State police stress racial treatment policy

PRINCESS ANNE -- Barrack commanders and trooper supervisors across Maryland are underscoring professional conduct and the Maryland State Police agency's intolerance of race-based treatment when dealing with the public after a black woman in Princess Anne handed authorities a cell phone voice message recording of an MSP criminal investigator making a racial slur.

"Commanders and supervisors are using this reported incident as an opportunity to remind their subordinates of the need to remain professional at all times, in all we do," MSP spokesman Greg Shipley said Thursday. "This is being discussed throughout the Maryland State Police. We hold our troopers to a high standard of professional police conduct."

The MSP sergeant who allegedly left the slur on the cell phone belonging to Teleta Dashiell is on administrative duty during a "priority" administrative investigation of the matter, a process that could conclude by the end of December, Shipley said.

The Maryland State Police already has a clear policy in place forbidding racial profiling or other type of race-based police action, Shipley also said, in response to an earlier suggestion by Somerset County NAACP branch President Kirkland Hall that the trooper in question "could use some diversity training."

MSP officials won't discuss the alleged Nov. 3 incident, except to say that the trooper is a 13-year MSP veteran assigned to a criminal investigations bureau and "is not assigned to a particular barrack."

Agency officials also refuse to identify the trooper, although the person heard making the slur identifies himself on Dashiell's voice message as Sgt. Maiello. Dashiell has said that an investigator at the MSP Princess Anne barrack who interviewed her Nov. 10 about the matter identified the trooper as Sgt. John Maiello.

At the Princess Anne barrack, Lt. Krah Plunkert said Thursday that supervisors are "reinforcing our core values."

Plunkert said it is important that the incident doesn't hamper relationships built between the Princess Anne barrack and the black community.