Overview
- The indictment, announced Monday, charges Officer Dequwan Houchins with four counts of false entry and five counts of misconduct in office.
- Prosecutors allege Houchins logged phantom traffic stops in the department's CAD dispatch system to make himself unavailable for service calls while doing personal tasks such as sitting in his patrol car and buying a smoothie.
- BPD Internal Affairs found that required body-worn camera video was not filed for the logged stops and undercover investigators observed discrepancies between Houchins’s CAD entries and his actual activity in April and May.
- Houchins is suspended with pay, faces up to 12 years and $4,000 fines on each false-entry count if convicted, and is scheduled to make his initial court appearance on Sept. 10.
- The case adds to a string of 2026 prosecutions of Baltimore officers and could increase scrutiny of reporting systems, officer accountability, and department workload distribution.