A civilian committee reads the evidence, decides an officer should be charged and recommends a punishment. The officer says no and asks for a trial board. Then the case lands in a hearing room where nobody speaks for the committee.
That gap anchored the annual update the Charles County Police Accountability Board gave the county commissioners on Tuesday, and it set off a back-and-forth that ran roughly 25 minutes.
Board Chair Granville Johnson walked commissioners through his panel’s report, dated Dec. 29, 2025. The recommendation he called the most significant would change the Maryland Public Safety Code so that the Administrative Charging Committee, known as the ACC, can set up the trial board process and have a case brought on its behalf.
Under the state’s police accountability law, the ACC reviews an agency’s internal misconduct investigation and recommends discipline under a state matrix. A department head can raise that recommendation but cannot lower it. If the officer rejects it, the case goes to a trial board made up of a retired or administrative law judge, a civilian and an officer of equal rank, whose decision is final, subject to court appeal.
Johnson said the weak point is who presents the case at that hearing. In his telling, the Sheriff’s Office attorney has at times told the judge and panel that, by the office’s own reading, the case could not go forward, undoing work the ACC put real time into. He said it has happened at least twice, early in the process, and that he could not say how recent the cases were or recall one last year. He wants an independent attorney to take the case for the ACC, which would keep both the Sheriff’s Office and police departments out of it. He also floated the county’s new Office of the Inspector General, created by a bill that took effect July 3, as a possible home for that role.
Commissioners pushed back. One asked whether the ACC had ever recommended something that conflicted with Sheriff’s Office policy. Johnson said no. Another asked what exactly was not transparent. Johnson said the public never hears what passes between a department and its own employee, and warned that a complainant could come to see a “blue wall of silence.” A commissioner replied that the process is effectively an employer’s personnel matter, and disagreed respectfully. Another participant called the arrangement a loophole if an agency can simply decline to put on a case.
Daniel Mitchell, the Acting Deputy County Administrator and the board’s staff attorney, offered the county’s view. The ACC functions like a grand jury, Mitchell said, reviewing evidence and recommending charges, not prosecuting, and was never designed to appear at trial. The trial board, Mitchell added, never hears how the ACC reached its position, and the agency carries the burden of presenting evidence. An inspector general investigates and refers cases, and would not take on prosecutorial power, Mitchell said. Past complaints were that agencies did not present evidence at all, a distinct problem from the ACC’s role. Speakers agreed it does not happen at every trial board, but when it does, one said, it undermines the point of the process.
The board’s other recommendations were simpler. It wants state law changed so officers can file misconduct complaints directly with the board, and so a complaint is expunged from an officer’s file if the officer is exonerated. It wants a comprehensive audit of body-camera and video problems, including pre-shift checklists, maintenance and training, because Johnson said the issues persist two years after every officer was outfitted. And it wants vehicle collisions involving officers carved out of misconduct, since current law puts even a knocked-over mailbox in front of the ACC. Johnson said the law enforcement agencies agree with that last point. He also noted that Sheriff Troy Berry attended the board’s most recent meeting after no agency head had come during the report period.
Johnson said the board believed it had to run its proposals through the commissioners and was unsure whether it could go straight to state lawmakers. Mitchell confirmed that county procedure requires legislative proposals to come to the commissioners first. The same recommendations appeared in earlier annual reports, Mitchell said, and were not supported by the Charles County delegation. This year’s legislative package is already set. The board plans to coordinate with other accountability boards across Maryland and may return to ask for letters of support during the 90-day session; commissioners suggested sending proposals by June or July for next year’s package.
Four years into the law, Johnson said the board was told early on that lawmakers wanted it to play out before revisiting it. He has heard no talk of changes. A participant noted that enough time has passed to see what needs tweaking.
Before the item closed, a commissioner presented a citation to board and ACC members for taking part in a forum hosted by Baltimore City’s Police Accountability Board.
