LA PLATA — Each year, Charles County’s Police Accountability Board writes up what it has learned about police misconduct cases and what it thinks should change. Nothing in state law requires anyone to answer.
That was the blunt assessment the board heard from its attorney at its October meeting, as members began work on their 2026 annual report. The county commissioners who receive the report are not obligated to respond to it, the attorney said, and they are not required to forward it to the county’s delegation in Annapolis, the only body that can change the state law behind most of the board’s recommendations.
The gap matters because many of the board’s asks, from clearer rules on which cases it can review to an independent prosecutor for police trial boards, require action by the General Assembly. Board members spent part of the meeting looking for another route.
Three and a half minutes
Board Chair Granville Johnson told members he had recently gone before the Charles County Commissioners for about three minutes and 25 seconds to discuss the board’s previous report, which had been out for more than a year. He said he tried to work through some of its recommendations but did not accomplish what he had hoped.
The board’s attorney noted the timing problem: the report was submitted at the end of December, but the presentation to commissioners did not come until October. That, she said, is not conducive to keeping the work moving, especially since proposals for the General Assembly have to be lined up months before the session that begins in January.
Under the 2021 Police Accountability Act, each county’s board must submit an annual report to the county’s governing body identifying trends in police discipline and making recommendations. The law says where the report goes. It does not say what happens next.
‘Not obligated to respond’
Board member Smith asked what the feedback loop looks like once the report is filed: whether the commissioners or lawmakers tell the board which recommendations they will take up, which bills they might sponsor and which ideas will wait.
The board does not send its report directly to the delegation, the attorney said. A county staff member said earlier in the meeting that the report is provided to the delegation each December; the attorney said she would confirm that.
“They’re not obligated to respond,” she said. “There’s nothing statutorily that requires it.”
Part of the problem, she said, is how Charles County is organized. The commissioners do not run either of the county’s police agencies. The sheriff is an independently elected official, so the commissioners cannot direct the Charles County Sheriff’s Office to change a policy. In a charter county with its own police department, she said, a county executive and council that receive the report would have that authority.
Where the report can matter, she said, is in the commissioners’ conversations with the agencies and at budget time, when recommendations with a price tag, such as body-worn or in-car cameras, can be weighed.
Looking for another route
Smith said Charles County’s problems may also be showing up in other jurisdictions, and that state lawmakers can’t sponsor fixes for issues they never hear about. She asked whether the board could carve out a required path to the delegation over the next several years.
Johnson said the board’s best avenue right now is a statewide working group of police accountability boards led by Baltimore, which he said has direct contact with state lawmakers. The group met virtually June 24, and another statewide meeting is expected. Johnson said there was a lot of common ground among the boards and he expects Charles County’s ideas to get a hearing.
The board does have one direct line. A county staff member reminded members that boards and commissions can submit legislative proposals to the commissioners each year, the same process the commissioners use to build the county’s request list for Annapolis, which most recently produced the 2027 legislative package. The board has used it before.
It skipped that step this year, the staff member said, in part because the board has made the same recommendations requiring state action in past years and they haven’t gone anywhere. Any fix would almost certainly have to be statewide, she said, since a Charles-only carve-out in the public safety law is unlikely, and the delegation has shown some resistance to statewide bills. She said the board could still submit proposals in the next cycle.
What goes in this year’s report
Members agreed to build the 2026 report from last year’s template and to wait for input from the Sheriff’s Office and the La Plata Police Department. Items they flagged include:
- A request that lawmakers clarify which complaints involve “a member of the public,” the question the board took up after trial board cases were dismissed statewide.
- A renewed call for an independent legal team to present the administrative charging committee’s cases at trial boards.
- Charging committee case statistics, kept in the table format the board adopted last year.
- The outcome and length of recent discipline appeals, including the Circuit Court ruling that upheld a trial board’s firing of an officer after more than 13 months, detailed in the Chronicle’s report on why Charles misconduct cases stall.
Board member Hill also asked to put more of the board’s data on its county web page, as other Maryland boards do, rather than leaving it buried in the annual report. Another member said the page should better explain who serves on the board and whom they represent, and members noted that recordings of past meetings are hard to find. County staff said they would work with the county’s IT and media services offices on options.
The meeting also brought a change at the Sheriff’s Office. The official who has represented the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility at board meetings said it was his last meeting, and introduced Capt. Anthony Celia, who takes over that post Dec. 12.
The board has pressed for state law changes for several years, as the Chronicle reported when Charles police oversight marked four years. Its 2026 report is due to the commissioners at the end of December, weeks before the General Assembly convenes Jan. 13.
