Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown has cleared cops of wrongdoing in 95% of police-involved death cases his office is responsible for investigating

In the 39 cases in which the Maryland Attorney General’s Office has completed an investigation of police-involved fatalities, the office’s Independent Investigations Division has brought charges in just two cases — the first of which was dismissed 10 months later. 

In the first cases, two Anne Arundel County officers were indicted when they chased a car at over 100 mph in an area with a 35 mph speed limit without using emergency lights, and were later said to have lied about the chase when the car they were pursuing crashed and the passenger, 22-year-old Damione Gardner, died. But a judge dismissed the case in September 2025, saying the IID had not sufficiently met the burden of proof. Last April, the office indicted Anne Arundel County Officer Alexander Rodriguez for engaging in an unauthorized chase, which killed a Navy linguist, and then leaving the scene of a crash. The office has declined indictments in the 37 other investigations they have completed since being charged with investigating police-involved fatalities in October 2023. 

The head of the IID, Allison Green, and the Deputy Chief Renee Martel Joy resigned from the agency in October following the September ruling. Jonathan Smith, the head of the Civil Rights Division, is acting director of IID.

Since then, the IID seems to be playing very cautiously. Most recently, more than six months after Dontae Melton Jr.’s death in police custody, the office released a report laying out the reasons it would not bring charges against any of the 10 officers involved in his June 24, 2025 death. 

Restraint, hypothermia, and the presence of drugs were listed as the means of death by the coroner, who deemed it a homicide — which, the AG’s report is careful to note, is not a criminal ruling but a medical term that means the death was caused by human action or inaction. 

Despite the homicide ruling, the IID found that “none of the subject officers committed a crime under Maryland law,” making the determination, according to the report itself, without speaking to any of the involved officers or receiving statements from them. 

All 39 cases the investigators ruled on were determined as homicides by the medical examiner, but cases like Melton’s are unique because in the others the IID ruled that the action police officers took was justified, whereas those categorized as “in-custody death” can, as in Melton’s case, seem to come into conflict with the medical examiner’s office, claiming that human agency was not involved in the death at all . 

For instance, in the case of Bilal “BJ” Abdullah, an arabber who police shot and killed on June 17, one week before Melton’s death, there was no question that the police officers killed Abdullah, and the IID’s job was to determine whether the actions that took his life were justified. 

The case of Melton is different because the IID ruling appears to contradict the medical examiner’s report in deeming that human action or inaction was not responsible for Melton’s death, at least not in a criminally chargeable way. Much of the blame, not just in this report but in public statements from politicians such as the mayor, have placed the blame on an outage of the city’s aging Computer Assisted Dispatch, or CAD, system.

The two relevant crimes the IID investigated in Melton’s case were the use of excessive force and manslaughter based on gross negligence of the officers. In both cases, the office found that the officers were not legally culpable.

“If the police are not responsible for my son’s death, please tell me who is,” Eleshiea Goode, Melton’s mother, said after the report was released. “Who restrained him? Because a CAD system is not a person. Who killed my son? That’s what I want to know.”

Though officers did drop Melton on his head at one point, prompting an officer to remark “he’s unconscious now,” the six hours of body camera footage do not seem to show officers obviously using excessive force on Melton, though they did restrain him and lay him down on the road in the extreme heat. But, by any normal standard of judgment if not legally, the video footage shows very little other than negligence as 10 officers stand around waiting for a medic as a man dies. 

The report highlights the times when officers took what appears to be minimal action — calling dispatch, putting water on him, or, once, laying him on his side — while ignoring the times when the officers failed to take appropriate action that may have been life saving. 

“With regards to medical treatment for Mr. Melton, the evidence does not show that the subject officers acted recklessly or negligently,” the report reads. “Rather, the evidence shows the subject officers took measures available to them, in accordance with BPD policies, to assist Mr. Melton while waiting for medical services that never arrived,” the report reads.

