News & Commentary

One of the biggest threats to our democracy is rooted in our mass incarceration crisis. Our nation has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and Maryland disgracefully leads the nation with the highest percentage of racial disparities in our prisons. While Black Marylanders only make up 31% of the overall state population, they represent 52% of people in jail and 69% of people in prison.1 There are serious and continuing problems of over-policing in Black neighborhoods and biased sentencing laws. These racist policies have a devasting effect on the political power of Black Americans. 

Currently, three Maryland counties – Frederick, Cecil and Harford County – are actively using local police agencies to target and cage immigrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of the 287(g) program. The 287(g) program deputizes local police as federal ICE agents who receive minimal training and are incentivized to use racial profiling tactics against mostly Black and Brown immigrants. The belief by some that programs like this keep communities safe stem from several myths. Let’s set the record straight.

The fifth of six children, John Alvin Henderson was born in Indianapolis, raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, and Silver Spring, Maryland, and traveled far before finding home with his wife and children in Baltimore. Of the city, John says, “there is a sense of community with the place that called to me.” Living his earliest years in Tuskegee, a hyper-segregated city, John has always been aware of the importance of civil rights and community. In fact, what first drew John to the ACLU of Maryland was our commitment to intentionally further racial justice. 

On Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017, at around 4:36 PM, Baltimore Police Department homicide Detective Sean Suiter suffered a fatal gunshot wound to his head, from his own service weapon, in a vacant lot in the Harlem Park neighborhood in Baltimore. 

On Tuesday Nov. 12, crowds gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for the “Here is Home” rally, holding signs that read “Defend DACA” and “Let Dreamers Dream.” In the cold pouring rain, protestors cried, “Ni la llueva, ni el ventó, detiene el movimiento,” which translates to neither the rain nor the wind stops the movement.

Latinidad is complicated for me. It’s the transgenerational trauma passing through our bloodlines. It’s the constant reminders of the horrors our ancestors suffered and the atrocities some of our other ancestors likely committed. Latinidad is being hurt, learning from our abusers, and subjecting our very own to that same persecution. Latinidad is a violent term in itself: A monolith that erases Black and Indigenous people, it works to silence the experiences of non-white/mestizo people both in the United States and abroad. 

In the era of MeToo, brave people continue to speak out against sexual violence. Sonya Zollicoffer has joined voices across the nation by exposing the truth about the sexual harassment she endured while she was a police trainee in Prince George’s Police Department in 2001. Zollicoffer has also filed a legal challenge, along with members of the United Black Police Officers Association and the Hispanic National Law Enforcement Association, to racial discrimination and retaliation against officers and community members of color in the PGPD.

In Pocomoke City, a small town on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore with a centuries-long history of racial oppression, three Black officers have fought against racial abuse from white coworkers, supervisors, and officials. In 2016, Police Chief Kelvin Sewell, Lieutenant Lynell Green, and Detective Franklin Savage sued officials in Worcester County and Pocomoke City, challenging a conspiracy of race discrimination and retaliation. This week, Chief Sewell and Lt. Green reached financial settlements for the racism they endured while on the force, as well as a Consent Decree to bring reform to the Pocomoke City Police Department. But the fight for justice still continues for Detective Savage.