In 2025, there were 51 complaints filed against county and municipal police officers in Carroll County — more than doubling the number from the year prior. In 2024, 20 complaints were filed.
William Wade, chair of the county’s Police Accountability Board, said he thinks the increase is “not an indicator of a trend,” and is instead due to more people being aware of the accountability board and its function.
The county documented nearly 84,000 interactions between police and residents in 2025, Wade said, and only four officers were charged in connection with the complaints.
Of the 51 complaints received in 2025, 18 were about an officer’s “professionalism,” alleging that the complainant was “badly treated,” as the Police Accountability Board’s report put it. Professionalism was the largest of the seven categories that Carroll sorts its complaints into.
The second-largest categories were complaints about unauthorized searches and excessive use of force, with nine complaints each.
The board investigates every complaint it receives by reviewing body camera footage, and then either exonerates the officer or offers a penalty. The officer then may deny the penalty and have their case heard before a trial board organized by the Administrative Charging Committee.
All four officers who were charged in connection with their complaints opted to appear before the trial board.
“Generally speaking … out of the tens of thousands of interactions, you only have four officers get charged. That’s a pretty good statistic,” Wade said.
The county’s Police Accountability Board reviews and investigates complaints of police misconduct, and the Carroll County Administrative Charging Committee. The PAB presented its annual report Thursday during an annual report to the Board of Carroll County Commissioners.
Pattern of complaints in Hampstead
The accountability board’s report showed a pattern of complaints against officers in the Hampstead Police Department, which had 16 complaints in 2025. Hampstead employs 10 sworn officers and had the third-fewest calls of the county’s six municipal police departments.
“Hampstead is an outlier, and they don’t really fall within the average of the statistics. They seem to have more of a problem,” Wade said in response to a question from commissioner Ken Kiler about the trends in Hampstead.
The county was set to hold an administrative trial for a Hampstead police officer Thursday morning in light of an October complaint that the officer was allegedly “having sexual relations with [the complainant’s] wife,” but the trial was postponed.
Three of the four complaints that resulted in penalties in the county were made against officers from the Hampstead Police Department. The police accountability board has recommended that the officer named in the October complaint be terminated.
Wade said at the meeting that Chief David Snyder of Hampstead has come under fire from the Carroll County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 20 in light of recent complaints.
In a letter sent by Ashley Owens, president of the county Fraternal Order of Police, to the mayor and Town Council of Hampstead in October, the FOP called for the chief’s resignation and said the chief was being investigated by the Office of the State Prosecutor. The letter alleged that Snyder had mishandled investigations by the Police Accountability Board against both him and other officers, withheld information from the Administrative Charging Committee, and ordered investigations into officers whom he personally disliked.
The Office of the State Prosecutor declined to comment. It is the office’s policy not to confirm the existence or status of any investigations.
Thomas McCarron, town attorney of Hampstead, wrote in response that “The Town and Chief Snyder absolutely and strongly take issue with a number of statements made in your letter,” and that they have not seen information to “suggest any wrongdoing of any sort.”
During the Police Accountability Board’s Thursday presentation, Wade defended Snyder, saying he “feels that [Snyder] is a good man.”
Misconduct complaints in Carroll
The other three officers who were penalized for complaints against them in 2025 received small penalties.
One, made in January against a Hampstead officer, reported that an officer had not turned on their siren during a pursuit. Another, made in April against another Hampstead officer, reported that the officer had made an illegal left turn in a police vehicle while off duty. A third, made in July against a Westminster officer, reported that the officer hadn’t informed an individual that they were being recorded with a body camera.
Carroll County formed its Police Accountability Board in 2021, when the state required every county in Maryland to do so. For the first two years, Carroll’s board received one complaint each year.
Todd Mitchell, a member of the accountability board, said Thursday that the board often receives complaints “where it’s obvious from the beginning that there was no misconduct” — for instance, if a complaint alleges that an officer was rude or used excessive force, members of the board will review bodycam footage to determine if that was the case. The board has an “abbreviated process,” he said, for complaints that it categorizes as unfounded.
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