The Attorney General’s office declined to answer detailed questions about the report, referring Baltimore Beat back to the report itself. 

“The AG’s office has the time to get it right, and they’re not getting it right by echoing what’s [been] going on in the State’s Attorney’s Office, and that’s very disheartening,” says Tawanda Jones, an activist whose brother Tyrone West was killed by police in 2013. Last year, a historic audit of the medical examiner’s office determined that her brother’s death had actually been a homicide, though both the Attorney General and the State’s Attorney have tried to push responsibility for reopening the investigation to the other. 

“It’s sad and disgusting to me,” Jones says. “In particular, in Dontae Melton’s case, he had no weapon, you know. He called for help. He was going through a mental health crisis, and he did what his mom instructed him to do like when he felt unsafe or needed to be taken to the hospital or that type of thing. She always advised him to call for help. And he called for help, and not knowing that that was going to have him murdered.” 

The IID does not comment on civil liability, but in criminal matters, it does seem to suggest the police did everything right, while skipping over many of the most pertinent details that would seem to indicate negligence, so it is difficult to square the report with the body camera footage. 

“The entire world saw the video where my son was restrained on a hot day,” Goode told the Beat. “And yet they tell me police did everything right?”

According to the body camera footage, around 9:40 p.m. on the night of June 24, Melton, suffering a mental health crisis, approached Officer Gerard Pettiford seeking help. “Get off of my car,” Pettiford said, as recorded by his body-worn camera. 

“Please, bro, please. It’s an emergency,” Melton begged the officer. 

When Pettiford asked, “You need an ambulance?” Melton clearly answered “yes,” he needed an ambulance, stating his first, middle, and last name, none of which Pettiford noted. Though Pettiford had already called for backup — ultimately bringing at least nine other officers to the scene — it wasn’t until 9:48 that someone could be heard on the radio saying “I need a medic.” 

At 10:12 p.m., 30 minutes after his initial encounter with Melton, Officer Gerard Pettiford made a second call for a medic. But the city’s CAD system was down, unknown to officers. The failing CAD system has shouldered much of the blame for Melton’s death. 

“If it was hot enough to break the computer system, what about my son, laying on the street?” Goode asked. 

As The Baltimore Sun first reported, the mayor’s office has since noted that police and fire departments “have established manual protocols to ensure continuity of emergency response in the event of a CAD system disruption,” and that communications can happen by phone.

Sgt. Joshua Jackson, also known as “Saint the Rapping Cop,” was in charge of the scene and kept other officers from taking action to save Melton’s life. Though the report says they followed BPD policies and procedures, Jackson did not follow the departmental policy stating that an officer with CIT training should be called to take charge of the scene when responding to a call where someone is experiencing a crisis.

When an officer suggested that he could go to one of the three fire stations within two miles to bring someone back, Jackson balked. “Yeah but I mean, would y’all feel a certain way if a fireman came down to the police station and said ‘Where y’all at?’” he said.

“They do it all the time,” someone said. 

“We can’t do that,” Jackson said, dismissively, although the action could have potentially saved Melton’s life. A few minutes later, on the phone with a lieutenant, Jackson stated that Melton  “took some K2. When I got here he was going completely nuts. I think he’s coming down now and is completely out of it.” Though Melton struggled with addiction, there was no evidence Melton used any drugs that night, and certainly not K2, and this false belief that Melton was “coming down” from it may also have influenced the treatment he received. 

Around 10:18 p.m., when officers were trying to put Melton in a car, Jackson, whose rapping has often been used as propaganda for the force, was concerned not about its effectiveness but about how it would look. “I think we should just wait on the medic guys. Let’s just wait. That does not look good. Looks like you guys, like a person is dead in the car, man.” 

He brought home the point: “This don’t look good. It’s all about optics, baby.”

None of these examples of negligence were cited or addressed by the Attorney General’s declination report. They may not have amounted to criminal negligence, but the fact that they are not addressed and discussed in a legal manner does a disservice to the public and makes the report seem incomplete or cherry-picking. 

