In 2010, the Baltimore Police Department requested $200,000 from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to continue funding an officer training program that had improved community-police relations and decreased police shootings. The funding request was declined, and the program shut down in 2012.
But according to the training program's organizer, Adam Walinksy, the DOJ added insult to injury when the same department the Baltimore PD had solicited for help instead gave funding to the production company that made Mr. Roger's Neighborhood to allow them to do a national rollout of their video program on fostering relationships between children and the police.
Walinksy believes Baltimore would have had more beautiful days in the neighborhood lately if the DOJ had supported the training program. "Once they stopped training the officers — stopped their interaction with the community, that all that was left was locking people up, and that's what led to this whole Freddie Gray thing," he says. "It was a nonsense arrest."
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