Joel Fitzgerald
Forth Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald, Mayor Catherine Pugh’s pick to head the Baltimore Police Department, pledged in a press conference today that, if confirmed by the City Council, he will work to rebuild the community’s trust in the beleaguered agency.“I think we have a very great opportunity to mend some of the broken fences, so to speak, that have happened over the last few years,” he said.
Pointing to training programs in procedural justice and implicit bias that he has implemented in the past, as well as the federally mandated consent decree hashed out with the U.S. Department of Justice following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, Fitzgerald said officers can police the city more effectively by putting into practice methods that have worked in other cities.
“I think that we can overcome a lot of the perceptions and realities of the way we’ve done business in the past by making sure that we bring these things to bear, whether it’s procedural justice training, de-escalation–things that you’ve already engaged in and things that need to be reinforced.”
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