Two top staffers out at attorney general’s police oversight unit

by Christine Condon and Bryan P. Sears, Maryland Matters
October 14, 2025

The Maryland attorney general’s office is looking for a new leader for its police oversight unit, after its top two staffers resigned, the office confirmed Tuesday.

The office posted a job opening Tuesday for a new division chief at the Independent Investigations Division, the unit that handles all deaths involving law enforcement in Maryland — and which recently gained the authority to prosecute police officers.

The staffing changes come after the division’s first set of officer indictments were tossed out last month by an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge.

IID Chief Allison Green and deputy chief Renee Martel Joy “have resigned and will remain with the Office through the end of this week,” according to a statement from Jennifer Donelan, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office. She said Jonathan Smith, chief of the office’s Civil Rights Division, will serve as IID interim leader “while a robust search for new leadership is underway.”

Asked whether the outcome of the Anne Arundel County case contributed to the staff shakeup, Donelan said the office “does not comment on personnel matters.”

The job posting says the attorney general is “seeking an exceptional attorney to lead one of its most consequential and high-profile divisions: the Independent Investigations Division.”

“This is a rare opportunity to shape the future of public safety and accountability in Maryland,” it says. The posting seeks candidates with at least 10 years of experience in criminal prosecutions or defense, and offers a salary range of $135,418 to $191,453.

“The role requires a skilled criminal trial lawyer and leader who brings vision and integrity to the work — someone who can implement and refine best practices in the handling of these complex and sensitive cases,” the posting states.

The new director will oversee an office that was created by the General Assembly in 2021 to evaluate and publish reports about all instances in which a person dies during an interaction with Maryland law enforcement officers.

But the Independent Investigations Division only gained the authority to prosecute officers it investigated in 2023; before that, it was up to local jurisdictions whether or not to charge officers involved in a death.

The first charges filed by IID with that new authority came in December 2024, when Anne Arundel County Police Cpl. Eddie Vasquez and Cpl. Kieran Schnell were indicted for a high-speed chase a year earlier that ended in a fatal crash.

In December 2023, Vasquez and Schnell, in separate cruisers, chased a vehicle with its headlights off traveling 92 mph on Fort Smallwood Road, which has a 35 mph speed limit. The chase went on for 2 miles and reached speeds of 109 mph before Meziah Johnson’s car hit a utility pole, killing his passenger, Damione Gardner, 22.

Johnson survived. Now 25, he has since pleaded guilty to negligent manslaughter, drug possession and theft up to $25,000.

According to the indictment, neither Vasquez nor Schnell activated emergency lights or sirens, or their body-worn cameras, or contacted a supervisor. The pair “made factual misrepresentations and material omissions to [their] supervisors about the circumstances of the crash and concealed the occurrence,” prosecutors said. Vasquez and Schnell, who respectively had five and six years of service with the department, were charged with misconduct in office.

But during a hearing in September, Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Stacy McCormack said the state failed to reach the burden of proof necessary for the charges against the two officers to move forward.

McCormack also said that the state failed to prove it followed procedures to keep “compelled statements” — made by the officers during an internal affairs investigation — separate from the attorneys prosecuting the case. Under the law, prosecutors cannot see those “compelled statements” or use them in trial, due to officers’ rights protecting them from self-incrimination during questioning by their employer.

“The burden is an affirmative one,” McCormack said. “The AG must demonstrate that its evidence is not tainted by any direct or indirect exposures to the compelled testimony.”

“I think it’s very important to note that I understand that this is a serious case involving an accident where an individual lost his life,” McCormack said, before dismissing the charges.

At the time of the officers’ indictment, Anne Arundel County Police Chief Amal E. Awad said her department had investigated the incident and was “not aware of any conduct demonstrated by our officers that rises to the level of a violation of criminal law.” Once the charges were dismissed by McCormack, the department said that both Vasquez and Schnell were reinstated “to full-duty status” on the force.

“These are good officers,” Vasquez’s attorney Andrew Jezic said after the ruling. “Their main focus was getting these two guys out of the car and into the hands of the emergency personnel. This ruling could not have benefited finer, more dedicated officers and extremely nice young men.”

— Maryland Matters reporter William J. Ford contributed to this report.

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