Face of Baltimore police since 2015 riots resigns

BALTIMORE (AP) — The chief spokesman of the Baltimore Police Department has resigned, saying there’s been a long-term “systematic failure” of policing in the city, among other ills.

T.J. Smith, the face of Baltimore policing at news conferences and crime scene investigations, announced his resignation in a Wednesday Facebook post. He’s been the police spokesman since 2015, coming to Baltimore’s force shortly after the suspicious death of a young black man triggered massive protests and riots.

Smith says that the vast majority of Baltimore’s officers are honorable and hard-working. But in his lengthy Wednesday post, he stressed that “some real hardcore criminals” infiltrated the department over the years and left a “lifetime of scars.”

He says it’s important to “weed out those who want to tarnish the badge and the image of policing.”