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Does anyone know if this is a consistent problem for the Baltimore PD -- do they have more of an anti-youth bias in general than most PDs do?

Several years ago, I lived in Baltimore. I never heard any overall statistics about the city cops, but I heard occasional bad stories, and personally had one infuriating experience with them. I got into an accident at one of the city's busier intersections. The accident was clearly the other driver's fault. I was 24 years old, looked quite a bit younger, and was dressed in old blue jeans and some tee shirt with a rock band logo on it. The other driver was fiftyish, distinguished looking, and wore a suit -- to look at him, one might have thought he was a corporate director on his way to a board meeting.

Well, you guessed it -- the cop who handled the accident took one look at us, made a snap judgment from appearances (responsible community member vs. some kid), and made his decision as to who was guilty. The very first thing he did was to ask the other driver, "let me guess, he [meaning me] ran the red light?"

I started to interject that it hadn't happened like that, and the cop cut me off, then turned back to the other driver and said, "now, did you get a chance to see how fast he was going when he ran the red light?"

Thank God the other driver was an honest man! He set the cop straight, admitting that he had got distracted for a moment and ran the light. Even after that, the cop was still very rude to me, implying several times that I was probably lying about something; implications he didn't make about the other driver, who would have had far more of a reason to lie than I would have. I'm sure that even to this day, that cop thinks that I was some punk kid who deserved to be punished, and that I got off only because of some mere technicality. Stupid bastard.