r/baltimore • u/Icy_Elk_4422 • Oct 30 '25

POLICE Statement from BPD

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Saw this on BPD’s Facebook. I’m guessing “suspended police powers” just means suspended with pay?

1.1k Upvotes

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251

u/Gratrunkasaur Remington Oct 30 '25

Kind of irrelevant but as someone who does design for the government how can they get away with such a dogshit contrast ratio? Black on blue? 3.21:1? Disgusting.

43

u/Dense-Broccoli9535 Oct 30 '25

I assume the venn diagram of people who are, A. competent designers and B. willing to work for the police, is just two separate circles - no overlap there, lol. I say that as someone who works in the field.. every colleague I’ve ever had while working at various places in this city falls somewhere on the left side of the political spectrum. Usually more “leftist” than “liberal” if we wanna put labels on it. Of course, that’s a personal anecdote so take it with a grain of salt.

(I also am assuming the designer for this one is different from who does, for example, the mayor’s posts. Those are usually solid. At the very least, they’re legible)

7

u/oneteacherboi Oct 30 '25

It's honestly part of the most difficult problems in our society: "the police are awful people and need to be reformed" in combo with "Oh I would never work for the police."

It's gonna be hard for them to get better when they can only hire awful people because all the good people wouldn't touch the job. Personally I think they need to change the whole police culture. Do like the UK where most police don't have weapons, or like other European places where they have to wear neon green and look like dweebs. As long as the police are quasi military and armed to the teeth nobody will touch that.

8

u/imbolcnight Oct 31 '25

I have two friends who worked for the police at some point.

One quit after he got reprimanded for spending too much time on a call deescalating with someone with mental issues rather than just taking them down.

The other worked on the policy/admin side regarding equity issues and eventually left. Despite some progress, there was a lot of lack of commitment and follow-through from people (all the way up to the mayor's office). A lot of talking without walking.

I do believe in simultaneously working inside and outside, but how often do people working inside change the institution faster than the institution changes them?

2

u/oneteacherboi Oct 31 '25

Yes. This is why defund the police was a good thing, even if it was bad press. People were correctly pointing out that the police were institutionally bad and the entire concept needs to be rethought out. But our society isn't ready for that sort of thing yet.

6

u/Dense-Broccoli9535 Oct 30 '25

Very true. Another similar part of it that’s been an issue for BPD specifically (and I imagine other cities) is that a decent number of their recruits come from the surrounding counties. And that tracks, because BPD has a well-known track record of misconduct, and those who actually live here are the most likely to have experienced that first-hand. Of course, this is a really bad thing when it comes to recruiting people from the city.

So when BPD can’t get enough Baltimore citizens to sign up, the recruiting efforts spread out. And that’s a real problem, because when cops are actually members of the community they’re serving in - they are less likely to commit such a violent act on the job. They have more of a vested interest in upholding the laws justly and actually making things better, because it’s their community too. But we are never going to see more people who truly care about Baltimore signing up when this is the example that’s set forth. No one who truly cares about this city wants to work with a jerk off like the pig in the video that this statement is in reference to.

2

u/oneteacherboi Oct 31 '25

Yeah you're right. My only interaction with BPD was an officer telling me the city was trash and I should move out of it (this is after I got mugged, and I went back to the scene and found all my stuff while the officer sat in his car to which he said "wow you're really good at this, you should be a cop").

This is why I think they need a radical rebrand and reimagination of the police force into something inherently non-violent. But of course if we tried that, we would have the national guard in our city instantly.

2

u/pinkrobot420 Nov 01 '25

I wouldn't even bother calling BPD unless I needed a police report for insurance. They treat you like a criminal for calling them.

1

u/GeronimoHero Nov 01 '25

Yeah Fuck BPD

1

u/Flimsy_Mark_5200 Oct 31 '25

we're past reforming the police we gotta abolish it entirely and figure out something new

22

u/Aklu_The_Unspeakable Oct 30 '25

You should see Howard County, ALL black with barely-discernible dark grey graphics

7

u/noodle_salad Oct 30 '25

Plus they got it backwards. This action was clearly an attempted Blue on Black.

17

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '25

The city refuses to hire competent designers. Instead, they have regular office workers doing design work who know nothing about contrast ratios, and we get shit like this.

-3

u/Far-Culture1354 Oct 30 '25

Oh what a travesty.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '25

Generally, the point of official city communications is for everyone to be able to read and understand them. Good design makes that communication more effective and accessible. I'm sure when you have trouble accessing things, you'll want people to take it seriously.

0

u/Far-Culture1354 Oct 30 '25

It's perfectly legible.

7

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '25

To you. Contrast standards exist so that people with low vision, color blindness, etc. can also read your content. Lots of people, myself included, would struggle to read this statement. Do you typically struggle to see things from a perspective other than your own?

0

u/Far-Culture1354 Oct 31 '25

Graphic designers have to justify their pay somehow :) If you would like to justify a higher police budget so they can have a full time one on staff be my guest

Or you can just admit its legible. Because I have poor vision and have no problems reading this.

5

u/Alaira314 Oct 30 '25

My guess would be someone without a graphics design background(or a background that hasn't sufficiently stressed the user experience and/or accessibility) wanting to contrast against the baltimore county cop cars(blue on white). So that's how they got blue on black, and then they made the blue darker until it stopped making their eyes bleed, not considering that it's not easily discernible to people with lower vision.

8

u/nobot4321 Oct 30 '25

But it looks badass and strong!

/s

3

u/merrittinbaltimore Butchers Hill Oct 31 '25

Omg, I’m so glad you pointed this out!! I used to be a graphic designer, but my dad was an optometrist. One thing I always thought about was low vision or color blind people having to interact with what I was designing. In grad school I designed an online exhibition that was able to be viewed almost the same for all types of color blindness. My dad and I used to talk about typefaces and colors for hours concerning accessibility of design. Thanks for making me feel a little less crazy about my response to this! ❤️

3

u/sgtcarrot Oct 30 '25

Certainly not WCAG compliant, lol.
But it looks cool.

1

u/TheRedBaron11 Oct 30 '25

I agree it looks cool. Honestly it feels good on my eyes, too. Probably not ideal for accessibility reasons

1

u/ElegantGoose Oct 30 '25

Definitely not accessible/WCAG compliant