Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown announced that no charges will be filed against two Baltimore Police officers who fatally shot 41-year-old Louis Jackson on Wilkens Avenue after he opened fire on their patrol vehicles during what dispatchers had already identified as a suicidal crisis. The Independent Investigations Division concluded on August 4 that the officers did not commit a crime under Maryland law.
According to WCBM, Baltimore City 911 dispatch had received a call on May 14 reporting that Jackson was in the 800 block of South Caton Avenue with a gun and wanted to kill himself. An officer was stationed at the intersection of South Caton and Wilkens avenues when Jackson approached, and after driving further down the block, the officer radioed dispatch that Jackson was coming toward him. The officer ordered Jackson to get on the ground, but Jackson instead pointed the gun in the officer's direction and refused to comply, the outlet reported.
A second officer responded to the scene and made a U-turn as the confrontation escalated. Jackson then ran toward the officers, and both discharged their weapons, striking him. Emergency medical services arrived and rendered aid before Jackson was transported to Saint Agnes Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Officers Were Patrolling Blind to the Crisis Call
State investigators identified the officers as Sharod Watson, a 13-year veteran of the force, and Mark Rankine, a 3-year veteran, both assigned to the Southern District's patrol division, according to the Attorney General of Maryland. Both officers were placed on standard administrative duty following the shooting, per protocol.
Police officials revealed that Watson and Rankine had no knowledge of the initial 911 calls describing Jackson's suicidal crisis, because emergency dispatchers had assigned those calls to the neighboring Southwest District while both officers were patrolling in the Southern District, according to WBAL NewsRadio 1090. The officers effectively stumbled into an active mental health emergency during routine patrol, only learning the fuller context of the crisis after the encounter had already turned deadly.
Ballistics details released by police show the shootout was brief but intense: Watson fired three rounds, Rankine fired five rounds, and Jackson discharged four rounds from his revolver, the station's report states. Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley confirmed during a May 22 news conference that an innocent civilian bystander was caught between officers and Jackson during the gunfire but escaped without injury, underscoring how close the encounter came to claiming an uninvolved life.
Untraceable Gun Sparks Federal Inquiry
Authorities recovered a gun at the scene, later identified as an untraceable .32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver with an obliterated serial number, the same account notes. That discovery has opened a federal investigation into how Jackson, who was legally prohibited from owning firearms because of prior criminal convictions, obtained the illegal weapon.
Baltimore Police released bodycam footage of the shooting in May, capturing officer statements made immediately after the gunfire ended. The Attorney General's Independent Investigations Division formally concluded its review on August 4, determining the officers did not commit a crime under Maryland law.
How Maryland's Police Accountability Law Works
The division was created under the Maryland Police Accountability Act of 2021 to provide independent external oversight whenever officers use fatal force against civilians, according to the Attorney General of Maryland. It has since grown to more than 20 dedicated investigators and legal personnel. Under Senate Bill 290, which took effect October 1, 2023, the division holds binding prosecutorial authority over police-involved fatal incidents statewide, stripping local state's attorneys of the charging decision in such cases, as reported by Conduit Street.
The division's 2025 annual report, released January 29, shows it opened 21 fatal police encounter investigations statewide that year and issued 24 declination reports in which Brown declined criminal charges against officers. The Jackson case fits a consistent pattern: Brown's office reached a similar conclusion in April when it declined charges against two officers who shot and killed Jamarl Muse on I-95 after Muse opened fire during a roadside struggle, as Hoodline previously reported.
Renewed Scrutiny Over Crisis Response
The Jackson declination lands amid heightened local scrutiny over how Baltimore police handle behavioral-health emergencies, following an AG declination earlier this year in the West Baltimore shooting of 70-year-old Pytorcarcha Brooks, who was killed during a welfare check and behavioral-health call. Community advocates have continued pressing for expanded non-police crisis co-response models in the wake of both cases.
Questions also remain about how dispatch communications broke down across district boundaries the day Jackson was killed, since the officers who confronted him never received the earlier crisis information routed to the Southwest District. Hoodline previously covered the initial scramble that followed the shooting on Wilkens Avenue in May, when the surrounding Southwest Baltimore neighborhood was thrown into confusion as the scene unfolded.
