Maryland recently became the first state in the country to repeal its Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBR). This type of law grants police officers special protections from prosecution and discipline. In theory, LEOBRs are meant to protect police officers from undo prosecution and discriminatory discipline; but in practice, they make it very difficult for law enforcement officers to be tried for excessive use of force. It makes sense that Maryland was the first state to do away with these policies. After Freddie Gray suffered fatal spinal cord injuries in Baltimore police custody in 2015, then-mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake blamed the state’s LEOBR for delaying the investigation into his death. Frustrated by the piecemeal reforms made in the wake of Gray’s killing, over 90 organizations across Maryland came together to form the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Police Accountability (MCJPA). One of their top priorities: repealing the state’s LEOBR, which the ACLU-MD called “one of the most extreme in the country.” When renewed anger about police brutality erupted after the murder of George Floyd last summer, MCJPA created a list of five demands to present to the Maryland General Assembly, the state’s legislative body, and chief among those demands was the repeal of the state’s LEOBR.