Young Moose wins $300K settlement from city of Baltimore in police harassment lawsuit

Baltimore’s spending board has approved a $300,000 payment from the city to Kevron Evans, a local rapper who performs as Young Moose, The Baltimore Sun reports and multiple local outlets confirm independently. The decision follows Evans’ and the city’s May 10 court settlement of a year-long lawsuit in which Evans claimed a Baltimore police officer had planted crack cocaine on him during a 2012 search. The officer in question, Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) Detective Daniel Hersl, was sentenced in 2018 to 18 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of racketeering and is portrayed by Josh Charles on We Own This City, David Simon’s new HBO show about the GTTF corruption scandal.

Evans was charged with three felonies in connection with the 2012 arrest and accepted a plea deal that led to a suspended three-year sentence and probation. (A state attorney vacated the conviction in 2020 after the GTTF indictment.) But Hersl’s harassment didn’t end there. Baltimore police arrested and jailed Evans multiple times in the ensuing years, regularly using depictions of drugs and violence in his lyrics and music videos as probable cause in their warrants. The charges against him were repeatedly dismissed for lack of evidence, but Evans claimed in his 2021 lawsuit that the time he spent fighting them and their damage to his reputation robbed him of $1.5 million in “lucrative opportunities” in the music business.

“In order to resolve this case, avoiding the expense, time, and uncertainties of further protracted litigation and the potential for an excess judgment, BPD and the city agreed to offer plaintiff a settlement payment of $300,000.00,” City Solicitor Jim Shea wrote in his memorandum to the spending board. According to The Sun, the city has already paid out more than $10 million to settle lawsuits against the GTTF.