“Dear Mayor Young and Police Commissioner Harrison:
On behalf of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF),1 we write to raise several concerns about the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) Aerial Investigation Research Pilot Program, which is better known to Baltimore City residents as the aerial surveillance plane program.2 First, there is no evidence that the program will accomplish the stated goals of investigating and solving crimes. Additionally, reviving an aerial surveillance program, secretly launched and rejected four years ago, in a city that is under a federal consent decree to address racially discriminatory and otherwise unlawful policing practices is unlikely to engender the public trust needed to assist the police with public safety issues…”
Read the full letter here.
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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization. LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF.
