Community association leader's citation will be dropped
Prosecutors plan to drop charges against a South Baltimore community leader who was arrested and later released and given a citation for impeding a police investigation.
Christopher Taylor, 33, president of the Union Square community association, was arrested Dec. 3 after police said he interfered with an investigation into an alleged sex crime involving a teenage girl, who ran down the street and asked Taylor to call 911.
Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, said prosecutors plan to drop the case Thursday morning because police incorrectly wrote a citation for “disturbing the peace” instead of “hindering a police investigation.”
“He was not disturbing the peace, according to the facts outlined,” Burns said. “This was a hindering case, and they cited the wrong criminal code as a reference point.”
Critics said the case was a clear incident of over-aggressive policing and misplaced priorities, though police were privately grumbling that prosecutors had again failed to back up the Police Department, which has not publicly wavered in its decision to cite Taylor.
Taylor said he was asking questions because he did not believe the officer was taking the case seriously, and said he was arrested when he refused the officer’s demand that he go into his home. According to police, Taylor was a nuisance, telling the officer, “I’m the president of the community association and have a right to know,” created an environment that upset the young abuse victim, and while being frisked called the officer a slur used against homosexuals.
Taylor was taken to Central Booking, though he was later released and taken to the Southern District, where he was given a citation. Some believe Taylor, who had days before the arrest helped raise money for the agency’s cash-stripped horeseback unit, got special treatment by being pulled from Central Booking and given a citation.
And that may also be why the citation is being dropped. Burns said prosecutors never had a chance to review the charge before Taylor was pulled, and a citation cannot be rewritten, she said.
Taylor, who e-mailed an account of his arrest to The Sun the day after he was released and has appeared on television, radio and an Internet news site, the Investigative Voice, speaking out about the incident, chafed at any suggestion that he got a good deal.
“I was asking a simple question: What’s going to be done?” Taylor said. “I received [only] a citation not because of who I am but because they knew they had done wrong.”
Since the incident, Taylor has sought to mobilize alleged victims of police abuse and said his stance towards the police department has changed dramatically. “In my own personal perspective, I think we need a complete change of leadership,” Taylor said. "There's got to be a different approach."
EDIT: Included link to original Investigative Voice story.
Categories: Breaking news, Courts and the justice system, Neighborhoods, South Baltimore
