And that’s how Suiter left Baltimore—in a powerful wave of sirens and light triggered by an unexpected catastrophic event.

To see the outpouring of respect and love from the community for an officer who tried to do right by everyone he interacted with was notable, said Ivan Bates, a Baltimore defense attorney.

Bates has defended officers, as well as people who have been victimized by police. He has seen both sides of the fence and understands why the community sometimes has a contentious relationship with law-enforcement officers. Earlier this year, he represented Albert Brown, whom the elite team of corrupt cops that Suiter was expected to testify against had mistreated. Brown was arrested in August 2016, and accused of being a felon in possession of a firearm and drugs by officers known to routinely break the rules for their own benefit. State prosecutors decided to drop his case in March. In addition, Bates has represented Shawn Whitting, Oreese Stevens and Andre Crowder, also victimized by the same group of officers.

There are just a few of Baltimore’s citizens who have had bad experiences interacting with local authorities, Bates said.

“Some of the people . . . a number of the drug units treated them so poorly and looked down upon them and their families in such a way that they lost faith,” Bates said. “The law-abiding people in the house lost faith in the criminal justice system and it eventually became ‘us versus them.’”

Community members generally know which officers will give them problems and which ones will treat them fairly, he said. Suiter clearly left an impression on them, the kind that earned him their gratitude and respect.

“I think for officer Sean Suiter, that was the type of officer he was, and that’s why you saw the outpouring of hurt from the community,” he said.

The Unknown Unknowns

One month after the shooting of Detective Suiter, his death remains a mystery. The information provided to the public has been sparse. It has only been enough to spark conspiracy theories. And among those theories is the possibility that a homicide detective was purposely killed so that he couldn’t speak out against a team of corrupt cops. That may not be what ended Suiter’s life, but it is a possibility that investigators must explore. Some people have dismissed that theory as illogical, but to former federal law-enforcement officers, it doesn’t seem far fetched. Michael Levine, a former undercover DEA agent who specialized in international narcotics trafficking, noted that if Suiter was working as an informant for a federal agency, then those he aimed to expose would have seen him as a direct threat, which would have given them a strong motive to kill him. It happens all the time, Levine said.

“As a trial consultant, I just recently testified in a deposition about a police informant who was killed for what apparently seemed nothing,” he said. “That is the life of an informant . . . working against police corruption, well, you’re playing Russian roulette with your life.”

It is also plausible that the killer knew Suiter. Maybe that person shared information with Suiter in the past, or maybe that individual interrupted Suiter's plans to meet with a source, said Fred Burton, chief security officer of global intelligence firm Stratfor and the former deputy chief of counterterrorism at the Diplomatic Security Service.

“It could have been something as simple as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as going to meet a snitch and the snitch was running late,” he said.

The FBI is now poised to take over the investigation into Suiter’s death. Commissioner Davis asked the federal agency to lead the probe during a December 1 press conference, but as of December 15, two weeks after the invitation was extended, agency officials have yet to publicly accept it, and Davis has yet to rescind.

The FBI has a variety of federal tools that could assist the Baltimore police in finding out what happened to Suiter on November 15, such as intelligence information gleaned from organized-crime investigations, forensic resources that typically surpass what the local authorities have access to and the ability to narrow down the types of candidates capable of committing the crime, Burton said.

But before the agency can even get to that point, it needs to work out some of the risk factors associated with the case, as well as legal issues, which is why agency officials may be slow to accept the commissioner’s offer, Levine said.

“This is a very complex legal situation that you can’t just say, I’ll take it, or I won’t take it. They’re probably going over it with in-house attorneys and FBI officials . . . it’s really a hot potato.”

The Cost of Repairs

The investigation into Suiter’s death opens questions into how much a person can get away with in Baltimore. Not only have hearts been broken by the loss, but the community’s perception has been damaged, too.

“It kind of rocks the establishment, so to speak,” Burton said. It sends the message: “if you can’t even solve this, then how are you going to solve that drug murder?”

And necessary repairs in the aftermath of another West Baltimore tragedy may come at a high cost, especially now that the Maryland ACLU is seeking to unearth evidence that the police department has once again violated the public’s civil rights. Now, Baltimore’s citizens have new reasons to harbor distrust.

There are serious consequences “to a pattern of violating the Constitution,” Smith warned. Not only are people’s rights injured, but those patterns interfere with the police department’s ability to deliver public safety, he said. If members of the community don’t have confidence in the police, then they are not going to provide officers with tips or participate as key witnesses to violent crimes, he said. And therein lies the danger for a city whose officials have touted a message of change, only to further prove to its citizens that some things remain the same.

“This is the moment that the police should be doing everything they can to say to the community, ‘This is a new day,’” Smith said.

Maggie Ybarra is an assistant managing editor at the National Interest.

Image: Police escort Baltimore Police Department homicide detective Sean Suiter from a church in northeast Baltimore to a graveyard in Timonium, Maryland. Maggie Ybarra / Used with permission