Baltimore Police officers wait months, years to face discipline amid backlog of trial board cases
Dan Belson
The Baltimore Sun
December 2, 2025
Facing discipline after a suspect under his watch escaped custody for roughly 30 seconds, a Baltimore Police officer’s case sat in limbo for more than a year before being heard at a trial board last month.
The seven-year veteran of the department did not dispute the charges — violations of the department’s policy for people in custody and its body camera activation rules. At dispute was the department’s recommended punishment of losing four days of leave; his attorney argued it should be only two. After the matter was heard, the board landed in the middle: three days.
The lawman’s case was one of the over 500 disciplinary cases involving Baltimore Police officers that were set for administrative trial boards. Most of the cases, police officials and attorneys involved in the hearings say, are for minor infractions such as failing to activate body cameras on time. The problem, though, is that at the current pace at which cases are heard — an average of just over two trial boards a month this year — it will be extremely difficult to catch up.
Maryland law requires all police agencies to afford officers facing discipline to have their matters heard by a trial board consisting of a retired or current judge, a civilian and a police officer of equal rank. Before Maryland lawmakers’ 2021 police reform package took effect, all three members of the boards were law enforcement officers. Any officer accused of misconduct who disagrees with the allegations or punishment can request the case be heard by a trial board, though in most cases disciplinary cases don’t make it to that stage.
Still, while the city’s police department has a backlog of 524 cases awaiting a trial board, spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said Nov. 26. A Baltimore County Police spokesperson said Nov. 24 that the department has only seven pending trial board hearings. Maryland State Police, meanwhile, has only 19 as of Nov. 26, a spokesperson said.
Asked about the cause of the backlog, Eldridge pointed to the 2021 reform laws that changed the trial board system and caused some growing pains. She said that it had taken “significant time” for the department to establish a process for training trial board members on police procedures, which is required by the Maryland Police Accountability Act, though the updated procedure is now formalized. She also noted that officers are not allowed to negotiate settlements on penalties recommended by the city’s Administrative Charging Committee, a body established by the 2021 laws; disputes over those findings now go to trial boards.
The backlog was raised by U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar at a recent hearing covering Baltimore Police’s consent decree with the Department of Justice, which requires the department to “use its best efforts” to ensure the hearings are conducted within 120 days of informing the involved officers of their disciplinary recommendations.
“It’s true here: Justice delayed is justice denied,” Bredar said at the hearing. He said “greater resources must be brought to bear” to address the trial board issue, and urged the city, the department, the union representing city police officers and legislators to “study and consider implementing procedures that will speed the settlement of at least some of the hundreds of these backed-up cases.”
Bredar suggested that “perhaps the city and the police department will see changes in state laws to the extent that they contend that those new provisions are impairing efficiency,” but only if they “comport with due process and fundamental fairness.”
At that hearing, Deputy City Solicitor Stephen Salsbury said his office had added an attorney “to help with the throughput on those cases” and was asking firms representing officers to do the same. He also noted that the department had brought on a new judge to hear disciplinary cases. He said that “somehow we’re going to have to get to a point where we double, triple” or quadruple the amount of cases heard each month.
“Delay hurts everyone,” Salsbury said. He added that delays in hearing cases becomes “especially problematic” when they involve a minor matter that isn’t close to a “career ender.”
“It just needs to be resolved, and instead, they sit there with this hanging over their head in this indefinite period,” he said. “It’s bad for the city; we’ve got this substantial number of officers that are impaired in their capacity to be… redeployed or promoted or whatever, by virtue of the fact that this is hanging like that.”
The overwhelming backlog puts the department in a difficult place as it seeks to increase accountability among officers, said José Anderson, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Beyond just the officers who have cases pending, having an overwhelming amount of disciplinary cases lowers morale across the rank and file.
But especially in a department that has had a long history of perceived problems with police accountability, not moving toward accountability — even for minor infractions — would lead to more problems, he said.