Baltimore Police Officer Robert A. Parks, shown in a viral video trying to run down a man in Park Heights, has been charged with second degree attempted murder, second degree assault, reckless driving, and misconduct in office.
The TikTok video shows Parks accelerating his patrol car directly toward the man, striking him with the vehicle at least once.
Before being charged, Parks had been suspended from his job with pay since October 29. As of November 10, he was no longer being paid.
“The charges brought forward in this indictment reflect the seriousness and dangerous nature of the actions we all witnessed in the viral video of Officer Parks driving his vehicle directly at the man while on duty,” Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said while announcing the charges on November 12. Bates said Parks had turned himself in to police custody that morning.
The man referenced, who Baltimore Beat is referring to by his last name “Smith” to protect his identity, told the Beat he was glad to see the officer facing consequences, but expressed disappointment in how long it took for him to be charged.
“If I was a regular citizen on the street doing that to another citizen, I’d be locked up for attempted murder immediately,” he said “I wouldn’t be facing no suspension … I’d be locked up for attempted murder fighting for my freedom.”
Smith says that the officer abused his position and spoke to him in a threatening tone.
At the press conference, Bates outlined the case against Parks, describing how Parks pulled up outside Wylie Liquors Bar. Exiting his patrol car, the officer told several men, “It’s getting a little hot, guys. I just need you guys to take a lap.” As most dispersed, Smith walked off first. Parks then got back in his cruiser, drove a short distance west, and pulled up beside him.
According to Bates, Parks called Smith by name and motioned for him to come over, saying, “Don’t make it worse. I’m going to be straight up with you.” When Smith refused, Parks allegedly shouted, “All right, I’m gonna call the dogs and come get you.” Moments later, prosecutors say, he radioed, “I have one running, adult male…in the alley” — before Smith actually began running, as the viral video shows.
Since the incident, Smith has begun physical therapy to address lingering pain in his back and left knee, and has undergone X-rays for his neck and spine.
Since the incident, Smith has begun physical therapy to address lingering pain in his back and left knee, and has undergone X-rays for his neck and spine. But the physical injuries, he says, pale in comparison to the unease he now feels in his own neighborhood, in part because of the notoriety he now has.
“I’m scared to travel in a car with my family,” he said. “I’m scared the police are going to hold grudges. You know how police stick together. I don’t feel safe traveling around with my family, so I mostly stay in the house.”
Smith said he now avoids driving within city limits altogether, preferring to schedule his medical and legal appointments far outside Baltimore to limit the risk of encountering any officers. “I told my lawyer, make sure all of my appointments are way out, not in the city,” he said. The sense of fear, he admits, is now a deciding factor for his daily activities. Smith does not like wearing the coat he had on in the video because it still holds the heaviness of that day and he is afraid of people recognizing him in it.
Slick Brown, the 19-year-old Park Heights resident who filmed the viral video, says he began filming after the officer circled back to confront the men a second time.
“He pulled up on us the first time and told us to move,” Brown recalled. “Then he pulled back up on us, and that’s what made me really pull my camera out. I’m like, ‘Why he pulling back up on us for nothing?’”
When the officer demanded Smith “come here” without giving a reason, Smith walked away into an alley. That is when things turned violent.
“All you heard was the screeching,” Brown said. “He straight hopped in that [car], speeding and all that, trying to hit my man. He just kept chasing him.” Brown says police presence in Park Heights has dropped dramatically since the video went viral.
“They don’t even come around here no more,” Brown told Baltimore Beat. “They rode around a lot before, but they’ve been chilling now because they know they’ve been doing shit wrong. That’s not how they’re supposed to do their job. They were caught in the act for real, but they won’t get fired for it.”
For activists like DeVonn Caldwell of the Baltimore Alliance for Peace, the viral video was only more evidence of the way Baltimore police officers have used their cars as weapons against residents.
“Watching the video was familiar,” he said. “Like, ‘Oh, here’s another incident of a cop doing something, but it’s something I have seen before — chasing somebody with a car.’ Whether it happens on camera or not, it’s happening. And the people who know that are the ones in these intentionally hyper-surveilled areas.”
What makes this case different, Caldwell said, is that it was caught on camera, making it undeniable, public, and unspinnable.
“We’re more than hashtags and body bags. Our lives matter,” said police accountability activist Tawanda Jones, whose brother Tyrone West was killed in police custody in 2013.
Even still, Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley told attendees at the quarterly consent decree meeting that his first thought when seeing the video was that it was artificial intelligence.
“I thought, because you can do so many things with AI. We had to make sure the video was real,” Worley said on October 30.
For a city already reeling from three police-involved killings in an eight-day span this summer, Worley’s initial disbelief of the video’s veracity felt like a slap in the face. Instead of confronting a pattern of violence, the commissioner’s first instinct was to deny the possibility that his department could produce it.
“It was not just disbelief, it was denial,” Brown said. A refusal to believe that an officer in his department could do something so violent, so reckless, and so recognizable to Baltimoreans who have lived through decades of police brutality.
And for all the public outrage from city officials, there has yet to be a single apology directed to the two men directly affected, they said.
“This is exactly what we’ve been saying for years,” said Norman McCroey, a life-long Park Heights resident. “Nine times out of ten, the officer will not be fired. In order to gain traction, stuff has to be recorded.”
At a recent Police Accountability Board meeting, Amber Greene, director of the city’s Office of Equity and Civil Rights, called the video “very disturbing” and said “it should not have happened.” But BPD declined to even send a representative to the meeting after she requested one be there, according to Greene.
“We’re more than hashtags and body bags. Our lives matter,” said police accountability activist Tawanda Jones, whose brother Tyrone West was killed in police custody in 2013.
For Jones, the incident, and the commissioner’s suggestion that it might be AI-generated, revealed just how far the department is still from confronting its reality.
To her, Worley’s disbelief was not about technology. It was about a refusal to accept that his officers could still embody the same violence residents have been documenting and decrying for years.
“You see these crazy episodes all because they know they’re not going to be held accountable,” she said.