The Justice Department's report Wednesday on the Baltimore Police Department is troubling because "one of the more disturbing underlying themes of the report is that there were many indicators of problems in Baltimore," former FBI assistant director Ron Hosko told Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
"Those things didn't grab their attention sufficiently — and what we ended up with is a tragedy, pain and suffering in the streets of Baltimore a year ago in the wake of Freddie Gray's death," Hosko, the former No. 2 in the agency's criminal investigative division, told "The Hard Line" host Ed Berliner.
"This report certainly reads like an indictment of the police department, and that's unfortunate."
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The report blamed aggressive policies championed by former Mayor Martin O'Malley that led to more arrests for "quality of life" crimes that have been blamed for some of the stress between the community and the police department.
"If you look at the details of this report, the report talks about widespread under-staffing of the Baltimore Police Department, the under-utilization, the under-application of resources," Hosko said.
"It's not just a culture of the police department," he told Berliner. "It's much more widespread than that."
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