Maryland police chief latest to face reckoning amid protests

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — A Maryland police chief resigned this week within hours of a court filing that portrayed his department, one of the state’s largest, as an agency poisoned by a racist culture.

A complaint cited by the filing said a Prince George’s County police sergeant had a personalized license plate with an acronym for a vulgarity directed at President Barack Obama. Officers allegedly circulated pictures of a training dummy adorned with an Afro wig and Black face. A lieutenant derided Black Lives Matter protesters in comments quoted in a New York Times article.

Those allegations were described in a 94-page report filed Thursday by plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit that accuses the department of condoning racism and retaliating against Black and Hispanic officers who complained about white colleagues’ bigoted behavior.

By the end of the day, the county’s top elected official announced that she had accepted the resignation of Police Chief Hank Stawinski.

Stawinski is the latest law-enforcement leader in the U.S. to face a reckoning amid national protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death last month. Police chiefs in Atlanta; Portland, Oregon; and Richmond, Virginia; also have resigned since a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes while the Black man pleaded for air.

Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said Thursday’s court filing, a report prepared by an expert witness for the plaintiffs, wasn’t a factor in her decision to accept Stawinski’s resignation. She said she had given the matter “much thought” for months.

“I am under no illusion, no illusion, that there aren’t things that are broken in our police department,” she said Friday. “Whatever we find that is...