By Justin Fenton,
As his security detail
struggled with an armed man this month, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony
W. Batts held a gun to the suspect's head and punched him in the face before
gaining control of the man's weapon, court documents show.
Batts and his three-member
security detail arrested Alante Moultrie, 20, on May 16 in the 2300 block of E.
Monument St., shortly after they left the scene of a police-involved shooting.
Moultrie is being held without bond on drug and gun charges.
According to charging documents, Batts' driver
pulled over for an unspecified reason and members of the detail — dressed in
suits — approached six men standing in front of a deli. Moultrie was standing
just inside the open door of a GMC van when Detective Ryan Diener identified
himself as a police officer.
Diener asked Moultrie his name,
then saw what he believed to be a gun, Diener wrote in charging documents.
Diener patted him down and felt
a weapon, and yelled "Gun!" to alert the other officers. Diener
gripped the gun and said Moultrie pushed him and tried to flee.
Two other members of the
detail, Detective Antonio Hopson and Detective Sgt. Derek Loeffler ran to help
Diener, police wrote in charging documents. Diener said Moultrie was able to
pull the gun during the struggle.
That's when Batts entered the
fray.
"Police Commissioner Batts
responded and removed his service weapon and placed it against Mr. Moultrie's
head," Diener wrote. "Mr. Moultrie would not release the gun from his
grip, so Police Commissioner Batts also attempted to pull the gun from Mr.
Moultrie's hand. Police Commissioner Batts then hit Mr. Moultrie with a closed
fist in the face."
The blow from the city's top
cop finally caused Moultrie to release the gun, Diener wrote, and Batts pulled
the gun away. Police said Moultrie also had four plastic bags of suspected
cocaine and a folding knife.
The .32-caliber handgun was
loaded with one round in the chamber and six in the magazine, police wrote in
charging documents. Crime lab technicians took photos of Batts and his security
detail.
Police said Moultrie required
hospitalization and was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, but the documents do
not detail his injuries.
After his release from the
hospital, police said, Moultrie gave a taped interview with investigators and
acknowledged possessing the handgun. Police tweeted that Batts had made an
arrest, using the hashtag #Leadingfromthefront. Later, they posted a photo of
him helping a woman carry groceries.
Batts has personally been
involved in other enforcement efforts, tagging along on raids, searching for an
alleged killer dubbed "Public Enemy No. 1," and performing a
stop-and-frisk of someone he has identified as a gang member in the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello
neighborhood. The agency has declined to release documents related to that
incident.
Moultrie's aunt, Michelle
Davis, said he did not seem to be aware that Batts was involved.
His mother, Lisa Moultrie, said
her son's friends told her that he had been beaten up by the police.
"If the gun was in his
waist, take the gun. ... Three men couldn't take a gun from his waist — he had
to get hit like that?" she said. Of the allegation that her son was armed,
she said: "It's surprising to me that my son even had a gun."