The Carroll County Police Accountability Board (PAB) met on March 9, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. in Room 003/004 of the Carroll County Government building. The meeting covered updates on trial board training, a review of the End of Year Report presented to the Board of Commissioners, legislative efforts to allow expungement of unfounded complaints, new complaint processing deadlines, and a summary of recent Administrative Charging Committee (ACC) cases. Law enforcement agencies from across the county reported on their activities and upcoming initiatives.
Hopefully everyone uh has seen the agenda. I sent it out. Uh Bethany sent it out. Um we um have a quorum um the video of last um December's meeting is available on the website. Um so uh anybody needed to review what was talked about uh can go on the uh PEB website of the county and see uh the discussions. Uh next meeting is June 15th at 10 a.m. Um and you'll you'll note that uh June 15th, September 14th, and December 7th are the next three meetings. It was either the June or the September meeting that I was worried that we were going to have another conflict with the Chiefs Conference in Ocean City. Uh I tried to avoid that. Um but I wish you guys would check me and make sure that that one of those dates, whichever uh is around that time frame that uh we're okay and and um we don't conflict with the Chiefs conference in Ocean City. Um I want to first uh talk about uh the trial board training which is coming up. I want to remind everyone, uh PEB members and law enforcement, that there is some trial board training on March twenty-third and August 24th down there in Sykesville. Um I understand that there was a recent situation uh where we had a trial board and the uh one of the the judge asked the officer uh well how was your training? And the officer said, Well, I haven't had the training. And so the trial board had to be postponed. I wasn't aware that officer that you know when when you pick the trial board as the judge, the civilian, and an officer of equal rank, I wasn't aware that that officer had to also have the trial board training. So um I'm hoping that y uh you all will think about uh if you don't have a an officer or two trained, and you can send someone to the training that you contact the Sykesville and and get them in that training in case uh you know, down the road you're gonna need need them to have that to have a trial board. Any questions about that? Apparently that wasn't a local department, that was a department from outside the county. Right, Chief? Yes, it was. And there was a last minute change. Oh, I'm sorry. It was a last minute change in the original officer. Um Chief Snyder, do you know the date that that was changed to? Do we know what when the new trial board date is? I believe it's May first. Uh and can you share the location of that? Right here. In this building. Okay, great. Thank you. Um the next thing I think I want to talk about is uh Tom and I met with the Carroll County commissioners uh last week. I think it was Thursday, and we gave them a briefing on the end of the year report. Um I just want to and the the video of this report uh of us being talking to the commissioners is on the uh is on the website, and I certainly would encourage everyone to take a look at that um to get the details, but I just want to kind of go, you know, give you a brief overview of what was discussed in case you don't have time to look at it. Um of the things that the commissioners were very pleased to see was the statistics. Um we asked you all to give us the statistics on your numbers of stops and your calls for service, and you obliged, and I think that went into the report, and we use that as a contrast to the number of complaints filed and the number of officers charged. And when you look at the 83,000 uh interactions with police officers in Carroll County, and you compare that to the 51 officers that were complained about, and the four were charged, we come up with a ratio of incidents to officers being charged at like 0.006 percent. Uh and that just the just juxtaposition of those two facts, the commissioners were very pleased to see. Uh it let it led them to believe that um law enforcement in Carroll County is very, very good, and they expressed that to us. Um they were pleased to see those statistics. Um we also talked about this thing's kind of loud up here, so I'm echoing it on me. But uh we also talked about um when police officers do get a complaint filed against them when when police officers do get a complaint filed against them, it's on their record forever. Um this was addressed uh specifically between a kind of like Tom and and Commissioner Krebs, and Commissioner Krebs was down in the legislature at that time and remembers the law being passed, and basically told us that it was really all about uh this law was passed because of things that were going on in Baltimore City, and um that they that they put that in there because there's some bad officers down there and they wanted to make sure they could root them out. Um but as the discussion went on, uh Commissioner Krebs felt pretty strongly, as we did, that it's really an overreach to have this be on our officers' record forever. And so she's gonna do what she can do, and I know the uh FOP is doing what it can do, and there is legislation uh proposed down there every year, and I think there's a growing sentiment that we need to have some sort of expungement process, especially for officers who get a complaint file against against them, and there's no basis at all for uh for that complaint. And so we're we're aware of it and we're doing what we can. I think Doug, I didn't introduce Doug, but Doug is one of the members of the ACC. Uh some of you know him from uh being there defending your officers. I believe Doug indicated that Doug, you told me one time that maybe there's some effort on on people you know to change this.