Black people are inherently animalistic and criminal provided the justification for chattel slavery and was essential to characterizing armed rebellion against being enslaved as an act of savagery. The first motion picture film produced in America, Birth of a Nation by DW Griffith, had a storyline that featured a Black man as a villain who was looking to rape white women. This aligns with the phenomenon of lynching, where Black men were often hanged as a result of accusations (which were most of the time false) of sexually assaulting white women. In a book called Brown in Baltimore by Howell Baum, he documents how Brown v. Board of Education was implemented in Baltimore. He reveals that on the eve of the implementation of desegregation in Baltimore, the school district received a flurry of letters from white parents expressing strong opposition to integrating public schools. Baum documents the fact that one of the most common explanations given by white parents in opposition to integration was the fear of Black boys being in close proximity to white girls. The stigma of Black men as inherently criminal and animalistic has effectively produced deeply held societal, irrational, exaggerated fear of our capacity to inflict violence. In fact, a 2014 study called “Essence of Innocence” documents that people who have strong mental associations between Black people and apes are more likely to use force against Black people than those for whom that association is weaker. In other words, Black people are disproportionately killed by law enforcement because the fear that they harbor, specifically of Black men/masculinity, causes a fundamental lack of regard for our humanity. It is easier to justify excessive force when the person is considered uniquely capable of animalistic criminal violence.
With this analysis, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle’s (LBS) approach to fight against police violence against Black people was based on the theory that the biggest deterrent to this violence is giving the community power to levy consequences against officers that harm our people. Their livelihood has to be on the line in order to change their behavior. Typical social justice organizations often focus too much on getting a broad (white) mainstream audience to have sympathy regarding the suffering of our community. The policy solutions that emerge from that perspective often center on body cameras, DOJ investigations, and specialized police training. While these interventions are better than nothing, they don’t address the fundamental issue of giving the community power to impact police officers who harm our community. In 2021 after George Floyd was murder by police officer Derek Chauvin, LBS in collaboration with organizations like the ACLU of Maryland and a coalition of organizations in the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Police Accountability (MCJPA) advocated for stronger mechanisms of community control and oversight of law enforcement. Two of the major policy changes that were successful in 2021 were the passage of Anton’s Law, which allows public disclosure of police investigatory records previously prohibited, and the repeal of the Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights (LEOBR), which prohibited community control of police discipline. While the disciplinary framework that replaced the LEOBR did not go far enough toward community control of police discipline, it opened up community participation in law enforcement’s internal disciplinary processes. Additionally, the Fraternity Order of Police in Montgomery County attempted to circumvent Anton’s Law by imposing additional barriers to public access to investigatory records. The ACLU of MD sued the Montgomery County FOP on behalf of MCJPA to reverse the barriers they injected into their collective bargaining contract with the County, and won.
When engaged in political battle, we have to make objective assessments of the impact of our political activity. In the four years between 2018 and 2021, there were 72 Black people who were killed by police. In the four years after the implementation of the major police accountability policies mentioned previously between 2022-2025, there were 52 people killed by police. While one life lost is too many, and police killing numbers are one metric of many to assess the impact of these policies, an objective assessment says that these policies have been modestly effective in Maryland in deterring police brutality against Black people. We need to continue building momentum to push even further toward greater community control over law enforcement. Given the recent ruling in the Maryland court, this presents an opportunity to make more MPIA requests in order to get more needed information about the abuses Black people suffer at the hands of law enforcement. This will create more momentum for stronger policies regarding community control of law enforcement.
With the recent incidents of police violence in the Baltimore area, including Baltimore County police killing Sam Brown, and the recent shooting of a man on Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore, our community should take advantage of the tools that we do have to hold police accountable. Each county in Maryland must have a police accountability board, established under the new disciplinary framework in 2021, which has a say in disciplinary action taken against police officers. People who are interested in getting involved should join and/or participate in their county’s police accountability board to create more pressure against police brutality against Black people. Additionally, making MPIA requests will provide the information needed to pursue policy change at the state and local levels that ultimately move us towards independent community control and oversight of law enforcement. Our own community institutions are better at seeing our humanity than others. Our community is less susceptible to the irrational fear we are conditioned to by this society than those who are agents of the institution of law enforcement. Having the community control the nature of police discipline combats the racialized stigmas that agents of the system (police) have historically used to justify violence directed at Black people by police. It does that by taking the judgment of what is the appropriate treatment our community deserves from police who harbor deep racialized notions of inherent Black criminality, into the hands of those who bear the brunt of the violence from law enforcement. We are more capable of recognizing our own humanity enough to say that when police have used excessive force.
