Baltimore County officials stay quiet on police chief. Exec says he has her ‘full support.’

Several County Council members did not respond to requests for comment. Meanwhile, others called for transparency.

“Chief McCullough is a dedicated leader who has served Baltimore County with honor and integrity for nearly four decades,” Klausmeier said in a statement. “His vision and proven success have made real impacts on keeping our neighborhoods safe, and Chief McCullough has — and will continue to have — my full support for his continued leadership for years to come.”

The county executive did not address why the chief is on the list.

Why is the chief on the list? Those who know aren’t saying.

On the list, which is sorted alphabetically, McCullough’s name appears next to his badge number under the status of “IADISCLOSE,” the most common status for the dozens of officers mentioned. Others are listed under statuses such as “IADONOTCALL” or “IACLEARED.”

Dave Rose, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #4, which represents Baltimore County officers, said of the chief: “I have no idea why he’s on that list, and I’ve been here since 1987.”

Rose outlined a number of problems he has with the list itself, saying that dozens of officers on it are either dead or retired. After reviewing the document, Rose said he could find only about 15 names of officers who still work at the police department.

“Once you get on it, there’s no mechanism under Maryland state law to get off of it,” Rose said. “There are other states around the country that have mechanisms to be able to say, ‘I should be off this list, I want to challenge it.’ … We need to have that mechanism.”

The Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office maintains the list, but has refused to explain why McCullough is on it, despite repeated questions and a public records request for any documentation that would explain the chief’s inclusion.

Deputy State’s Attorney John Cox said the only documentation in his office responsive to the request is a “partial sentence with five words contained within an electronic case management system.”

But that partial sentence, Cox asserted, is “prohibited from disclosure … because the source is a personnel record.”

In 2021, the General Assembly enacted “Anton’s Law,” which altered Maryland’s public records laws to remove protections for police disciplinary records, making them no longer exempt from disclosure as confidential personnel records. Cox acknowledged a section of the statute saying internal affairs investigatory records are not personnel records, but claimed without elaborating that it was inapplicable to the “partial sentence.”

She also questioned the criteria for inclusion on the list, which she said is not public.

“Understanding the criteria for inclusion holds both the police and the prosecutors accountable,” she said. “We cannot effectively use these lists to encourage honesty and integrity if the criteria for placement remain secret.”

Does Baltimore County have a transparency problem?

Nick Stewart, a corporate lawyer who is running for Baltimore County executive, said his understanding is that the county’s category of “IADISCLOSE” is not consistent with other jurisdictions, such as the city. He called it a “very broad category” that could cover “anything from a tax deficiency 25 years ago to a traffic thing like a DUI.”

Stewart, a Democrat who served a brief stint as a prosecutor in Prince George’s County, said he was confused by the reasoning Cox gave for the partial sentence not being a public record, adding that it seems it should fall under Anton’s Law.

He said the lack of transparency from elected officials underscored a broader problem in county government: “We make things really hard to understand and determine.”