To compare this investigation with that of local state’s attorneys, we could look back to the case of the officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray in 2015. In that case, Alicia White, a sergeant who looked in the back of the van in which Gray was being transported, was charged with manslaughter and misconduct in office because she “while acting under color of her office … corruptly failed to do an act required by the duties of her office.” 

In that case, White saw Gray only for a moment, and the charges against her were ultimately dropped. But, the focus on “optics” over the safety of Melton could in fact be a stronger case than the one former State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby brought against White. 

“These are all very fact-specific cases, and they’re hard because they all come down to, you know, what did the officer reasonably believe,” says David Jaros, a University of Baltimore Law School professor and an expert in the Freddie Gray case. “It was particularly hard in the case involving Freddie Gray, when it came to Alicia White, what was the evidence that she could actually see, given that she only saw a slice of the day, and it’s not clear exactly what she saw when she looked in the van.”

The Melton case appears different, where Jackson’s “statements are relevant to the degree they suggest he really was aware of the risk and was simply balancing those risks against his concerns about not looking good in the public eye,” Jaros says, giving an insight into what was going on in his mind, and whether “he seems more concerned about the PR issue for the department may be relevant in deciding whether or not he ignored a risk that he was fully aware of.”

As far as the CAD system being down, Jaros suggests that such an excuse wears out after a while. 

“To the extent that it was down, it justifies their inaction for a while, but at the point at which it’s clear it’s not working, and someone’s offering to do something faster, they can’t, then say, well, we didn’t know he was in real danger, since they tried to get a medical attention,” Jaros says. 

“So I think it works both ways. One is to say, look, we took reasonable precautions, but at the point where it became clear that it was no longer working, I think it’s harder for them to argue that ‘We didn’t know he was in serious physical distress,’ right? And to the degree the officer is actually turning down aid, knowing he’s aware [Melton is] in physical distress, because he’s concerned about the PR impact on the department, that’s troubling.” 

It was 50 minutes after Melton initially sought help from Pettiford when officers transported him to the hospital, where he was identified only as a John Doe, because Pettiford never noted his name, and died alone. 

The report is clear to say that the IID brings charges where they think they can bring a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt and that they cannot comment on civil matters. The family’s attorneys have said they plan to bring a suit against the city. 

The autopsy report found cocaine and fentanyl in his system, though after speaking to people he used drugs with, Melton’s family believes he had not gotten high in perhaps 48 hours as a result of his mental health crisis. “When he had an episode, he would forget to get high,” Goode says. 

The decision not to charge the officers involved in Melton’s death comes almost a month after the office also declined to prosecute the officers who shot Abdullah, the arabber, only days before Melton’s death. During that same eight-day period, Baltimore Police officers also killed 70-year-old Pytorcarcha Brooks, who was experiencing a behavioral health crisis and whose family members had called police for help. Officers initially wanted to leave the scene when she refused treatment, but later decided to kick down her doors and enter. Brooks was holding a knife. An officer used a taser on her. She still didn’t drop the knife. When the officer tripped and fell and she moved the knife in his direction, another officer shot and killed her. IID has not yet announced the outcome of that investigation. Nine other investigations throughout the state are also still pending, including the January 20, 2026 incident where police shot and killed a man on a bicycle off of Eastern Avenue. 

In the case of Abdullah, who was shot only days before Melton’s death, the IID report relies on police claims of a confidential tip that claimed Abdullah was seen with a gun. Evidence of that tip, other than a photograph that reveals no gun, was not included in the report and it remains unverified. 

“Melton and Abdullah didn’t need punishment, they needed help,” Aaron Maybin, chair of the Civilian Review Board, told the Beat. “But in both interactions, the police officers chose to see them as not just threats, but something to be removed. This highlights the reason why so many people in our community don’t trust or believe in the police, or the lie that we’re meant to be protected or served by them.”