Johns Hopkins Police finalize department policies, make leadership hires
The Johns Hopkins Police Department finalized policies Wednesday to govern how the university police force will operate on its three campuses starting next fall.
Branville Bard Jr., the department’s police chief and Hopkins’ vice president of public safety, said the policies incorporate more than 800 responses from community members after he asked for public feedback on draft policies in September. He also hired a deputy chief and captain as the first two members of his leadership team.
Monique “Mo” Brown, a retired Baltimore Police deputy commissioner of patrol and community policing, will work as the deputy chief. Robert “Teddy” Reed, who previously commanded the Towson University police force, will serve as captain. Bard said he plans to hire two more people for his leadership team.
“I really think that both of those individuals, Deputy Chief Monique Brown and Capt. Robert Reed, they really are prime examples of the type of police officer that the Hopkins community needs and that I was looking for,” Bard said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun.
Officers who live in Baltimore receive a 20% bonus to meet a legal requirement for 25% of the police force to reside in the city. Brown, the deputy chief, and Reed, the captain, grew up in and live in Baltimore. A Hopkins spokesperson declined to say their salaries.
The 88 policies include use-of-force procedures, arrests and interactions with the community. Bard said they were written with themes of racial justice, procedural justice, de-escalation and harm reduction. The arrest policy, for example, advises officers of alternatives to arrests, such as warnings and referrals for criminal and civil violations. Arrests are made only when it is “least intrusive and most appropriate,” the policy says. Supervisors must approve actions beyond a warning, except for felony offenses.
Among the policies is a directive on interacting with LGBTQ+ community members and preventing discriminatory policing. Officers should use specific language and be respectful of names and pronouns, including in media releases, according to the policy.
Hopkins shared some of the community feedback it received, such as one comment, “While I’ve never been in favor of the private police, I understand it’s a reality now, and appreciate that efforts are being made to govern police interactions with LGBTQ+ people.” The writer then suggested edits such as changing terminology from “transgendered persons” to the updated “transgender persons,” according to the report.
Bard said he believes the policies embody what advocates would want to see from a modern police department.
“It’s a huge accomplishment, and we’re excited to be at this stage in the process because of the amount of collaboration and the amount of community input that we received,” Bard said. “I think it’s unique that we’re a police department that the community had the opportunity to provide input in every single one of its policies. I think that sets us apart from any police department to see that.”
Several students on the university’s relatively empty Homewood campus on Wednesday said they hadn’t been following the police force closely but had heard about it and received an email earlier that day about recent developments.
Ben Wen, a rising sophomore, said he was “pretty unopinionated” about the developing police force. The engineering major said he could “see both sides” of the ongoing debates about it — on one hand, safety, but on the other, there were valid concerns about “who they target.”
The Hopkins police force has been in the works since the Maryland General Assembly passed a law in 2019 greenlighting its creation. Fierce community and campus protests have followed the gradual steps of its development. Many protesters are concerned about a private university police force having authority on public sidewalks and streets adjacent to their jurisdiction on campus property.
Some faculty, students and Baltimore City Council members have said they don’t want Hopkins to have its own police and are worried about accountability and oversight of the department. The Maryland Appellate Court dismissed a lawsuit this spring from three Baltimore residents challenging the department’s existence. The plaintiffs, who live near Hopkins’ campuses, filed a motion for reconsideration in June.
A 15-member Hopkins police accountability board staffed by students, staff and community residents is tasked with reviewing policies and crime metrics. Hopkins selected seven people this winter to serve on the board.
A public safety accountability unit that oversees police complaints and misconduct reports to the Johns Hopkins Office of Internal Audits, outside the police department’s chain of command. Bard said an executive director has been selected to lead the unit, which will be staffed by Hopkins employees. He declined to identify the executive director, who will be publicly announced soon.
University police are also overseen by the city’s police accountability board.
It’s been a year since the agency’s draft policies were released for public input. Bard had aimed for officers to start training last winter to patrol the Homewood academic campus, the medical campus in East Baltimore and the Peabody Institute conservatory in Mount Vernon.
Eight officers have received job offers so far, but training focused on Hopkins policies hasn’t started. Two officers are new recruits, and the others are lateral officers moving from other police departments, though Bard declined to identify which ones. He said short biographies of the officers will be posted on the department’s website.
Bard said officers and police cars will gradually appear on campus sometime this fall. Hopkins can staff the agency with up to 100 employees, both sworn and civilian. Bard expects the force to reach full capacity over the next two to three years.
“We’ll be heavily reliant on services of BPD, and as we grow, the department we’ll take over more responsibilities,” Bard said.
Baltimore Sun reporter Dan Belson contributed to this article.
