BALTIMORE — Last April, four Baltimore County Police detectives from the department’s Criminal Apprehension Support Team fired at a motorist in Dundalk, seriously injuring the 19-year-old driver.
In January, one of those same four detectives shot and critically injured a 37-year-old man in White Marsh during an attempted arrest, after police said the driver tried to escape and hit an unmarked department vehicle.
Neither shooting was recorded by officers’ body-worn cameras, because members of the Criminal Apprehension Support Team have yet to receive them from the department.
In past use-of-force cases involving Baltimore County Police, body camera footage has provided the public with greater insight into what happened, including when a 76-year-old woman was thrown to the ground during a 2020 arrest. She was later awarded a settlement from the county.
A 2021 study from the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing found departments that implemented cameras saw a drop in police complaints and use-of-force cases, although other research on the use of body cameras has demonstrated uncertainty about whether the technology significantly influences officers’ behavior. Experts caution that cameras are just one tool among many for improving relationships between police and communities.
Baltimore County started its body camera program in 2016, and supplied cameras to all uniformed, “public-facing” personnel in 2017. In August, the agency said that 350 sworn members of the department, or about 20% of the agency’s nearly 1,400 officers, corporals, sergeants and lieutenants, lacked cameras.
Six months later, the same number, about 350 people, still don’t have cameras. Director of Public Affairs Joy Stewart said since then, the department has purchased more equipment and is in the process of deploying cameras.
Stewart said that the members of the Criminal Apprehension Support Team, which is tasked with arresting violent offenders wanted in the county and surrounding areas, would be the next unit to be outfitted with body-worn cameras.
Stewart declined to provide a timeline for completing the distribution of cameras or explain why the department has chosen to outfit the Criminal Apprehension Support Team next.
Several other units under the agency’s Criminal Investigations Bureau will also be prioritized, Stewart said. The department did not specify which units would receive cameras or when members would begin wearing them.
“Before additional units of the Baltimore County Police Department can be equipped with a body-worn camera, policies need to be updated, members must undergo proper training, and the installation of infrastructure needs to occur,” she wrote in an email to The Baltimore Sun.
Since August, the agency has installed docking stations for personnel to upload footage recorded on their body cameras, Stewart said. Equipment installation at police headquarters has included rewiring floors and attaching docking stations to walls.
The budget for the county’s body-worn camera program for fiscal year 2023 is about $2.1 million.
The department does not use dashboard cameras in its vehicles.
The Jan. 31 shooting by a member of the Criminal Apprehension Support Team left the driver injured after detectives tried to arrest him outside a Royal Farms along Pulaski Highway. Police have not identified the man, but said Thursday that he remained under medical care. His stepmother said earlier in the week that he was on life support.
The Independent Investigations Division of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating the shooting, identified the officer as Detective J. Trenary, a 16-year veteran of the county police department. A county salary database lists an officer Jonathan Trenary with 16 years of service.
About 6 a.m., detectives from the Criminal Apprehension Support Team tried to use a vehicle to block an SUV with two people inside so they could arrest the driver on outstanding warrants, the attorney general’s office said in a news release.
The attorney general’s office said that after officers got out and approached the SUV, which county police identified as a Kia, the man began driving away and struck the unmarked police vehicle.
After Trenary fired his gun and hit the driver in the upper body, the Kia continued moving and crashed into a truck, police said. A person inside the truck wasn’t hurt.
The department said Trenary was one of the detectives who fired his weapon during a shooting in Dundalk last year that seriously wounded 19-year-old Shane Radomski.
A grand jury found May 2 that Trenary and three other detectives from the Criminal Apprehension Support Team were justified in firing their weapons in the April 14 shooting.
Trenary returned to work shortly after the grand jury’s decision and returned to full duty on May 4, Stewart said. The department’s administrative investigation into the April shooting remains open.
Former Police Chief Melissa Hyatt set a goal of equipping all the department’s sworn members with cameras “well before” 2025, the year that county-level officers who regularly interact with the public in most counties must wear cameras, under a 2021 state law.
Anne Arundel, Harford and Howard counties must meet an earlier deadline of July 1, 2023.
Anne Arundel has already outfitted all 700 of its sworn officers.
As of early February, Howard County had equipped 395 out of 473 sworn officers with cameras, and the agency plans to train and equip the remaining officers in the next few months, a spokesperson said.
Harford County and Baltimore City have reached their goals of outfitting all sworn personnel at the rank of lieutenant and below.
Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees said his office plans to launch a body camera program in summer 2023.
———
(Baltimore Sun reporter Darcy Costello contributed to this report.)
———
