The Carroll County Police Accountability Board (PAB) met on September 14, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. in Westminster, Maryland. Chair William Wade presided. The meeting included updates on complaint trends, outreach efforts, personnel changes, and year-end reporting. Law enforcement agencies provided updates on complaint numbers and discussed the need for a complaint expungement mechanism for exonerated officers.
Chair Wade reiterated statutory deadlines: law enforcement agencies have 334 days from complaint filing to complete investigation and provide to ACC; ACC has 30 days to review; total process must conclude within 395 days. He stressed the importance of including the complaint date on paperwork, noting that ~20% of submissions lack this.
Colonel Baker raised concern that officers cannot have exonerated or not-sustained complaints expunged from their record, even if frivolous. He urged PAB to advocate for legislative change. Chair Wade noted PAB's annual reports have included this recommendation. Doug (ACC member) mentioned he is working on legislation with Delegate Chris Tomlinson to address this, including a possible three-year rolling expungement window. Discussion on making the proposal politically palatable. Commissioner Krebs previously expressed support.
I want to thank everyone for coming this morning. I know that we have uh a lot of other things pressing on us, and it's uh it's great that um you all and we all feel that this is important enough to uh gather and discuss our mission, which is to work with you all to work with law enforcement to improve policing in Carroll County. And um I just want to preface that by saying it's not that doesn't mean that it's not good. It's it's very good. And we laid that out in the report last year, and I think it's continuing to be very good uh this year. Um but but that doesn't mean that we should rest on our laurels and uh that we can't try to even make it better. Um I read a book one time that said uh nothing fails like success. And the the guy's point was, you know, you succeed in something, you're you're a business, you're making a lot of money, but one day, you know, the competition comes along and and now you're a failure. And the reason is because you didn't you didn't keep looking at what you were doing and trying to improve it. And so um we appreciate uh you working with us. Uh and we're not gonna rest on our laurels, we're gonna try to do everything we can to improve what's already really good. So uh thank you for coming. Um just want to point out uh in accordance with the agenda that uh uh the video of last meeting is on the website. Uh a next meeting is December seventh, a day that will live in infamy. And um I on number four, I have proposed some meeting dates uh for next year. At this point, these meeting dates are not written in stone, they're just a proposed uh set of dates for next year uh that we we think will work. Um I made special attention uh to the September date because I know that's when the Chiefs conference is uh uh over in Ocean City. In one year we we missed a few uh officers uh chiefs because we uh conflicted with that meeting. So uh maybe take a good look at that one and all these other dates and uh maybe uh in December uh if uh you all have any comments or uh we need to change things, we'll finalize these dates and we'll get them on the uh next year's agenda. But right now those are the ones that that I'm looking at. Um I want to talk a little bit about personnel changes uh for everybody, both us and you um may have pointed it out last time. Todd uh who was one of the members of the PAB has now moved to the administrative charging committee. Um we have a vacancy on the PAB, but I understand by um from talking to Bethany this morning that we do have someone who has agreed uh to be on the board. Uh did you say it was Rob Robin Dorsey? Robinette Dorsey. And so we'll we we didn't find that out till this morning, but uh we'll try to get her uh going um for the December meeting, and maybe if I I can get her if uh get her email or something I could you know send her a message uh uh welcoming her to the board. Um I don't know if I've mentioned it or not to you all in the past uh but we have a new trial board member also in in the event anybody needs a trial board. His name is Bob Klein. And so now we have Michael Klein, I'm sorry. We have uh now we have three members on the trial board, so uh I think that's pretty good. I think that's enough. Um so I just want to uh also say that Tawny Town had a had a new acting chief. I don't know if he became uh permanent or not. Does anybody know? Yeah, he has not uh been named permanent yet, he's still in the interim. Okay, thank you. And then we've got a new chief up in Hampstead. Yes, sir. Uh Pere is it? Perretta. Welcome, welcome aboard, Chief. Thank you. Um any other changes. I don't the sheriff's department is not here. That's right. Right here. Sir? Right here, sir. Okay. Oh, oh Colonel, nice to see.