Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether the city’s Police Department has underlying patterns of abuse or discrimination, the New York Times reports.
“We all know that Baltimore continues to have a fractured relationship between the police and the community,” the mayor said as the city continues to deal with the death of Freddie Gray, who was fatally injured while in police custody in what Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has called an illegal arrest.
“We have to have a foundation of trust,” Rawlings-Blake continued, “and I believe that we need the assistance of the Department of Justice and the civil rights investigation to shore up that foundation, which is weak right now in this city.”
The mayor had a private meeting with newly sworn-in U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Tuesday and said that during that meeting, she expressed her intentions to ask for an investigation into whether there was a “pattern or practice” of the type of policing that leads to civil rights violations.
The mayor also announced that the Police Department could be equipped with body cameras by the end of the year.
Read more at the New York Times.