Baltimore County Police Sgt. William McGladrie punched the Black man multiple times as other officers stood nearby in the Woodlawn precinct, but he was not punished for his use of force.
The story may sound familiar because it’s happened before.
“This seems to be a pattern for Sergeant McGladrie,” Maj. Orlando Lilly wrote about the Jan. 5, 2022, encounter when McGladrie punched a handcuffed man twice in the stomach and headlocked him.
The department’s only Black major was referring to 2020, when the sergeant punched a different Black man repeatedly in the face inside a precinct holding cell, according to body-camera videos and police records.
The department’s Internal Affairs Section cleared McGladrie of wrongdoing in the more recent case in October 2022. A few months later, a police trial board ruled he hadn’t used unnecessary force in 2020, either. The boards at the time were made up of other county officers who review cases when officers appeal internal disciplinary decisions.
The similar outcomes demonstrate the high bar for punishing Baltimore County police officers for how they apply force against suspects.
A review of more than six years of police data shows county officers reported using force less often in recent years. However, they use force disproportionately against Black people. The county’s population is about one-third Black, yet more than two-thirds of the people officers use force against are Black.
Last month, three county officers were indicted in connection with their involvement in a September 2023 encounter in which a handcuffed Black detainee in Baltimore City was pepper-sprayed and yanked around by his hair.
Changes in state law that went into effect last summer in the county added new public oversight to the process of reviewing police misconduct.
The Baltimore Sun obtained documents and videos related to the internal investigation of McGladrie’s 2022 actions through a Maryland Public Information Act request. McGladrie, a 25-year veteran who earned about $144,500 last year, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The three officers who made up McGladrie’s police trial board in April 2023 ruled that he should receive a letter of reprimand for swearing during the 2020 beating, but rejected the Internal Affairs’ determination that he used unnecessary force. McGladrie’s comments in 2020, including saying, “You gonna step to me? You want to step? Let’s [obscenity bleeped] step,” escalated a tense interaction, internal investigators wrote.
During that incident, three officers, including McGladrie, threw Robert Jackson III to the floor of a holding cell after trading insults.
“This is racist,” Jackson can be heard saying in the footage.
“Yup, it is,” McGladrie answered, after punching him in the face.
Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr., a Democrat, said in the fall that he had “concerns” about McGladrie’s conduct in 2020, but that the matter was settled by the police trial board.
The sergeant is not the only county officer who has faced scrutiny for his use of force in recent years.
Last year, police trial boards — made up of other officers — reversed Internal Affairs findings that two different officers used unreasonable force, including an officer who hit an intoxicated man bleeding from his wrists in the head with a department-issued flashlight in 2021.
Under a new state law, civilians are now involved in the disciplinary process for Baltimore County officers, with citizen complaints going through the county’s Administrative Charging Committee. The committee can lodge administrative charges accusing officers of violating policy, and if officers appeal those charges, the case now goes to a three-person panel with only one police member, rather than three.
The charging committee reviewed three use-of-force cases between July and December and cleared the officers in each case, according to a year-end report.
Meanwhile, Baltimore County Cpl. Zachary Small faces charges of assault, excessive force and reckless endangerment in Baltimore City. In September, Small pepper-sprayed the face of a man who was complaining he couldn’t breathe inside a police vehicle, then used the man’s hair to yank his head around as he lay on the ground, body-camera video released by police shows. Two other county officers, Jacob Roos and Justin Graham-Moore, were indicted on charges of misconduct in office for failing to intervene.
After viewing the 2022 video of McGladrie, Ryan Coleman, president of the Randallstown NAACP, said he saw parallels between his actions and those of Small. He called it “problematic” that both men are supervisors.
“Anytime you’re having people hit people who are handcuffed, or pepper-spray people who are handcuffed, it’s just too much,” Coleman said. “You cannot hit a handcuffed suspect. There’s just no rhyme or reason.”
Ian Adams, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said officers’ use of force is subject to greater scrutiny when a person is handcuffed.
“When subjects are handcuffed, officers are generally taught that force should not be used except in pretty extraordinary circumstances,” Adams said.
When McGladrie approached Jarvis Sewell inside the precinct in 2022, he was standing on a bench jutting out from the wall with his hands cuffed to a bar behind him, according to McGladrie’s body-camera video. Although his name was redacted in the Internal Affairs records provided to The Sun, Sewell confirmed that he was the person in the video.
Police had arrested Sewell for violating a protective order and disorderly conduct after a woman called 911, police records show. However, court records show that the protective order had been dismissed earlier that day. The disorderly conduct charge was put on the stet docket, meaning prosecutors could revive it without recharging Sewell.
He argued with officers inside the Woodlawn precinct, according to multiple videos, refusing to take off his sweatpants and obey other commands.
Officer Sean Langeheine walked toward Sewell and bent down to shackle his legs. McGladrie told him to sit, then grabbed one of his feet to force him down on the bench.
“Have a seat, have a seat now. [Obscenity bleeped.] Have a seat,” McGladrie said, then twice punched Sewell in the abdomen. McGladrie grabbed Sewell’s head and held it under his arm as Langeheine shackled his legs and Sgt. Michael Toni stood nearby.
“Are we gonna play? Are we gonna play? Are we gonna play?” McGladrie said, according to the video.
In an interview with The Sun, Sewell called his experience with officers “normal.”
“ A couple of them will be like that,” he said. “If I’m standing there restrained and there’s multiple of you, what’s the point of excessive force?”
McGladrie wrote in a report that he used force to protect himself or another member of the department. Sewell had “rocked to the side, lifting his foot, potentially kicking Officers and he stood on a bench and failed to follow directives,” McGladrie wrote.
Adams, who serves as an expert witness in policing cases with a specialty in use of force, said he could not tell from the videos provided to The Sun that Sewell was about to kick an officer, but internal investigators might have used other evidence to conclude that.
“What it comes down to is, do you think it was a reasonable perception that the subject at the time was about to pose an imminent threat, i.e. he was about to do something harmful?” Adams said.
Adams called it “concerning” that a similar incident happened previously.
“That suggests that there might be a pattern going on, in which case, a little more oversight would probably be appropriate,” he said.
Internal Affairs investigators found McGladrie had acted within policy to subdue a suspect who was “belligerent and antagonized the officers,” ignoring commands and yelling at officers.
“With his continued defiance, the tensing/leaning of his body documented by Sergeant McGladrie, and the vulnerable position Officer Langeheine was placed in to apply leg shackles, Sergeant McGladrie’s documented assessment and fear that Mr. [Sewell] would imminently assault Officer Langeheine was reasonable,” Sgt. Christopher Smith wrote in the findings of the Internal Affairs Investigation.
All this caused McGladrie to use “two fist strikes,” Smith wrote. He also wrote that because of the “perceived threat of imminent assault,” McGladrie’s decision to hold Sewell’s head in the crook of his arm “would be reasonable.”
Before the Internal Affairs investigation, Woodlawn Precinct Capt. Jeffrey Hartman wrote on Jan. 18, 2022, that McGladrie’s use of force was justified, but the sergeant would undergo training for other aspects of the interaction. Hartman wrote that officers could have put shackles on a handcuffed Sewell with “what appeared to be little threat” and that forcing his legs onto the ground made it harder to search him.
He said McGladrie would be required to attend a “Verbal Judo Seminar,” which addresses “the skills of persuasion” and “the art of verbal de-escalation to generate voluntary compliance.”
A police spokesperson confirmed McGladrie attended the seminar in March 2022.
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