A new report from BBC details how corruption within the Baltimore Police Gun Trace Task Force operated in the years since its inception. The force was created in 2015, in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray, with the task of getting guns off the street. Since a criminal investigation opened on the group in 2017, it has slowly been revealed that the force abused its power to steal drugs, guns, and cash.
The elite team comprised of eight officers and carried out 110 arrests and 132 gun confiscations in a 10-month period, according to BBC. This earned the group city-wide praise until the FBI arrested seven of the officers and indicted them for racketeering, extortion, and fraud. “They were involved in a pernicious conspiracy scheme that included abuse of power,” the US Attorney for Maryland told reporters on March 1, 2017.
BBC accompanied the story with footage of one of the force’s several break-ins, where they robbed $100,000 and two kilos of cocaine from a suspected drug dealer. “Their business model was that the people that they were robbing had no recourse—who were they going to go to? That’s what [the officers] were counting on,” acting U.S. Attorney Stephen Schenning said back in February after two of the officers were found guilty of robbery and racketeering.
Read the full investigation here.
