It was the Friday after Thanksgiving, 2012. Baltimore police Officer Joseph Crystal had just come home after visiting his in-laws. As he and his wife approached their car, Crystal noticed something was wrong.
There was a dead rat with its head clamped underneath the windshield wiper.
Crystal felt warmth all over his body, palpitating with fear. He took a deep breath. All the events that had transpired in the past few months came flooding into his brain. The times he radioed for backup while patrolling the streets and no one from his squad showed up. That conversation he had with his supervisor, who told him that his career was over. All those people in the police department who called him a “rat.”
To his colleagues, Crystal was a snitcher, someone who gave a black eye to the Baltimore Police Department. For Crystal, he just wanted to do the right thing; to live up to the integrity his parents taught him was so important.
Crystal is a whistleblower police officer who was forced to resign from the Baltimore police force after facing harassment and threats for speaking out against other officers’ misconduct.
